[getgoingnow]

Peter Thiel is a weird guy. For many years he said there is going to be a major economic crisis.

- He wrote a paper on the fall of the Roman Empire [1] and thinks something similar could happen to the US.

- His fund 'Clarium Capital' bet on the fall of US dollar and lost a lot of money [2]

- He also stated that Hillary Clinton is going to win and be a one-term president, probably because the economic collapse is going to happen in few years [3]. He said "You kinda don't want to win 2016".

What do you think is behind his support for Trump? Does he want the economic armageddon to happen or not? Does he think that collapse is going to happen and that Trump is better at dealing with consequences than Hillary?

  [1] http://bit.ly/2acARwG
  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital#Recent_performance_2008-2010
  [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxtXMlPSQAY

[kafkaesq]

He said "You kinda don't want to win 2016".

Thiel isn't just "weird"; it should be pretty clear that he's out-and-out nuts, by this point.

At least he's being honest in conveying to us that not only does he not expect his sockpuppet candidate to win in 2016 - but that his ideology as a whole is essentially fatalistic; and that he needs some major catastrophe (in the form of either the economic collapse he's predicting; or of an actual Trump administration, which he's smart enough to realize would also be a major disaster) to bring about the sweeping, transformative change in global consciousness that he seeks -- the social chaos, ruined lives, and piles of corpses be damned.

Just like any megalomaniacal ideologue anywhere, since the beginning of time.

[sremani]

Lets tone down the rhetoric, I have immense respect for Thiel, he is a smart man, man of ideas and vision. But he is not infallible. As Gandhi said, right to err is a basic right. He is a known libertarian and for his own reasons supports Trump, so what?! Also remember, you are not infallible either.

[Analemma_]

> so what?!

There are some people, including a lot of us here on Hacker News, for whom a Trump administration wouldn't be that big of a deal. I'd hate it, but my day-to-day life probably wouldn't change all that much (unless he really goes off the deep end and starts a war, either the real kind or the trade kind, which can't be ruled out).

But there are a lot of people for whom a Trump administration would be a living hell. Those people have a right to be angry at Thiel's support of Trump without being treated to a "so what?! he's a smart mean of ideas and vision" lecture.

That's especially true when, as mentioned above, Thiel's support doesn't appear to be coming from a genuine belief that Trump is the right man for the job, but rather a hope that he will be such a disaster the country will fall apart, and that will ultimately result in the more widespread public support for Ayn Rand-style libertarianism that Thiel has been craving for so long. "Let's burn everything down and hope my preferred ideology springs from the ashes" is easy to support when you're rich and powerful enough to be unharmed by the "burning down" part, which Thiel is and most people are not.

[sremani]

I am not telling people to stop being critical of others, but we should stop painting people whom we disagree with as James Bond movie Villains. That is the point. During the election cycle, we all get emotional esp. if we are politically minded, my caution is against these heightened emotions and rhetoric.

Contempt for fellow citizens should not be a habit.

[kafkaesq]

I see your general point, and I respect it.

At the same time: in politics we occasionally do find there are truly bad actors; -- who don't just hold views we disagree with, or find distasteful; but who are basically out to push buttons and sow chaos (either with some greater goal in mind, or with chaos, and/or simple ego gratification in itself as the ultimate goal). And when this happens -- as it seems to be happening in the current U.S. election cycle -- it isn't uncivil (or even impolitic) to point this out.

It's simply a matter of stating the obvious -- and calling a spade a spade.

[vivekd]

I don't really follow American politics too much (I'm a Canadian), but as I see it, the people who stand be really adversely affected by Trumps policies are illegal Mexican immigrants and people from Islamic countries, and to be honest, I don't think they will actually be affected. I think trump is lying about those campaign promises. For one, it's just not practical from a logistic standpoint to deport all those millions of Mexican illegal immigrants, the process would bankrupt the country, and Trump has got to now that.

It's also not practical, in a globalized world, to have a ban on immigrants from Islamic countries. It would be financial suicide.

I think Trump is going to backtrack on both these promises, I think the Muslim ban is going to become a ban on "non approved" immigrants from Syria, Iraq and Yemen where there are major conflicts and he's probably going to backtrack on the Mexican issue claiming impracticability.

I mean really, it's not like anyone holds you the promises you make during primaries. I remember Trump also made a promise to shut down congress over the abortion issue (which is impossible for congress to overturn because it's been ruled a Constitutional right) and then just a few days later, I saw him on the news praising planned parenthood for the great work they do.

I think the guy is just playing to the crowd and saying what it takes to get the nomination. Trump seems to me to be one of those guys who is determined and will do what it takes to succeed at what he sets his mind to. I think a lot of his more radical statements during the Primaries is just election talk aimed at getting single issue republican voters to rally behind him (the Christian right over abortion, the nationalist right over immigration etc).

