0:07

I'm Dave Rubin, live from the

0:09

local studio here in Miami and joining

0:11

me today is the founder of the Thiel Foundation,

0:14

the co founder of PayPal and

0:16

Palantir. Peter I could

0:18

have given

0:19

you, like, a whole bigger intro

0:21

there. Anything else you wanna throw in? It's all good.

0:23

Generally, the shorter intro, the more flattering it as

0:25

Oh, you have super long. You have a twenty page resume

0:27

for people who've never done

0:28

anything. So I

0:29

was gonna say, four and so forth. And

0:31

disgruntled Libertarians something

0:33

longer the intro

0:34

gets the the moored suggested you're not really doing

0:36

anything at all. Oh, alright. Well, you are doing a

0:38

lot. I have I actually have notes. I never

0:40

have notes I do a show, but I was like, I wanna cover

0:43

some new ground and not just get into the

0:45

the political thing that we're always fighting

0:47

with everybody about. But I thought I'd

0:49

start because we are here in Miami. You

0:52

know, you famously left San

0:54

Francisco, moved most of the

0:56

operation to Los Angeles, you do have

0:59

a place in Miami.

1:01

How do you feel about this sort of

1:03

movement of people across the country

1:05

right now and sort of watching people

1:07

migrate to different places, to live

1:09

very, very different ways? Well, it's

1:11

it's it's it's it's it's

1:13

it's surely a very healthy thing

1:15

that, you know, that it's it's

1:18

in retrospect. It's amazing that people were as

1:20

stuck as they were and the places they were

1:22

they were in for for such a long time

1:24

and the history of the US was

1:26

that this had always been a society where

1:28

people moved a lot between places

1:31

and and the physical

1:34

mobility had actually gone down probably a lot

1:36

for the last forty or fifty years relative

1:38

to the two hundred year history

1:40

before that. And so

1:43

it's probably Thiel a little bit out whether it's a

1:45

temporary or permanent feature, but it's

1:48

surely a healthy recalibration. It's

1:50

sort of this idea you can always start

1:52

over in this

1:53

country. And one of the ways you start

1:55

over is move to new place. Were you kind of patent

1:57

yourself on the back that you were the first guy

1:59

out of San Francisco and my audience is well

2:01

aware as I've posted some videos from a recent

2:04

visit to San Francisco, the way that place has

2:06

just collapsed under progressive policies

2:08

is absolutely insane. I'm guessing

2:10

you don't have any employees that are wishing that

2:12

you guys had

2:13

stayed, although you still do have some people there.

2:15

Right? There still are some people, not

2:17

not very many that still are are living

2:19

in San Francisco proper and

2:22

it is really extraordinary. I lived in

2:24

San Francisco from two thousand three

2:27

to two thousand two thousand eighteen.

2:30

And it's sort of, you know, it

2:32

never quite got better, but

2:34

the idea it took a while for the idea to

2:36

sneak up on people that it was actually on

2:38

the slow decay deterioration thing.

2:40

Now, the homelessness was always

2:42

a chronic problem. But in circa twenty

2:45

fourteen, twenty fifteen, you start

2:47

to realize, you know, it's actually getting worse.

2:49

And they're never gonna it's not just that this is

2:52

this fake problem that they're taking long

2:54

time to

2:54

fix. It's they are it's a fake problem they use to

2:56

distract from everything else and never gonna fix it. So

2:58

when you're when you're here

2:59

It's also a real problem. Well, it's also right. It's

3:02

it's clearly a real problem, but something that they

3:04

either don't seem interested in fix Well, what do you think

3:06

about the answer to

3:06

that? Is there a lot that interesting? There are a lot of problems

3:08

that are both real and fake. Yeah. So the homeless

3:11

problem is, you know, yeah, it's it's a it's

3:13

a it's an incredible problem,

3:15

but it's also you get a sense

3:17

that it never gets fixed. And so if you

3:19

if you talk about problem that you're never gonna

3:21

fix then you can avoid talking about all

3:24

the other problems like, let's say, cost

3:26

of living for out

3:28

of control rents, for people with homes, or

3:31

broken schools

3:31

or, you know, crime or, you know, there's sort of

3:33

probably half dozen other issues that

3:36

move to the bottom of the queue as long as we talk about

3:38

an unsolvable problem. When you were there, were

3:40

you trying to talk to them about those things and

3:42

say, guys, like, look at what is happening

3:45

here and and and the state of the decay?

3:47

Well, on the on the on the city level, it

3:49

felt it felt like exit

3:51

is much more powerful than

3:52

voice.

3:53

Yeah. You know, it is it was

3:56

I'm not sure it's super corrupt,

3:59

but San Francisco is super ideological in

4:02

this very left swing -- Mhmm. --

4:04

very unreformable way. And

4:07

and, you know, it would be, you know, it's

4:09

it's I always have a schizophrenia view about getting

4:11

involved in in politics for like super

4:13

important and super toxic. But

4:16

getting involved in a San Francisco

4:18

city politics, that would be that would

4:20

be absolutely an insane thing to do relative

4:23

to just

4:23

moving. You're

4:24

not enough of a masochist for that. It's it's you

4:26

know, I'm I'm heroism is good.

4:28

Margarded and not so good. And and,

4:31

yeah, the the relative the

4:33

relative sanity of getting involved

4:36

in local politics or just moving out of San

4:38

Francisco should always

4:39

move.

4:39

So to that point, one more thing on this.

4:41

So now you're here in Florida. You know, you've been placed

4:43

The winter For the winter, if you went you're split in

4:45

time, and obviously, you also have your place in LA.

4:48

But do you feel a real tangible difference

4:50

when you're

4:51

here? I mean, you know, I left a year ago and it's like,

4:53

I have not looked back. And I'm

4:55

loving it here and I see something so incredibly

4:58

powerful and flourishing here. Do you feel

5:00

that when you're here? Well, it it

5:02

has, you know, there is there is sort of just

5:04

an extraordinary difference if you're in a

5:06

place where you you just feel

5:08

it's growing versus not. Yeah.

