I have sometimes wondered why billionaire bunker builders think NZ is such a safe refuge in a crisis. Does the NZ gov't offer them special protection by police, security and military over and above that which a regular citizen could expect? Do these people have special dispensation to recruit ( or import) private armed protection squads?- that would definitely be outside the realms of everyday legality. Having these people within our borders during a global crisis would be a threat to the civil rights and safety of normal citizens from both domestic and foreign agencies.
I’ve no doubt that Thiel’s fantasy is that if there’s a crisis sufficiently severe to send him fleeing to New Zealand he will be able to form a junta with cronies like John Key to abrogate democracy in tinpot sized NZ and run the country free of pleasing the mere people. There’s likely to be something of a gulf between Thiel’s fantasy and what happens on the ground.
He's obsessed with them. Almost all his companies and projects have Tolkien names. I do think that at least has a small part of why Aotearoa was so enticing for him as a bolthole...
I’ve asked myself many similar questions Kevin. It seems more than just a coincidence that there seems to have been a seismic shift in political directions in NZ in recent years (from a foreign observer’s perspective)?
The world over, we see a kind of 'reverse Orwellian Newspeak', where the names of parties stay the same, but their political direction goes off at a tangent, if not into complete reverse. 'National' (NZ for Conservative) represents internationally owned corporate business and finance, 'Labour' represents the ambitions of the public sector managerial class and, increasingly, the same corporate entities whose lobbyists they deal with on a daily basis.
Meanwhile. the suckers- that is to say the voters- being mostly animated by 'teamsport mentality' (particularly salient in NZ) vote for the party that's 'traditional' for their region and/or their family or social group. It is literally like choosing a football team to support. In particular, neither wage-workers nor small-to medium business owners- who largely operate in a sector that relies on workers' discretionary spending capacity- are represented by mainstream parties, but still refuse to coalesce into a united political force, preferring to default to the 'traditional' vote, or to let some random fascist 'have a go next'.
Sadly I think you’re absolutely correct Kevin. I’ve said for many years that here in Oz the two main political parties have more differences within them than between them.
Ironically, one of our current politicians rattling the conservative’s cage (and doing a brilliant job) is an ex footballer! There’s still hope that some people doing good things.
Don’t worry about it. Once “the shit hits the fan” and money’s no good, his hired head of security will have no reason not to off him for the rest of us.
In the video Karp is in distress. He rocks himself away and toward the camera before speaking. I recognize this behavior, having lived with "on the spectrum" narcissists for many years.
That’s really offensive to people who are on the spectrum. Conflating narcissistic tendencies with neurodivergent people is wrong. Neurodivergent people aren’t any more narcissistic than neurotypical people. Often a neurodivergent person’s affect may come across as uncaring and cold, but that doesn’t mean this is how they feel internally.
Are you suggesting that people 'on the spectrum' can't be narcissists? Nowhere in the comment did it say that all people 'on the spectrum' are narcissists. Just that the person in the video is probably both.
While you are correct that the original comment did not say all people on the spectrum are narcissists, and I did take the comment to be specific to a subset of individuals known to the commenter, InkyFingers also did not say people on the spectrum can't be narcissists. They said they aren't any more narcissistic than neurotypicals. (edited to point to the original commenter)
So, I'm currently in chem class right now in the bathroom writing this, but I'm so confused... what exactly do we do to stop Peter Thiel? Like actually?
Do we need to come together and organize, start an anti-Palantir movement, join one online, or something else?
To add on, I get the 10000 reasons of what we can't do since we're all just average citizens, but what is the ONE thing we can do beyond just making people more aware?
Overall, I just need some way to make this worry more actionable than to just keep on reading Substack articles. Sorry if this is too much to be asking in just one comment.
This is not investment advice. If for their own reasons a bunch of hedge funds and retail investors also went short on Palantir, that would change incentives for Peter. A person doesn't need to be Michael Burry to short a stock.
Edit: hey y'all! i've decided to start a new pro-worker organization called "Luddites" that aims to organize people in Big Tech and make tech worker-owned, amongst other things. It's still a work-in-progress, but if you want to check out the Substack for updates, here it is!!
You see. This is what happens when the world markets are essentially controlled by a handful of mega-rich men. All you pension fund holders out there get on the phone to your ‘advisers’ and ask what your risk spread looks like. Are they still banking on the same 7 stocks??