Also Theil is a huge pro-immigration advocate, I can't see him supporting an anti-immigration candidate .

[dragonwriter]

> I don't really follow American politics too much (I'm a Canadian), but as I see it, the people who stand be really adversely affected by Trumps policies are illegal Mexican immigrants and people from Islamic countries

Many people who do follow American politics closely disagree with this assessment of who stands to be "really adversely affected" by a Trump Presidency.

[mjburgess]

"The right to err" is commensurate right on behalf of those your err'ing against to call you a lunatic.

Thiel is responsible for his own pronouncements, ideological fantasies and desire for catastrophe.

[clarkmoody]

> He is a known libertarian and for his own reasons supports Trump

This is the craziest part to understand. Trump is about as libertarian as Hillary.

[kafkaesq]

Exactly. Talk about ulterior motives.

[tcoppi]

Making bets on and predicting an economic collapse does not mean one necessarily wants it to happen, simply that they think it is going to. I wouldn't presume to know why he supports Trump, but it will probably be clear after the speech next week.

[methehack]

w/r/t support for Trump (he's a Trump delegate, I think) the best I can come up with -- obviously utter speculation -- is that he's hoping for enough of a collapse of the republican party to create an opening for a new party more in line with is thinking, or alternately, enough of a weakening of the current republican party so as to re-forge it in the same manner.

I have thought about this very topic a little because I'm utterly flabbergasted that a book I like as well as Zero to One was written by a Trump delegate. So -- I may be cobbling together more of an excuse here than an explanation, if that's not obvious.

Also, in other Theil news, he gave a truly fantastic commencement speech this year at Hamilton college (the delivery is a little halting or stilted for sure, but honestly I think it's part of the charm): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4ywg5oemc

[chubot]

I'm also a fan of Zero to One and Thiel's other writings, and not a fan of Trump...

To me, it's a reminder that people are complex. Peter Thiel is a remarkably lucid thinker, but he was openly homophobic when he was young, while in the closet! Ron Paul is probably the only political candidate I've ever learned anything from, but he also has a history of racism.

Even Trump is complex -- he's not just the arrogant, ignorant character he plays on TV. I found this piece in the NYTimes to be illuminating (sorry if it's a subscription link):

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/campaign-stops/...

Like Peter Thiel and Ron Paul, Trump has contradictions. He is both ignorant and accomplished. He says a lot of bigoted and sexist stuff, but he has also known to be been shrewd in cultivating gay and female executive leadership. It's been said that his best advocates are his children, and that's saying a lot when you compare them to their peers (other children with 3rd generation wealth).

Trump is tapping into a real need that the electorate has, which honestly NEITHER party has an answer for.

Trump probably doesn't have an answer for it either, but acknowledging it is the first step. Honestly, it's probably NOT irrational for lower middle class white men to vote for Trump (over Clinton, at least). I would argue that it was probably irrational for them to vote for Bush, since Bush didn't act in their interests.

As for why Thiel would support Trump, I'm mystified too. But what I would guess it's because he doesn't support either Democrats or the "establishment GOP", which Trump isn't a part of.

Thiel is a contrarian, and in tech social circles, Trump is the ultimate contrarian choice :)

[tcoppi]

> As for why Thiel would support Trump, I'm mystified too. But what I would guess it's because he doesn't support either Democrats or the "establishment GOP", which Trump isn't a part of. Thiel is a contrarian, and in tech social circles, Trump is the ultimate contrarian choice :)

This does seem to be a major reason why otherwise rational people are supporting him. I think it is incredibly short-sighted, and sometimes wonder if these people have thought it through much, but it is what it is.

[unethical_ban]

I've pretty much decided I can't vote for either candidate, but I understand the spiteful vote. No one feels in control of the elite; their voice and vote don't matter.

This might be their way to say "See what happens when you ignore us?"

[optimuspaul]

That's funny because I'm a contrarian and I feel like Hillary is the ultimate contrarian choice.

[huherto]

> It's been said that his best advocates are his children

May be it is the education provided by Ivana. Who also had the good sense of divorcing Trump.

[piva00]

This would require an Ozymandias-level of forethought... But I think Thiel is odd enough to pull something like that, so weird to not have a clue about the underlying reasons now.

[Rotten194]

Yet another ridiculously ahistorical "This is the one / primary reason Rome fell" paper. Ugh.

[HarryHirsch]

Indeed. And how far did Rome fall during the Crisis of the 3rd Century? In those provinces that were unaffected by tribal incursions (Hispania, Africa, Egypt), life was golden! OK, Auson wrote his Mosella a century later, but it's required reading in this context. That poem tells of peace, peace since time immemorial.