5:10

And and there there's a sense in which

5:14

Florida, Texas, have this

5:16

have this dynamic of where it's just

5:19

growing, every store front is

5:21

full, there are no empty stores, everything

5:24

it's not not sure it's quite booming, but

5:26

it feels healthy

5:29

and growing. And then

5:31

And then, you know, much of California does

5:33

not quite have that feel even though of course,

5:36

you know, Silicon Valley has been this

5:38

odd place where was you know,

5:40

a gold rush and everyone was depressed.

5:42

Yeah. Even so for the last decade. So

5:44

the the the that Silicon Valley had a very odd

5:46

dynamic where it's a crazy boom. That

5:49

didn't actually feel that way if you

5:51

know, walk down the street. And then and then

5:53

certainly with the with the COVID shock the last few

5:55

years, it's quite different. I still think California

5:58

is is probably somewhat healthier than

6:01

New York or, you know, completely bankrupt states

6:03

like Illinois or, you know, non

6:05

states like Puerto Rico. Mhmm. But

6:08

Why do you think healthier than New York?

6:12

I think the -- I think there are

6:14

ways that the finance

6:16

industry that New York is centered

6:18

on is more movable than the tech industry

6:21

in California. And probably

6:24

the very big tech companies like

6:26

Google, and Apple. It's

6:29

it's hard to picture them actually moving

6:31

out of California, whereas you

6:33

can you can picture

6:35

the big banks gradually moving out of New

6:38

York and and and there's something

6:40

about finance that's been little bit more

6:42

movable. It also paradoxically makes

6:44

it more dangerous for California because

6:47

if things ever go wrong, they

6:49

will be so bust. Right? It'll be like

6:51

Detroit, which thought that it had these captive

6:53

big three car manufacturers and

6:56

could get away with very bad policies in Michigan,

6:58

Detroit for decade after decade. And

7:00

then when, you know, when that industry finally

7:02

went south, you

7:03

know, it was it was just unflexible.

7:06

So do you find that New York's in

7:08

a worse shape right now because people are

7:10

are relatively more people are

7:12

leaving. It's easier for the businesses

7:14

to leave. And then maybe

7:17

California, if it's not careful it

7:19

will at some point really go off the

7:21

cliff. Right. Do you find that these things sort of happen

7:23

slowly and then very quickly? So something like

7:25

California, it's like, you know, Cali has lost almost

7:27

million people in these last three years. And a

7:29

lot of them are hires. I mean, these are people who

7:32

are paying into the system that's ever growing.

7:34

At some point, somebody has to look at numbers,

7:36

right, and be like, none of this works. Or

7:38

I guess maybe not. Right? It just continues

7:40

somehow. I suppose Yeah. III actually

7:43

I don't know how many of them were the highest earners

7:45

in California, the last last few years.

7:47

think New York was was a little bit more of that effect

7:49

than than California. But

7:52

yes, these things, you know, we

7:55

have these odd dynamics where things go on

7:57

for a very long time. They're not ultimately

7:59

sustainable, but there's

8:01

some there's some way I often think that

8:03

much of the two thousands and twenty tens

8:06

were this weird

8:08

continuation of the nineteen nineties. You know,

8:10

the decades there were things that happened. You had

8:12

nine eleven, you had the global financial crisis,

8:14

Trump, election, Brexit. There were some events

8:16

that happened in those twenty years. But it was surprisingly

8:19

little. December twenty nineteen, I was reflecting

8:22

on the twenty tens. And III realized

8:24

there have been no retrospectives on this decade.

8:26

What actually happened in the twenty ten You

8:28

know, we had marijuana legalization, we

8:30

had game of thrones, and people fell

8:32

into their iPhones. And -- Right. --

8:34

and then -- but then it was somehow just

8:37

this this thing that was sort of

8:39

a stretched exhausted version

8:41

of the two thousands, which themselves were a stretched

8:43

exhausted version of of the nineties. And

8:45

then And then I want to

8:47

say that in some sense, March

8:50

twenty twenty when COVID

8:52

hits we

8:54

finally, you know, a lot

8:56

of these things finally accelerate and

8:58

so and, you

8:59

know, and we're finally in the

9:01

twenty first So that's actually a great segue

9:03

to sort of where I wanted to start today because years

9:06

ago once off camera you said to

9:08

me I wouldn't be a libertarian if any of

9:10

it worked. And I just thought that line

9:12

pretty much captured so much of what's

9:14

happening even right this moment. You referenced

9:16

the last three years of COVID, where it seems like nothing

9:19

really works anymore. Our government kinda

9:21

doesn't work. Our educational institutions

9:24

don't seem to work. The the medical

9:26

Thiel doesn't seem to

9:27

work. Is it all is it sort

9:29

of obvious that they were all not gonna work at

9:31

the exact same time? Or how

9:34

did this happen? Well, I'm

9:36

tempted to say the rod has been building up for

9:38

a long time. And, you

9:40

know, if you define technology as doing

9:42

more with less, So

9:45

many of these institutions, educational,

9:48

even health care, are kind

9:50

of the opposite where you get the

9:52

same for more or you get less for

9:54

more. So it's the anti tech definition.

9:56

I think of the public schools probably,

9:59

in some sense, the quality of the education is

10:01

is way lower than it was fifty or sixty

10:03

years

10:04

ago, the costs are way higher.

10:05

Mhmm. And so it's it is you getting less

10:08

for more. Mhmm. And and then

10:11

versions us with health care where

10:14

maybe people getting a little bit better health care than

10:16

they were thirty years ago, but it doubled the cost.

10:18

So it's again you know lot

10:20

of it's sort of like a eighty percent socialist

10:23

health care system that we have, not a hundred percent

10:25

but eighty percent and there's a lot of

10:27

lot of stuff that's screwed up with that. So, yeah,

10:29

I think I think there are a lot of things that

10:31

had not been working for for quite

10:33

some time And maybe the

10:35

the interesting question is why people weren't

10:37

noticing it or something like

10:39

that. Yes. So what do you think that is? Is that just

10:41

our modern lives? We're staring at our phones all

10:43

day? We're we're watching TV shows and we're

10:45

just not paying

10:46

attention. know, they're they're they're there were there were

10:48

still some parts of our society where things

10:50

were progressing. There was certainly

10:52

some maybe narrow

10:54

cone of progress around computers, software,

10:57

Internet, mobile Internet. And

10:59

then those parts where

11:01

there was still progress and where things were were

11:03

still getting better, also were

11:05

somehow distracting us from

11:07

the lack of progress everywhere else, the ways in

11:09

which we're not progressive

11:11

society. We use the word progressive. It gets used all the

11:13

time, but

11:13

it doesn't stand for actual progress.