I think the tech bros know that they have a better shot at getting Trump to bail them out than whoever comes after Trump. And Trump is not looking too healthy, physically or politically.
I see this Thiel situation in three ways. One, he’s planning for a collapse and wants liquidity when the rest of us are bartering canned beans and emotional support. Two, he’s getting ready to shovel a mountain of cash into Substrate so he can personally own the shovel factory for the next phase of the chip war. Three, complete weird wingnuttery that makes “Broligarchy” feel less like satire and more like a government form we’ll all be forced to fill out in ten years.
Thiel does not make moves based on morality, patriotism, or human continuity. He makes moves based on the same thing every vampire oligarch cuts their teeth on: asymmetric power. And dumping Nvidia now is not a whim. It is a signal flare. He thinks the music is about to stop, and he intends to be the guy already seated while the rest of the economy face-plants into the brass section.
This is disaster capitalism in its final form. Manufacture the mania, pump the narrative, cash out before impact, then present yourself as the only adult who saw the storm coming and deserves to run the reconstruction. It is Shock Doctrine with a private jet.
Thiel is not escaping a bubble. He is rearranging the blast radius. And if you listen closely, you can hear the rest of Silicon Valley clutching their balance sheets like rosary beads.
The question is not what he knows. The question is what he thinks he can build from the rubble.
Is he going to buy all the tinned beans? Because if we are bartering them that suggests money has no value, so his liquidity will need to be reidrected into something people will want. In a post crash, post money world, that's not AI, or whatever clever data chewing tech he currently owns. People like him and Musk depend on all the trappings of civilization, in its current structure, especially the tech, for their status. Without it they are just another collection of flesh, as vulnerable as any other. I suppose he might fantasize about becoming a war lord, but I suspect that requires a different skillset.
Thiel agrees with you. There is a bubble. Tesla’s PE ratio was approaching 200 last time I checked, Nvidia’s somewhere in the 50s. Most of the rest of Big Tech is in the 30s. So he sold his stock. Which ironically means he himself won’t need a bailout, whoever is buying these stocks from him has already bailed him out.
The sudden sale by Theil speaks for itself. I've been positioning myself for this for about a year, withdrawing from the stock market. I watched the AI boom and compared the performance vs it's apparent lack of world changing effects (business leaders nonwithstanding). It looked an awful lot like another tech fuelled management craze. I've seen enough of those to know that they frequently don't work as advertised.
The projected “myth” of AI has always been overstated by those who saw the potential, yet never factored in the cost of obtaining the end goal. The environmental and health costs of data centers are huge. The slow adaptation by the general population (actually most people have no need to use it). Companies are learning human oversight is still needed. There are some really excellent uses of the data collection and processing in the scientific, mathematics and medical fields. For the creative side, not so much. For all Musk, Theil and others assign human traits to a machine it does not include emotions. Empathy, compassion, etc. are critical humanity traits that machines can only mimic, never understand or feel.
I own and love a very old book that consists of essays by a host of writers from just about every genre. The assigned topic: AI. I learned a lot from it, and go back to it occasionally to refresh. Nothing that's being said today isn't there. Title: "The Mind's I".
1981: The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett and a bunch of very wiggy big thinkers: before Internet, way before AI really got going: the nature of intelligence and lucid thinking about what machines are actually capable of: if we read this and compare it to the stupefying amount of AI-propaganda we've read over the past 15 years: you really see how much BS is going on with AI, which is really just a super fast computer. Actual creativity and intelligence requires embodiment. How did we ever believe intelligence is just some hi-powered "vat brain"? AI can do math stuff, and find patterns in large data sets, which makes it valuable for scientific research and medical applications. But "creativity"? Please. This was one of those books that made me super skeptical when all the AI hype went supernova. Then, when Jaron Lanier's "There Is No AI" came out in the April 2023 New Yorker, I realized I wasn't being too reactionary against the AI BS.
One wonders how much guys like Thiel and Karp (and Michael Burry?) actually believed it too.
I am a retired 34 year IT professional who started my career in 1984. I was called a Luddite when I pushed back against people who saw AI as the wonderful future. Now reality is starting to sink in. I wonder how many will change their minds, especially when the stock market busts from the over investment of AI and predatory surveillance is exposed.