[biot]

Clickable:

[1] http://bit.ly/2acARwG

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital#Recent_perform...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxtXMlPSQAY

[praptak]

How about class awareness as the explanation? A one percenter supports the party that represents the interest of the one percenters.

[jazzyk]

Completely unlike the other party </sarcasm>

[Kinnard]

Ever been to Detroit? In some ways, in some places, the collapse is already well-underway. Ruins all around.

[saturdaysaint]

Yeah, I ate there last night. It was hard to get a table at several restaurants and I almost got bumped into by a few Poke-hunters.

[eclipxe]

Comment would have been spot on 4-5 years ago. While Detroit hasn't become an amazing place, it has recovered from its lows a bit.

[Kinnard]

Au contraire, the ruins are still there, they surround all the strips and islands of recovery.

[internaut]

It's an eerie image, the desolate ruins inhabited by nothing but lolloping sandshrews ;-)

Probably can't find a pokestop either... There was even an article written.

[adventured]

Except there's very little data supporting that claim. Quite the opposite in fact.

- The middle class has continued to get richer for about 40 years, moving up rather than down. That move up has caused the middle class to contract.

- US household assets are up by $27 trillion since the peak in 2006/2007. For comparison sake, that gain alone is equivalent to 2/3 of all the wealth in the EU.

- US household balance sheets have improved dramatically in the last six years. The household debt to income ratio has declined by a lot, home equity has continued to climb. This contrasts with most of the rest of the developed world, in which households have been rapidly accumulating vast amounts of debt (mostly on mortgage debt accumulation).

- Full-time job openings are near record highs.

- Full-time job employment is at a record high.

- Unemployment has plunged dramatically since the peak of the great recession, including on the U6. The U6 is back to a normal level for the last 30 years, and is back to where it was before the great recession.

- The labor force participation rate is finally climbing again. The majority of the losses suffered there were from retirement anyway.

- Wages have been growing modestly well for the last two years, after enough slack was removed from the labor pool.

- Manufacturing is near an all-time record high on output.

- US median net wealth is higher than Germany or Sweden.

- US median disposable incomes are the highest in the world outside of Switzerland.

- US GDP per capita is back to being #5 in the world (soon to be twice that of Japan by comparison, and ~40% higher than Germany), which is rather extraordinary given the issues the nation just went through.

Where's the evidence to support this inbound great collapse? The sole issue that stands out meaningfully is the national debt. That's only going to get easier to manage as rates on debt fall over the next several years. The US has vast spare taxing capacity that very few developed nations have, the US middle and upper-middle class is among the lowest taxed out of that group; the US rich could easily be taxed several points higher without it significantly impacting the economy.

[tsunamifury]

I pay nearly 48% tax to state federal and city, and it does significant damage for my ability to grow in the Bay Area. There is no room to be taxed more, in fact the tax rate here hinders the middle and upper middle class from saving effectively for a down payment, doing actual damage to the region.

[webXL]

Oh, believe me, there's room to be taxed: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/24/how-y... ;)

Some people look at that map and think "look at all that income just being disposed of! Just think of what governments could do with all that cash!"

[SilasX]

Those people are wrong, and there isn't room: tax revenues has been roughly constant across enormously varying [1] rates. An increase in rates will scare marginal workers (people near retirement, moonlighters, the lower-earning member of a couple) off the labor market, and direct more efforts into reclassifying consumption as a business expense, canceling much of the increase in revenues, while leaving significant economic waste in its wake.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law

[harryh]

I don't believe you. Your marginal tax rate might be 48%, but I would be shocked if your average rate was that high even living in a very high tax area of the US.

I live in NYC (also a very high tax location) and have a pretty decent income and my rate for 2015 was just over 40%. That includes Fed, State, City, FICA & tax preparation costs.

[SilasX]

Unfortunately, decisions are made at the margin[1], so high marginal rates cause extreme distortions and "deadweight loss"[2] -- i.e., a loss of X dollars' worth that corresponds to less than X dollars of gain for the government.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss

[harryh]

I certainly agree that marginal rates are important. I'm just saying that it's important to understand the difference between marginal rate and average rate and not use one where you mean the other.

[louprado]

At least you have mobility in the U.S. as a means to reduce your tax liability. By simply moving 250 miles east, your rate would drop to ~35%. Many people leave California for this reason while others feel the extra 9-13% is worth it.

[dragonwriter]

> I pay nearly 48% tax to state federal and city, and it does significant damage for my ability to grow in the Bay Area.

Its possible to reach that total tax rate, though even if you manage to have no dependents or other sources of deductions, credits, etc., it takes a lot of income, even for the Bay Area (like, the kind where you could, after those taxes, meet reasonable living expenses and buy a new Bay Area home, without selling the last one, for cash every decade or so.)