11:15

And I would say, you know, the the

11:17

the iPhones that, you know,

11:20

distract us from our environment. Also

11:22

distract us from the way it's strangely old. So you're looking

11:24

at an iPhone while you're riding a hundred year old

11:26

subway. It's completely busted in New York.

11:28

And so there's something about we

11:31

have some elements of progress, but

11:33

they've been distracting us from

11:36

Thiel lack of progress or even the outright

11:38

decline. And then

11:40

there was some kind of crazy crystallizing

11:43

event like like COVID where, you

11:45

know, you have no

11:47

science, no rationality, You

11:51

can't – it takes a long time to even

11:53

get the vaccine approved. The FDA

11:55

is just a blocker, all these

11:57

things. Don't work that well.

11:59

They still work relatively better in the US than many

12:01

other countries, but all

12:03

sorts of things are really off. So as

12:05

the guy that was the first outside investor

12:07

in Facebook and sort of, you know, at the beginning

12:10

of the of the tech boom twenty something years

12:12

ago, Were you thinking about some of

12:14

that then? Or was anyone talking about the

12:16

fact that we might all get distracted by

12:18

so much information and so much nonsense

12:20

and scrolling and all this stuff? That everything

12:22

else will just kind of slide away and we won't

12:24

even know, like, was there any inkling of some

12:26

of

12:27

that? Well, I didn't didn't you

12:29

know, III it's always a little bit

12:31

unfair to to put

12:34

too much of the blame on on Silicon Valley

12:36

for this where, you know, there there

12:38

was some innovation in Silicon Valley.

12:40

There was a sense in which it it probably was not

12:42

not quite enough. You know, there was this

12:44

manifesto that my venture

12:47

capital fund put out in back in

12:49

twenty eleven where the tagline was, you know,

12:51

they promised us flying cars and all we got was hundred

12:53

forty characters. And that wasn't it wasn't

12:55

meant as an anti Twitter

12:57

argument per se. You know, like Twitter, you

13:00

know, it's a it's a good business. It's

13:02

good for the several thousand people

13:04

that work

13:04

there. Maybe were slightly too many, but

13:06

-- Yeah. -- or at least for the several thousand that

13:08

are left, it's a good business. It's and,

13:11

you know, it's it's somehow was transformative

13:14

in some way, but it's wasn't enough

13:16

to, you know, take our whole civilization to the next

13:18

level. And this was so so I

13:20

think Silicon Valley was was doing some

13:22

things, but it was not enough. And then

13:24

there were arguments that, you know, it didn't

13:27

have to all be in Silicon

13:28

Valley. You know, they weren't building blind

13:30

cars in Silicon Valley. They weren't building playing Carl's

13:32

anywhere else. Right. So since you mentioned Twitter, let's

13:34

just do an Elon thing for a second. As you watch

13:36

the guy buy this thing, obviously, you guys did

13:38

PayPal together and everything else. Do

13:40

you think he realized what a freaking headache

13:42

this thing was gonna become? And and how

13:44

how crazy the product under

13:46

the hood actually was?

13:50

There was probably

13:53

there was probably I mean, I

13:55

I

13:55

mean, I've been talking about the

13:58

Twitter, the Twitter acquisition.

14:01

I think that

14:04

or just broadly speaking, figure finding that

14:06

so many of these things are sort of broken under the

14:08

hood, in a way. Uh-huh. I

14:11

I think I think he

14:14

had some idea, but probably not not the full

14:16

extent. Yeah. Right? There was probably,

14:18

you know, probably the fact

14:20

that they're willing to sell Twitter, Tim. Should

14:22

have told him. They were just I mean,

14:24

it was just it was just, you know, Jack

14:27

Dorsey, all these other people. It was, you know, they were

14:29

just these figure heads and it was I mean, the inmates

14:31

were running the asylum. Yeah. And

14:34

and it was it was probably on some level

14:36

you know, you know, there's some

14:38

part of it. There was somewhat ideological. There

14:40

was a way that Elon felt

14:43

like the wrong person ideologically to take

14:45

over Twitter. But, I mean, after

14:47

after a decade of the stock going nowhere,

14:50

they were just completely exhausted. Yeah.

14:52

You can only lose money for so long. I don't know

14:54

that much about business. They didn't lose

14:56

money, but they didn't if you'd look

14:58

at the Twitter price, the day

15:01

at the end of the first day of trading. So, you

15:03

know, price the IPO, it closes

15:05

on day one. And I forget what the

15:07

exact number was. I think it was it was roughly the same.

15:09

Right? It was roughly the same as -- Yeah. -- at the point where

15:11

Elon offered to acquire it. So it had gone nowhere in

15:13

a decade -- Yeah. -- in a context where a lot of tech

15:15

stocks had gone up. So I think they were they were

15:17

just completely exhausted and and

15:20

was sort of a plea for help. And then

15:22

Elon probably on some level realized

15:24

it and on some old didn't realize quite

15:26

how, you know, please take this company from us

15:28

and and, you know, you can hear that as

15:30

Elon, you're wonderful. You can do a great job

15:32

or we're just

15:34

really, really exhausted. Probably with

15:36

some combination of both. Right. So alright. So

15:38

let's shift a little bit. I want to talk to you one

15:40

of the things that we've covered an awful lot on my show

15:42

in the last two months is lot of the the

15:44

globalist stuff. And the WEF.

15:47

And the meetings in Davos and

15:49

all of these things. And I I always try

15:51

to say when I'm doing these things on the show, it's like,

15:53

I I don't have a a full sense

15:55

of how much influence these

15:58

organizations actually have

16:00

versus just they give these crazy speeches.