My husband worked on AI in the mid 80s with a start up company whose CEO was a ‘tech-bro’ from MIT. As you commented, AI propaganda and a super fast computer which has limited uses. However, when you look at China’s practical applications - 😮
I'm interested in how this tracks with Trump's Epstein woes and crack-up of his base & players and the next in line being Thiel's creation. Maybe I've been watching too much Netflix.
Don’t forget how he’s done this before and often, if we had any real rule of law and regulations he’d be investigated for numerous stock/other manipulations. He’s done it with crypto, banks esp the tech vc’s ones if any remember the prior ones that went kaput and had to be taken over etc etc etc should be no surprise then that he’s also in the ep files either both financial manipulators too. Vulture capitalism at its worst rape pillage and steal I believe that’s also the reason we’re supposed to have laws rules and regulations against such but yeah so much for any of that these days. The reason so many are hurting by trying to play by the rules ethically and honestly. They seem to get richer though shmhs
I will never ever forgive our former PM John Key for giving Thiel NZ citizenship 🤬
I have sometimes wondered why billionaire bunker builders think NZ is such a safe refuge in a crisis. Does the NZ gov't offer them special protection by police, security and military over and above that which a regular citizen could expect? Do these people have special dispensation to recruit ( or import) private armed protection squads?- that would definitely be outside the realms of everyday legality. Having these people within our borders during a global crisis would be a threat to the civil rights and safety of normal citizens from both domestic and foreign agencies.
I’ve no doubt that Thiel’s fantasy is that if there’s a crisis sufficiently severe to send him fleeing to New Zealand he will be able to form a junta with cronies like John Key to abrogate democracy in tinpot sized NZ and run the country free of pleasing the mere people. There’s likely to be something of a gulf between Thiel’s fantasy and what happens on the ground.
Anyone read Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton?
I don't doubt they have "network state" plans for places like New Zealand.
Reminds me of Birnam Wood...
I think it’s just because there’s mountains and buying one is relatively cheap?
Life in a SILO
Agree 100%, though he may be able to buy a lot of 'potlatch' loyalty if he can manage to hold onto his billions.
IDK but I suspect it’s our relative isolation. Agree that it’d be a threat to civil rights.
Don't forget the NZ/Lord of the Rings tie in for Thiel.
I have no idea to what you are referring, apart from the obvious 'Palantir' reference. Was he a financier for the movies or something?
He's obsessed with them. Almost all his companies and projects have Tolkien names. I do think that at least has a small part of why Aotearoa was so enticing for him as a bolthole...
I’ve asked myself many similar questions Kevin. It seems more than just a coincidence that there seems to have been a seismic shift in political directions in NZ in recent years (from a foreign observer’s perspective)?
The world over, we see a kind of 'reverse Orwellian Newspeak', where the names of parties stay the same, but their political direction goes off at a tangent, if not into complete reverse. 'National' (NZ for Conservative) represents internationally owned corporate business and finance, 'Labour' represents the ambitions of the public sector managerial class and, increasingly, the same corporate entities whose lobbyists they deal with on a daily basis.
Meanwhile. the suckers- that is to say the voters- being mostly animated by 'teamsport mentality' (particularly salient in NZ) vote for the party that's 'traditional' for their region and/or their family or social group. It is literally like choosing a football team to support. In particular, neither wage-workers nor small-to medium business owners- who largely operate in a sector that relies on workers' discretionary spending capacity- are represented by mainstream parties, but still refuse to coalesce into a united political force, preferring to default to the 'traditional' vote, or to let some random fascist 'have a go next'.
Sadly I think you’re absolutely correct Kevin. I’ve said for many years that here in Oz the two main political parties have more differences within them than between them.
Ironically, one of our current politicians rattling the conservative’s cage (and doing a brilliant job) is an ex footballer! There’s still hope that some people doing good things.
Ain't that the truth! So how do we strip it from him? Thiel, that is!
Don’t worry about it. Once “the shit hits the fan” and money’s no good, his hired head of security will have no reason not to off him for the rest of us.
Well at least that means your country will probably survive the coming fall
If someone like PT has a vested interest in a place, it's a measure of protection.
In the video Karp is in distress. He rocks himself away and toward the camera before speaking. I recognize this behavior, having lived with "on the spectrum" narcissists for many years.
Yes, that was very telling.
That’s exactly what I thought watching. He’s definitely stressed and on the spectrum.
