I want just to add that Peter Thiel is one of the reason why we cannot have / invent ‘cool stuff’. But he is also not wrong about what he saying: I’m just saying that it is not so simple.
How do you blame Thiel for bureaucratic bloat in the US government? NASA, the canonical example of a formerly productive organization becoming hopelessly turgid, was dysfunctional by the time he was a teenager.
Thiel believes that rent seeking monopolies are desirable and necessary to enable innovation. He's plainly wrong about that as a mater of economic science. Lockhead's use of regulatory capture to extract as much money as possible is directly in line with how Thiel thinks business should be done.
I don't think Thiel thinks this. I think Thiel's argument about monopolies is that good businesses act like monopolies because they have no competition, i.e. it's better to be Tesla[0] than to be starting a fast food franchise. I don't agree with Thiel on this, I think you're more likely to get rich in an area where there is already demand, but Thiel is more focused on people that pioneer new industries.
[0]: Yeah, I know there are other EV manufacturers, Tesla is really not competing with them at this stage and never really was.
He's been quite explicit about it in his talks for years. He sees monopolies as necessary to concentrate enough capital under one person's control to enable them to be an innovator.
To be rather blunt about it, much of his rhetoric is ultimately just about saying indirect forms of "let John Galt do whatever he wants and be grateful peasant."
This is why he's financially supported Yarvin, who quite literally wants to turn the world into a technocratic monarchy, with some very nasty "scientific racism" style stuff mixed in. It's a drop in the bucket compared to Thiel's wealth, but he clearly has no problem providing millions of dollars in support of this kind of thinking.
Also pay attention to how Palantir does business. They behave very similarly to Lockhead Martin when it comes to over promising their technology and under delivering in order to pull as much money off the table as possible, including from governments.
Ehhh, I've read his book (which is really just a rehash of Michael Porter) and I've seen some of his talks and while I see where you're coming, I wouldn't be quite as harsh, although Thiel might be sailing a bit close to "real monopolism has never been tried."
With regard to Yarvin I have no idea what Yarvin wants because he takes 10,000 words to explain himself and I can never find the energy to finish reading anything by him. He has a much less long winded brother who has a somewhat interesting blog though (totally unrelated topics to the better known Yarvin). I do think it is good that people like Thiel support these sort of thinkers though. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and I'm sure some of their ideas have merit.
No, Yarvin's thinking does not have merit, and his entire approach is to exploit attempts at good faith debate with his own bad faith behavior. It's similar to the approach a lot of creationists use. There's no reason to indulge it. Here's a piece that's mostly about the Star Slate Codex drama, but covers the issue well: https://modelcitizen.substack.com/p/climbing-the-bell-curve-...
You're giving NASA way, way, way too much credit. The organization was a clusterfuck from the very beginning. The only reason they managed to get anything done is because top brass quickly figured out that they are primarily a presidential vanity project.
There are some great interviews from the 70s on YouTube with some of the first high ranking officials within NASA speaking rather candidly about how terrible it was there. Everyone hated them: Congress, Military Brass, the American public.