16:03

We all kind of freak out about it. But what

16:05

are actually the policies? And then on the other hand, you

16:07

see someone maybe like a Justin Trudeau who

16:09

seems like he really is incorporating a lot

16:11

of the policies of the WDF. So

16:13

as someone that you you've been to some of these things

16:15

over the years, right? Like, what do you

16:18

make of what actually goes on

16:19

there? I assume you're usually kind of on

16:21

the outside even if you're there.

16:23

Just because of your

16:24

political leaning III went to the WEF

16:26

three times two thousand eight, two thousand nine, two thousand

16:29

thirteen. So I haven't been in about a

16:30

decade. It

16:33

is

16:34

I mean, there's there's things about it that are

16:37

maybe maybe maybe talking something about global

16:39

globalism generally. Mhmm. None.

16:42

It is it is somehow this

16:44

official ideology. It

16:47

is it's in some ways very

16:49

exhausted So it's I

16:51

think the tide is going out. The high

16:53

watermark here was probably two thousand

16:55

seven, and it's been going out in

16:58

some way for sixteen years, but it's been

17:00

going out very, very slowly. And

17:03

there are sort of ways that

17:05

it is you know, in theory,

17:09

you know, a borderless, more integrated,

17:11

more peaceful world is

17:14

is a good world for the twenty first century.

17:16

Yeah. That's true. That's true. Globalization. Right.

17:18

And then there are all kinds of versions

17:20

of it that are kind of bad where it just ends

17:22

up being you know, AAAA

17:25

rocket for, you

17:27

know, dictators stealing money and

17:30

stashing in Swiss bank accounts, which probably

17:32

were Davos, you can think of as a sort of reputation laundering

17:34

operation or something like that. Yeah. Or

17:36

there are all sorts of versions of it that

17:38

are you know, deeply,

17:41

deeply unhealthy. And

17:43

I think it has been on this

17:46

this kind of autopilot where just

17:48

keeps going even though it's very

17:49

exhausted. I think it's been exhausted for

17:52

for fifteen years. Is that why in some ways

17:54

the the rhetoric seems to ramp up where,

17:56

you know, they really are making it sound like we control

17:58

you and we are the gods and it's sort of

18:00

like hysterical because perhaps there

18:02

actually isn't I

18:03

mean, that would be I I would love that as the takeaway

18:05

here. Yeah. There there probably are all these

18:08

different vectors of globalization.

18:10

There's, you know, trade is movement of goods.

18:12

Movement of people is sort of immigration, policy,

18:16

movement of money is is banking and finance,

18:19

and and then movement

18:21

of ideas is the Internet. So there's sort of a –

18:23

those are – you can sort of analyze in terms

18:25

of these different sectors.

18:28

And there were in theory,

18:31

all these ways, these things should work. In theory,

18:34

free trade is is a positive sum

18:36

exercise where both sides benefit. And I think

18:38

was, you know, Adam Smith has said, you know,

18:40

why would anybody ever throw rocks in their own harbor?

18:42

And and then,

18:44

you know, being able to

18:46

to move between

18:48

countries and and places is also

18:50

something that you might expect to see in dynamic

18:53

healthy world. So there are are sort of

18:55

all kinds of ways these things are in

18:57

theory pretty good. And then in practice,

19:00

they went they went very haywire. The movement

19:02

of money piece was in some ways

19:04

the global financial crisis where people

19:06

were sending the money to all these

19:09

different places all over the world where

19:11

they had no local knowledge. Mhmm. And

19:14

and it was badly invested and then the

19:16

banks blew up. And so that you can think of

19:18

two thousand eight as as

19:21

the financial part of globalization kind

19:23

of blew up. So then and then, you know,

19:25

one version would be, well, it's gonna just stop and

19:27

we're gonna stop sending the money. And

19:30

it's sort of got replaced by governments. So

19:32

if if you think about Europe,

19:34

sort of a mini globalization in

19:36

the form of the European Union, the

19:38

EU. And and basically, in two thousand

19:40

seven, German savers were voluntarily buying

19:43

Italian bonds and sort of this international

19:46

financial flows. After two thousand

19:48

and eight, nobody wanted to do that anymore. But

19:50

the Northern European government stepped in and

19:52

started doing it and somehow kept that game

19:55

going for for another decade or

19:56

so. But yeah, my intuition is that it's very

19:59

exhausted. There's obviously a China

20:01

version of

20:02

this where, you know, in two thousand

20:04

seven, people still talked about globalization

20:06

as, you know, all the developing

20:09

countries. They were gonna converge with developed

20:11

world and it was sort of it was a sort of convergence

20:13

theory of history. And

20:16

in some ways, that story

20:18

got dominated much more by by

20:20

China. And there are, you know, there are

20:22

sort of there are ways in which China has

20:24

been growing but it's actually not

20:27

been globalizing if globalizing means

20:29

becoming, you know, sort of

20:32

a western liberal democracy. And

20:35

and so China is actually, you know,

20:37

this place that hasn't been following that script

20:39

terribly well. And if the biggest country in the

20:41

world, doesn't fit the picture of

20:43

globalization at some point to tell

20:45

you, you know, the theory is wrong.

20:46

Right. So the end of history theory was a version

20:48

of globalization. And I

20:50

always say that, you know, in

20:52

two thousand, you know, the end of history itself

20:55

was obviously over. Ended

20:59

in two thousand seventeen when g becomes dictator

21:01

for life, you know. Right. So it's a country.

21:05

Like investors who you co wrote zero

21:07

to one with. I think his line on China was

21:09

we thought that we would make China

21:11

more like us basically by by

21:13

having a conversation with China

21:15

about what's going on with the

21:16

world. And instead, we became more like China.

21:19

So I I take it. You probably agree with that premise

21:21

generally. It's a very it's

21:23

a, you know, it's

21:25

a it's it has a great deal of very

21:28

disturbing truth to it. And where

21:30

yeah, there's sort of all this, you know,

21:33

social credit scoring, centralized control.