That’s really offensive to people who are on the spectrum. Conflating narcissistic tendencies with neurodivergent people is wrong. Neurodivergent people aren’t any more narcissistic than neurotypical people. Often a neurodivergent person’s affect may come across as uncaring and cold, but that doesn’t mean this is how they feel internally.
Yeah. We are all on the spectrum by the way. I was speaking anecdotally. You're really offended. That's on you, not me.
Hunh. Not.
Are you suggesting that people 'on the spectrum' can't be narcissists? Nowhere in the comment did it say that all people 'on the spectrum' are narcissists. Just that the person in the video is probably both.
While you are correct that the original comment did not say all people on the spectrum are narcissists, and I did take the comment to be specific to a subset of individuals known to the commenter, InkyFingers also did not say people on the spectrum can't be narcissists. They said they aren't any more narcissistic than neurotypicals. (edited to point to the original commenter)
Hey, it wasn't my comment. My point was that they needn't feel offended.
Sorry. I edited the comment to indicate the originating comment and not you.
Let’s cut to the chase - he’s a see you next Tuesday - let snot previldge him or excuse him with a diagnosis
So, I'm currently in chem class right now in the bathroom writing this, but I'm so confused... what exactly do we do to stop Peter Thiel? Like actually?
Do we need to come together and organize, start an anti-Palantir movement, join one online, or something else?
To add on, I get the 10000 reasons of what we can't do since we're all just average citizens, but what is the ONE thing we can do beyond just making people more aware?
Overall, I just need some way to make this worry more actionable than to just keep on reading Substack articles. Sorry if this is too much to be asking in just one comment.
This is what I want to know
Riot in the streets when the government decides to bail them out?
This is not investment advice. If for their own reasons a bunch of hedge funds and retail investors also went short on Palantir, that would change incentives for Peter. A person doesn't need to be Michael Burry to short a stock.
Edit: hey y'all! i've decided to start a new pro-worker organization called "Luddites" that aims to organize people in Big Tech and make tech worker-owned, amongst other things. It's still a work-in-progress, but if you want to check out the Substack for updates, here it is!!
-> https://substack.com/@ludditesofficial/notes?utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-page
You see. This is what happens when the world markets are essentially controlled by a handful of mega-rich men. All you pension fund holders out there get on the phone to your ‘advisers’ and ask what your risk spread looks like. Are they still banking on the same 7 stocks??
Tried to get my pension stock to only trade on solar, wind, tidal, hydro tech but there wasn't a fund setup for that (oh and no US companies). Ugh.
Try Trading 212. Set up your own pie. Nice app!
Burry shutting it all down should worry almost everyone with anything in the market.
When this sector bursts watch Trump bail them out. Not even one cent of our taxpayer money should go to these weirdos.
I think the tech bros know that they have a better shot at getting Trump to bail them out than whoever comes after Trump. And Trump is not looking too healthy, physically or politically.
I see this Thiel situation in three ways. One, he’s planning for a collapse and wants liquidity when the rest of us are bartering canned beans and emotional support. Two, he’s getting ready to shovel a mountain of cash into Substrate so he can personally own the shovel factory for the next phase of the chip war. Three, complete weird wingnuttery that makes “Broligarchy” feel less like satire and more like a government form we’ll all be forced to fill out in ten years.
Thiel does not make moves based on morality, patriotism, or human continuity. He makes moves based on the same thing every vampire oligarch cuts their teeth on: asymmetric power. And dumping Nvidia now is not a whim. It is a signal flare. He thinks the music is about to stop, and he intends to be the guy already seated while the rest of the economy face-plants into the brass section.
This is disaster capitalism in its final form. Manufacture the mania, pump the narrative, cash out before impact, then present yourself as the only adult who saw the storm coming and deserves to run the reconstruction. It is Shock Doctrine with a private jet.
Thiel is not escaping a bubble. He is rearranging the blast radius. And if you listen closely, you can hear the rest of Silicon Valley clutching their balance sheets like rosary beads.
The question is not what he knows. The question is what he thinks he can build from the rubble.
Is he going to buy all the tinned beans? Because if we are bartering them that suggests money has no value, so his liquidity will need to be reidrected into something people will want. In a post crash, post money world, that's not AI, or whatever clever data chewing tech he currently owns. People like him and Musk depend on all the trappings of civilization, in its current structure, especially the tech, for their status. Without it they are just another collection of flesh, as vulnerable as any other. I suppose he might fantasize about becoming a war lord, but I suspect that requires a different skillset.