> There is no room to be taxed more

The maximum combined federal, state, and city taxes on income (including income and payroll taxes at all levels) in San Francisco is lower than the maximum federal income tax alone in the period of the US most rapid aggregate growth (and also the most rapid relative growth of the middle class.)

[ams6110]

During that time there were many more tax shelters. Even interest on personal debt like car loans was deductible.

[venomsnake]

It is expensive to be unmarried, well earning and human in the US (I think that tax rate is almost impossible to achieve for a family). I recommend you to become a corporation ...

[humanrebar]

It's actually less expensive; it's just the payoff happens when other people's children start paying for future social security, medicare, and medicaid checks.

[rayiner]

> It is expensive to be unmarried . . . I think that tax rate is almost impossible to achieve for a family

When household income is above $150k, married couples with roughly equal incomes to each other will pay more in taxes than if they were single. That is because the tax brackets for married couples are wider than for singles, but not twice as wide.

[tanderson92]

Here is an interesting paper on Taxation and marriage: "Taxation and Marriage: A Reappraisal"

> Marriage taxation presents a "trilemma": An income

> tax cannot simultaneously maintain progressive

> marginal tax rates, an equal tax burden for all married

> couples with identical incomes ("couples equity"),

> and neutrality with respect to the tax burden of

> married versus unmarried couples ("marriage

> neutrality").

Much more interesting discussion: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

[JauntTrooper]

The US debt-to-GDP ratio is 104%, which is high by historic standards, but no cause for alarm. Japan is at 226%, the UK is at 88%, Germany is at 75%, and China is at 41%.

Last year, interest payments on the national debt were 6% of our budget and only 1.3% of GDP -- a near record low.

And the US only has to pay interest of 2.2% a year on 30-year bonds. If average inflation over the next 30 years is greater than 2.2%, then the US will actual gain money in real terms for every dollar it borrows.

As you stated, the US has ample ability to service its debt; the 2011 S&P debt downgrade was due to questions on Congress' willingness to pay it.

[Kinnard]

You're talking about national accounting, I'm talking about a crumbling city . . .

[pc86]

If you don't monospace footnotes they'll actually be clickable.

[gmarx]

I think he was also a "peak oil" guy and made some bad bets

[quadrangle]

regardless of Thiel, there's nothing invalid about the concept of peak oil. The main questions are "when?" and "will we have enough oil so that full destruction of the stability of the climate hits us first before major peak oil issues?" and things like that

[gmarx]

Crap like this bugs me. Because you waste more time on Hacker News you can downvote and I can't? I am clearly correct that we did not hit peak oil back then and if he made a bet on it he got burned for exactly that predictable reason.

Someday we will hit peak oil? Duh? Someday the sun will burn out. The peak oil histeria from 5 or ten years ago was about the claim that we had already hit peak oil and pretty soon we wouldn't have enough petroleum to even grow food and we were all going to die. I had two friends having panic attacks over this BS.

Sorry reality failed to confirm your preferred political narrative in the past. Keep retconning and you can always think you were right

[dragonwriter]

> I am clearly correct that we did not hit peak oil back then

It may be the case that Thiel misinterpreted the economic consequences of peak oil and made bad bets based on it (particularly, there are no particular clear short-term market effects associated with peak oil beyond greater price volatility).

> The peak oil histeria from 5 or ten years ago was about the claim that we had already hit peak oil and pretty soon we wouldn't have enough petroleum to even grow food and we were all going to die.

The idea that the point that will be the peak in the smoothed long-term production curve is already past is not yet rejected, though there remains some doubt as to whether that point is in the recent past or not.

The idea that the peak would have any particularly clear set of clear short-term market consequences (and particularly anything like "we wouldn't have enough petroleum to even grow food" or "we were all going to die") has never been part of peak oil theory. Now, its clearly possible Thiel bought into some crazy idea like this secondary to peak oil theory, but that's a different issue than peak oil itself.

[quadrangle]

Yeah, sorry but peak oil isn't something that happens on a particular day or hour. There's tons of evidence that we actually already are past peak oil. We're now already getting oil out of tar sands, and if that's even close to economically sensible at all, then it's obvious that the cheap, easy oil is past its peak.

Anyone who thought that peak oil meant immediate real-world decline in availability of gasoline would be deluded. We have too much at stake in our oil-dependent system to let that happen. We'll screw with tax incentives and government systems and all sorts of crazy things and get at the hardest-to-get oil until we get way way way past the peak.

We probably will never hit the point of being on the far tail end of the oil curve because the pollution and climate mayhem will take over before that, so we'll have to stop burning all the oil for environmental reasons long before we run out of oil to burn. But that doesn't mean we haven't peaked our accessible, cheap oil options.

P.S. I have no clue about the voting here. I typically don't see downvote options, and I'm pretty sure you can't tell who downvoted you, so you seem to just be speculating.