21:35

Obviously, we're still very

21:37

far ways off from China. You know, I wouldn't

21:40

wanna move there. China's

21:42

lot worse than China was ten years ago. Mhmm.

21:45

I mean, you know, I I think, you know, I think it

21:47

was, you know, it was a one party communist

21:49

state in twenty twelve. But I

21:51

don't think it felt as heavy handed and as totalitarian

21:53

as it does now. I mean, there's there's I don't I don't

21:56

know what the right metaphor is. It's like the

21:58

Cylance and Battle Star Galactica where they've

22:00

just been The tech the tech is just it's

22:02

like all the surveillance tech. Everyone's being monitored

22:04

at all times and all places. And

22:06

now in a way that they they were not a decade

22:08

ago. So is is the white pill version of that

22:10

that it just can't sustain itself long enough?

22:12

If you if you surveil people constantly, if

22:14

you control everything constantly, eventually

22:17

you cannot maintain that level of control,

22:19

something to that effect? Howard Bauchner:

22:23

There are stories we like to tell where

22:25

it's just going to collapse.

22:28

They're, you know, they're also very passive those I

22:30

think those are too optimistic, and I think there

22:32

are ones that are you know, overly pessimistic

22:36

where China is just gonna take over the whole world.

22:38

It's now it's more efficient or or things like

22:40

that. And I I think both the extreme

22:43

optimistic and extremely pessimistic stories

22:45

are probably wrong, somewhere in between.

22:47

And, you know, we have to we

22:50

should not assume it's going to collapse on its own. We

22:52

need to think very hard about

22:55

how we how

22:57

we rise up to the challenge that China

22:59

represents and has, you know, has all these

23:02

mentions military, technological, economic.

23:05

It's sort of much more multifaceted than

23:07

the challenge the Soviet Union

23:09

was, which was, you know, much more military

23:11

and ideological. When

23:14

you say we, is it like,

23:16

is it our political establishment that

23:18

that we are the ones that are gonna have to deal with

23:20

probably,

23:21

like, what We we always that's

23:23

a good catch. We always are very ambiguous

23:25

words.

23:25

Yeah. It means we conservatives, we libertarian,

23:28

brands. It means we republics, we Americans,

23:30

and

23:31

we, the western world, or

23:33

we, all the countries that are not China.

23:35

Yeah. Or maybe we, On the doo

23:37

above. Right. Like, so but but what do

23:39

you mean by that? Like, in in in a

23:41

sense, like All the above. Yeah. All

23:43

the above. There's

23:46

probably is, you know,

23:49

there's always a debate between, let's say,

23:51

you know, the the president

23:53

Trump's policy was somewhat of a unilateral anti

23:57

tough on China policy. And

23:59

and there's obviously sense where multilateral approach

24:01

to China is is more powerful

24:04

and and better. It's also hard to

24:06

pull off. And and so multilateralism. In

24:09

theory is good. In practice, you

24:11

have to always worry that that's that's almost

24:14

like a Chinese communist decoy

24:16

attack before they're intentionally encouraging

24:19

us to be multilateral because they know that Thiel go super

24:21

slow.

24:21

Right. Basically, like, having the UN do

24:23

anything

24:23

for the WTO or all these all these

24:25

multinational agencies that have that have been,

24:28

you know, semi hijacked. Yeah. So

24:30

so yeah. But I I think yeah. I think there

24:32

are there are ways in which

24:35

one should start with rethinking it

24:37

on a on a US level

24:39

and then and then and then

24:42

it's it's definitely something we need to bring our

24:44

allies

24:44

into. Do you think we have enough sort of

24:46

not mental acumen, but

24:48

do we have enough like juice

24:50

left in America to to tackle things

24:53

properly. I think think that's what a lot of people

24:55

are feeling right now, that the incumbency is

24:57

so across the board and Biden is so

24:59

either mentally compromised or -- Mhmm. -- has

25:01

the wrong ideas or is staffed the wrong way or whatever

25:03

you wanna call that. That we just don't have

25:06

enough left to to

25:08

do the right thing in the

25:09

world. You know, we

25:13

at least as it's There's always worries that

25:15

I that we have that we're exhausted, but

25:17

III kind of wonder whether this is just

25:20

sort of the baby boomer narrative --

25:22

Mhmm. -- where, you know, the boomers were. They

25:24

were this very big generation. And

25:26

then the country was always defined

25:28

by the age the boomers

25:30

worse. The nineteen fifties was this innocent

25:32

childhood time because the boomers were ten years old.

25:34

Mhmm. And the late sixties was this

25:37

great youth movement because

25:39

the boomers were all in college, and

25:41

the nineteen eighties, the boomers were yuppies, and

25:43

now the boomers are all retired and

25:45

angry old people. And then Or

25:48

hang on. Or and then that somehow that

25:50

somehow is the template for

25:52

the whole US. So III

25:54

think so I think the complicated answer is there's

25:56

some truth to it because the boomers have

25:59

dominated our society and

26:01

there's sort of in a strange place right

26:03

now as a as a generation. But

26:06

but they're not the whole

26:07

society. We're not all boomers. Do you think that's

26:09

a little bit of because people

26:11

are living longer and medicine has been good

26:13

and technology has enabled people to

26:15

be sort of functional longer

26:18

that now we're ruled by Octadingerians who,

26:20

you know, basically shoot, you know, when you see

26:22

Nancy Pelosi up there, it's like, go with your grandchildren.

26:25

Go play with your

26:25

grandchildren. Labor that you don't have to be out there still

26:27

or Biden. You know, it's like they can't let go

26:30

because science in some ways has

26:32

kept you going? It hasn't it hasn't

26:34

changed it. It's been frustratingly slow.

26:36

I mean, we had some some extension

26:38

of life expectancy. It's actually reversed the

26:40

last few years with COVID and the opioid

26:43

epidemic, etcetera. But no,

26:45

I think the main dynamic was

26:49

you never had generation like the boomers. You

26:51

know, that I'm, you know, I'm Gen X. Yeah.

