[gizmo]

The problem isn't that Thiel is contrarian, the problem is that many of his beliefs (e.g. women's suffrage being a mistake) make for a hostile work environment.

You're not the first to reframe the issue to Thiel being simply a person who challenges conventional wisdom. As though all contrarians are alike and automatically beyond criticism.

[randyrand]

Not quite. His point is pretty simple: womans suffrage is a reason we are not as libertarian a country as before. Of course as a libertarian this makes him sad, but it does not imply it was a mistake - that was an assumption on your part.

"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron"

Cato later updated the essay and Thiel clarified that he does not want to disenfranchise women:

"While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better."

IMO this belief about democracy should be way more controversial than essentially stating woman don't vote libertarian.

Society needs to be a bit better at differentiating exploratory intellectual conversations from statements of belief. It shouldn't be so difficult to have reasoned discussions about controversial topics.

[gizmo]

His later clarification is a clear deflection. He laments women have the right to vote and he never retracted that statement.

[randyrand]

I'd argue that's an assumption.

To your second point, he never retracted his original statement because he never said woman shouldn't vote. What statement would you like him to retract? For your sake he still clarified his beliefs "I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised".

[gizmo]

You edited your post to remove the first sentence of Thiel's response: "It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away". That's a deflection, because it's a truism and doesn't address the criticism. Of course women's right to vote won't be taken away, but Thiel still believes that women's voting rights are not compatible with a free (meaning libertarian) society.

[randyrand]

I deleted it for that reason. Its a truism and does not represent his belief.

Your last sentence may be a truism as well. It's a belief about the way things are, not the way things should be.

[stcredzero]

He laments women have the right to vote and he never retracted that statement.

Sorry, but the interpretation that Mr. Thiel just has no faith in democracy improving things further seems much more reasonable. Given the entire corpus, do you think Peter Thiel would assert that life would improve if large swathes of the populace were disenfranchised? Please provide some quotes.

[gizmo]

> do you think Peter Thiel would assert that life would improve if large swathes of the populace were disenfranchised

Yes! He literally says so:

Thiel: I no longer believe that freedom [meaning capitalism] and democracy are compatible.

Thiel wants to save capitalism, and therefore rejects democracy because in his view you can't have both. That means he wants to disenfranchise everybody except the monied.

[stcredzero]

Thiel wants to save capitalism, and therefore rejects democracy because in his view you can't have both. That means he wants to disenfranchise everybody except the monied

I think his view is a bit more nuanced than that. I think that he'd say that the monied are the only ones really enfranchised now, and that public opinion is currently manipulated by those actors through their influence over the media. In such conditions, we'd expect any democracy to be dysfunctional.