Water?
Thiel agrees with you. There is a bubble. Tesla’s PE ratio was approaching 200 last time I checked, Nvidia’s somewhere in the 50s. Most of the rest of Big Tech is in the 30s. So he sold his stock. Which ironically means he himself won’t need a bailout, whoever is buying these stocks from him has already bailed him out.
The sudden sale by Theil speaks for itself. I've been positioning myself for this for about a year, withdrawing from the stock market. I watched the AI boom and compared the performance vs it's apparent lack of world changing effects (business leaders nonwithstanding). It looked an awful lot like another tech fuelled management craze. I've seen enough of those to know that they frequently don't work as advertised.
The projected “myth” of AI has always been overstated by those who saw the potential, yet never factored in the cost of obtaining the end goal. The environmental and health costs of data centers are huge. The slow adaptation by the general population (actually most people have no need to use it). Companies are learning human oversight is still needed. There are some really excellent uses of the data collection and processing in the scientific, mathematics and medical fields. For the creative side, not so much. For all Musk, Theil and others assign human traits to a machine it does not include emotions. Empathy, compassion, etc. are critical humanity traits that machines can only mimic, never understand or feel.
Nor do most of the bros.
I own and love a very old book that consists of essays by a host of writers from just about every genre. The assigned topic: AI. I learned a lot from it, and go back to it occasionally to refresh. Nothing that's being said today isn't there. Title: "The Mind's I".
1981: The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett and a bunch of very wiggy big thinkers: before Internet, way before AI really got going: the nature of intelligence and lucid thinking about what machines are actually capable of: if we read this and compare it to the stupefying amount of AI-propaganda we've read over the past 15 years: you really see how much BS is going on with AI, which is really just a super fast computer. Actual creativity and intelligence requires embodiment. How did we ever believe intelligence is just some hi-powered "vat brain"? AI can do math stuff, and find patterns in large data sets, which makes it valuable for scientific research and medical applications. But "creativity"? Please. This was one of those books that made me super skeptical when all the AI hype went supernova. Then, when Jaron Lanier's "There Is No AI" came out in the April 2023 New Yorker, I realized I wasn't being too reactionary against the AI BS.
One wonders how much guys like Thiel and Karp (and Michael Burry?) actually believed it too.
I am a retired 34 year IT professional who started my career in 1984. I was called a Luddite when I pushed back against people who saw AI as the wonderful future. Now reality is starting to sink in. I wonder how many will change their minds, especially when the stock market busts from the over investment of AI and predatory surveillance is exposed.
My husband worked on AI in the mid 80s with a start up company whose CEO was a ‘tech-bro’ from MIT. As you commented, AI propaganda and a super fast computer which has limited uses. However, when you look at China’s practical applications - 😮
THANKS! I short- handed too much! Your way better review will have a way better chance of getting people to read it!
That a mega powerful “techno” bro apparently has a messiah complex is very disturbing.
Welcome aboard.
I'm interested in how this tracks with Trump's Epstein woes and crack-up of his base & players and the next in line being Thiel's creation. Maybe I've been watching too much Netflix.
Nobody likes Vance. Succession will be part of the implosion of MAGA that is already starting.
even so, Vance is VP until Jan. 2029, which makes him next in line for several more years
remember when that used to be called insider trading and be punishable? i do.
interesting article, I'm curious now what the process is to try and get someone sectioned in the USA, greta is the antichrist etc
Don’t forget how he’s done this before and often, if we had any real rule of law and regulations he’d be investigated for numerous stock/other manipulations. He’s done it with crypto, banks esp the tech vc’s ones if any remember the prior ones that went kaput and had to be taken over etc etc etc should be no surprise then that he’s also in the ep files either both financial manipulators too. Vulture capitalism at its worst rape pillage and steal I believe that’s also the reason we’re supposed to have laws rules and regulations against such but yeah so much for any of that these days. The reason so many are hurting by trying to play by the rules ethically and honestly. They seem to get richer though shmhs
A couple of suggestions of things you might like to read / listen to, to cheer yourself up, on this topic:
https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_332
and
The Future, by Naomi Alderman.
Both were on Start the Week this morning. Who says the BBC is no use any more?