26:53

You know, there are millennials. And

26:55

there's some generational sensibility you can tell

26:57

or silent generation. There's some generational story you

26:59

can tell around other people. But the, you

27:01

know, the the generation with a really

27:03

strong identity is the boomers, and I think it's there

27:05

were just so many of them. It was like in nineteen forty

27:07

six, or twenty percent more kids born

27:10

than nineteen forty five or something. It was like

27:12

a step function up and then you get

27:14

birth control pill in the early sixties and you

27:16

have fewer fewer

27:17

babies. And and so it was just it was just

27:19

a lot of people. Where does that put

27:21

us? The gen xers, that seemingly should

27:23

be doing the thing right now. And I

27:25

opposed in some cases we are, but but really

27:28

are are the missing generation in that way. We

27:30

focus on boomers and then, you know, millennials

27:32

or boomers or whatever it

27:33

is. Like, we've sort of missed the people that are between

27:36

say forty and, you know, like I've all I've all

27:38

these resentful genics. Yeah, I can say, but

27:41

I Thiel there's probably some

27:43

narrative where it's a smaller

27:46

group, and so

27:48

there's a risk that you end up being sort

27:50

of left out. I mean, think there's some things where we did

27:52

perfectly fine. I mean, we had our we had our share

27:55

of, you know, Olympic gold medalist because

27:57

we get those at certain age and we were -- Right. -- we're

27:59

at the right age at a certain point. You

28:02

know, it's we had twenty

28:04

eight years of of boomer presidents,

28:07

and I sometimes wonder whether we're ever gonna have

28:09

a Gen X present with just It's not enough.

28:11

Maybe you you just skip to the the millennials.

28:13

So, you know, the Silicon Valley

28:16

story in the nineteen nineties was the Internet

28:18

companies were started by Gen X people and

28:20

then somehow bought out taken

28:22

over by boomers. And that's that's sort of what

28:24

happened. Almost all the companies in the nineties.

28:26

And then the boomers probably had a healthier relationship

28:29

with millennials where it was those were millennials

28:31

were their kids. And so they were were a little bit nicer

28:33

the millennials than they were to us. We were sort of more their

28:35

competitors. Wow. So when when

28:38

when Paypal got acquired by eBay and

28:41

two thousand two. And it was sort of this boomer company,

28:44

and we were this gen x company.

28:46

One of my one of my friends David Sachs said that,

28:48

you know, If it would be a movie we

28:50

called Meet The Parents versus this stodgy

28:53

older people company was gonna clearly not

28:55

be fun when they took over but

28:58

actually you need a you need sort of a

29:00

word for for people who are half

29:02

a generation

29:03

older, not related to you. And are

29:05

are gonna be a lot less nice to you than your parents.

29:07

And so we we do need to worry about that.

29:09

So I think that it would be more like I don't know, Meg

29:11

Whitman would be like more meet the the

29:14

the evil young

29:17

stepmother. Right. Right. So actually, since

29:19

you mentioned Saxx, do you find it interesting

29:21

if you were to look back twenty years ago and boy, you

29:23

know, Elan's doing everything he's doing now.

29:25

You've done incredible things. You know, Saxx

29:27

is becoming an outspoken political voice.

29:29

You know, really anti war. He's one of the people leading

29:32

that thing. That this crew of pay, you know, the PayPal

29:34

mafia, so to speak -- Mhmm. -- you guys are all

29:36

still in the mix in in

29:38

a odd way. Is there something special

29:40

about what was going on there twenty years

29:42

ago? Or it's more than twenty years at this point? I know

29:44

it's it's it's always hard to it's

29:47

hard to tell the story. It was it was

29:49

I

29:52

don't I don't think we really appreciate time, but it was it was

29:54

a phenomenal group of people. There's

29:56

always there's always sense where PayPal

29:58

didn't really succeed in that

30:01

big way. You know, it was it was a successful exit

30:03

in two thousand and two. It was, you know, one point five billion

30:05

dollars acquisition by eBay, but it didn't you

30:07

know, we couldn't figure out how to

30:09

run the business on our own. It

30:11

made sense to combine it with eBay for all sorts

30:13

of reasons. It was, you know, in

30:15

some ways of depressing, but a very rational thing

30:18

to do. And then -- You didn't feel that at the

30:20

time? That that maybe you wanted to hold

30:22

on a little bit longer or something like that?

30:24

We didn't it it was hard to see

30:26

a path to an independent business where, you know,

30:28

eBay, you had the store and we were running the

30:30

cash registers and the people running the store were trying to

30:32

figure out how to get their own cash register machines to work

30:34

figure it out one time we'd be sort of out

30:36

of business. And then there are ways you could gradually

30:39

diversify away from eBay and but

30:41

it it it took like a decade in practice.

30:43

So I I think I think

30:45

the combination made a lot of sense, but

30:47

then it's somehow short circuit of the business,

30:49

whereas so many of the

30:51

other tech companies just scaled

30:54

and scaled and scaled, which meant like the Google History

30:56

or something like that. And that

30:58

would have been, you know, a far more successful

31:01

version, but probably

31:03

would have done less. You know, if you

31:05

were if if you you had

31:08

you know, if you'd gotten

31:10

on board the Google Rocket at the right time,

31:12

you should just never got

31:13

not. Right. When you see the the frustrations

31:16

that people have with these things, you know, the sort lack

31:18

of trust in these things, you know, is

31:20

the government working to silence you on

31:22

Twitter? Or how is Google manipulating the

31:24

search results or all of these things? Do you also

31:26

see those as inevitable problem problems

31:28

that were gonna happen with these things.

31:31

The reason I ask is I heard you give a talk at

31:33

Mattcon. You gave the keynote speech last year.

31:35

And one of the things you said was that nobody represents

31:38

the individual at these big conferences. And

31:40

I sort of think that's the same problem that we

31:42

have with tech. Nobody represents the individual

31:44

anymore. We just have these giant corporations

31:47

that or these giant tech companies that

31:49

make decisions, you cannot get somebody

31:51

on the phone. You can't you can't actually

31:53

communicate as yourself.

31:56

You there's, you know, there's a business version of

31:58

it, something like that. Yeah, there probably

32:00

are all kinds

32:02

of ways they they have biases in that direction.

32:05

You know, there's There's always a Noam

32:07

Chomsky, the Communist MIT professor.

32:09

I always like to quote him on this where he says

32:11

that, you know, the Republicans are the parties,

32:14

the party of business. But the democrats

32:16

discriminate. The democrats are the party of big

32:18

business. Yeah. And and and

32:20

there's sort of like a center left. Look at them

32:22

quoting the communist. There are you everything's

32:25

entirely wrong about things or Yeah.

32:27

But but there's sort of a a

32:29

center left sensibility where, you

32:32

know, basically,

32:35

big businesses could be regulated. They'll

32:37

follow all the rules, small businesses,

32:40

you know, they often make a little bit more money

32:42

by being in a gray area, not

32:45

following the rules to the letter. And

32:47

and so there is probably just this structural

32:50

anti small business bias, this that's,

32:53

you know, political, regulatory, cultural

32:56

partisan that's very

32:57

deep. Were you shocked how obvious that

32:59

became during COVID? I mean, where, you know, Target

33:01

could stay open for, you know, the big box store,

33:04

but the mom and pop that was selling the exact same

33:06

Next door got closed. That that shows the bias

33:08

right there. Right? The system just kind of eliminated

33:11

a certain set of people.

33:14

Yes, I Thiel, I mean, I Thiel it

33:16

was, yeah, it was a, I

33:18

mean, a dramatic shift in terms

33:20

of the power of big relative to

33:22

small businesses. And it probably

33:24

– I don't know, I think in some ways COVID

33:26

surfaced all these realities that had been there for

33:29

a long time. And, yeah,

33:31

this was this is the institutional center

33:33

left establishment in this

33:34

country. It's good with

33:36

big business. It's anti it's very

33:39

anti small business. How did you fight some of

33:41

that with your businesses during COVID and figuring

33:43

out, you know, people gonna work from

33:45

home or just all of the nonsense

33:47

that everybody dealt with. Did did you try to give

33:49

as much power to your employees and say do what you

33:51

gotta do? Or Well, you know, most

33:54

the because even

33:55

now, a lot of the people still don't wanna come back. That's one

33:57

of the problems that that Yeah. Most most of the

33:59

tech companies were

34:02

pretty well

34:05

positioned to adapt to COVID

34:07

where there

34:09

were sort of ways you could do the remote work.

34:14

You could remotely do things like that.

34:17

And it seemingly didn't hurt the business

34:19

too much. And then, of course, there was there was a way

34:21

where COVID shifted a lot to the Internet. So

34:23

sort of a lot of the the tech companies in which

34:25

I'm involved got got a

34:27

big temporary boost from COVID even

34:30

though, maybe they

34:32

actually got more bloated,

34:34

less well managed. In the last two, three years,

34:36

and that's that's what I worry about. Yeah. So it

34:38

was it was actually sort of windfall for them.

34:40

And then the question is just did they

34:42

did they really take advantage of it or or

34:45

did they get even more dysfunctional

34:47

in various

34:47

ways? Do you think more people in the

34:49

tech world or maybe even in political world

34:51

actually think like you to some degree,

34:54

but because of the way we

34:56

the hive mind is or the globalist movement

34:58

or whatever it is, they just sort of always go

35:01

to that. But I you know, if you privately sat

35:03

down with these people about what their real

35:05

beliefs in the individual are in capitalism

35:07

and these things.

35:08

Directionally yes, but I I think

35:11

it I always wonder if it actually

35:13

works if you can't say it. So so,

35:16

yes, to surely almost

35:18

the definition of political correctness that

35:21

it distorts things and that there are

35:23

all sorts of people who are people are less politically

35:26

correct than they appear to be because political correctness

35:28

is about appearances. And then the reality is always

35:31

that people are going to think it's

35:33

a little bit crazy. There probably are

35:35

a lot of parents who think the schools went

35:37

very crazy. But

35:40

then if you feel like you can't talk

35:42

about it or articulate it, it's

35:45

it's not going to be that well formed a

35:47

view at all. And so that's And

35:49

so III think the political correctness

35:52

is is real to the extent it just stops

35:54

people from from saying things. You you

35:56

you don't actually get to a very considered

35:59

non politically correct

36:00

opinion. Right. It's interesting because that also then gets

36:02

to the stagnation part that you're talking about. People

36:04

can't talk about what the actual issues are. You then

36:06

you you really don't have to wonder why we're so stagnated

36:09

and why we got a hundred and forty characters

36:11

instead of

36:11

flying. Sure. There's there's probably some way all these

36:14

things, you know, all these things are are

36:16

linked, but

36:17

but Yeah.

36:19

I think

36:21

I if we live in a society where there

36:23

are an awful lot of topics that

36:25

are somewhat off limits, you

36:28

know, where, you know, and if we think about science,

36:30

I let's let's about sort of

36:33

freedom speech or debate in

36:35

in in the area of science. And I always think

36:37

you can describe science as involving

36:39

a two front war in theory.

36:42

It should be a two front war against excessive

36:44

dogmatism and excess of skepticism.

36:47

Mhmm. So excess of dogmatism in the seventeenth,

36:49

eighteenth century context, it's like the Catholic church

36:51

or it's this sort of decayed aristotelianism

36:54

And, you know, a scientist, you know,

36:57

needs to think for themselves and challenge

37:00

the the sort of classified

37:02

dogmas or offside in Metaphysics and

37:04

just do an experiment you think for yourself. But

37:07

then you also can't be a scientist if

37:10

you're too skeptical. Mhmm. So if

37:12

I don't think you exist, I Thiel you're just a

37:14

simulation or Yeah. It's everything's

37:17

fake, nothing's real. I'm just

37:19

in a brain being And I'm just

37:21

braining about being That's my way by my math. Since

37:24

you're viewing eight. That's not

37:26

a good world for science either. So you can't be too

37:28

too dogmatic, you can't be too skeptical. Yeah.

37:31

And sort of probably healthy version of

37:33

science cuts against both excess

37:36

dogmatism and excess skepticism. But

37:39

my scoring is it's all anti skepticism

37:42

at this point. The scientific establishment,

37:44

it's all circling the Wagons, and we have

37:47

a climate change skeptic. We have a,

37:49

you know, you can't be skeptic of

37:51

you know, you can't be a vaccine skeptic, you can't

37:53

be a skeptic of of anything. And

37:55

so it's all against skepticism, which is,

37:57

of course, the exact opposite of, you know,

37:59

let's say, children's science book would

38:01

be the design. Right. Scientists thinks for

38:03

themselves and is is against

38:05

dogmatism. So what do we do?

38:06

What do we do to break down? Twenty percent anti dogmatists

38:09

and twenty percent anti epicism. That's healthy

38:11

science. We're in a world where it's a hundred percent anti skepticism.

38:14

And that's a tell that it's hyper

38:16

dogmatic and that the scientists,

38:18

you know, the scientists can't talk

38:21

freely about the science. And if you have,

38:23

you know, if you have if you have dissenting views, you

38:25

better keep them to yourself or your government funding will

38:27

get cut

38:27

off. They're, you know, they're all in the sort of government welfare

38:29

or something like that. I

38:30

mean, look at the last three years of COVID, and I

38:32

think you pretty much Yeah.

38:35

It was a shockingly narrow

38:37

range of discourse allowed

38:39

in

38:39

science.

38:40

Was there a moment?

38:41

There's no science and scare quotes? Right.

38:43

So was there a moment during COVID where where

38:45

you realized how disregulating that effect

38:47

was that you couldn't get a counter. I

38:49

mean, I saw you couple times during COVID

38:52

for dinners and things and it was like we weren't wearing

38:54

masks, and we were sitting there. I don't even know if you're allowed to

38:56

have people at your house. Like, oh, but but

38:58

humans continued. And

39:00

yet, the machine just kept telling you no

39:02

stay in your house and wear the masks and get

39:04

the backs and bit the do

39:07

I had I had a lot of skepticism

39:09

about all these things before. I would say for the

39:11

skepticism of the excessive dogmatism

39:14

of science. Yeah. And and

39:17

I think I think

39:19

that had but yes,

39:21

I it was it was still it was still

39:23

strong. It was like you had these I don't know, you had these

39:25

public health officials. All these people were It

39:28

was just again the opportunity to to really

39:31

to push it in a conformist standardized

39:33

way. It was it was it was extraordinary about

39:35

it. wasn't just the dogmatism

39:38

and the uniformity, but it was

39:40

it was the Orwellian character where

39:43

we pivoted radically from

39:45

black to white, maybe to not a,

39:47

and so, you know, it was it was III

39:50

mean, I'm not gonna get the history was so it

39:52

was so so many twists and turns as hard as you can

39:54

keep it straight, but I believe October twenty

39:56

twenty was still Kamala Harris saying that she

39:58

would never take

39:59

see. Yeah. A Trump vaccine. Trump vaccine. Yeah.

40:01

And then, you know

40:03

and then when I I But that you literally

40:05

shouldn't trust the agencies because he has something

40:08

to do with it. That's what she

40:09

said. And then, you know, and then

40:11

a year later, it's it's like you're

40:13

a really crazy person if you don't get one.

40:15

So so we had these sort of orwellian

40:18

twists in the narrative. You know, there was there was the

40:20

thing where the originally the masks didn't work

40:23

because they were trying to lie to

40:26

say the mask for the hospital workers or something.

40:28

Right. And then he pivoted on

40:30

that. There was, you know, anyway, there were all

40:32

these these crazy twists and turns. It was,

40:34

you know, it was the initial the very initial

40:36

one where, you know, it

40:38

was just we shouldn't shut the border because

40:41

that's anti globalist. And then

40:43

and then when when Trump, you

40:45

know and

40:47

then when Trump president Trump didn't wasn't

40:50

restrictive enough and somehow it all shifted

40:52

into the sort of dirt and nanny state.

40:55

Yeah. So it seems like it all

40:57

flipped almost I think this is what you're saying. It it

40:59

happened so quickly that we almost couldn't react like. So

41:01

the same people who were saying my body, my choice

41:03

were the same Same ones yelling at you that you must

41:06

be injected with the thing I want to inject you

41:08

with.

41:08

And so that's It was sort of like

41:10

it was like, you know, the sky is blue, but,

41:12

you know, they were saying the sky is green, and then the sky

41:14

is orange and then the sky is

41:16

yellow. So it was it was it was

41:18

it was just this dizzying shift

41:21

in the

41:21

dogmas. It wasn't like the Catholic church in the middle

41:23

ages where at least the dogmas stayed the same for

41:25

a few hundred years.

41:26

Yeah. They

41:26

don't didn't change Thiel, every six months.

41:28

So what does that tell you? I guess this is a little

41:30

bit of what you're you're doing at Stanford now.

41:33

What does that tell you about people's belief

41:35

systems and how they operate?

41:38

Well, it's it is because

41:41

they seem to believe anything on any given

41:43

day. You could almost depending on who was president

41:45

and what their, you know, party

41:47

was, you could get virtually anyone to say

41:49

almost anything.

41:51

Yeah, III would say, I would

41:54

I mean, it's hard to do sweeping generalizations

41:56

by our society, but it's it's striking

41:59

how many things are not very

42:01

well thought through it all. And there are,

42:03

yeah, I think there are some set of things

42:05

where things are doctrinaire and

42:07

dogmatic, and then they're

42:10

all kinds of issues that that

42:12

barely even register as as problems

42:14

and we we don't even talk about. So I, yeah,

42:17

I think there's this this official

42:19

ideology, but it's almost like a

42:21

magic show, preppnostic trick

42:23

where, you know, it redirects our attention from

42:25

other things. So so people have yeah,

42:28

they have very well defined opinions

42:30

on on the vaccine, and those are sort

42:32

of officially set. Mhmm. But then if we talk

42:34

about a topic like text stagnation?

42:36

Or how fast are we developing vaccines?

42:38

Generally, how fast are we curing other diseases

42:40

besides COVID? That's something

42:42

people don't even think about.

42:44

Right. What what are you thinking

42:46

about that maybe the average person isn't

42:48

thinking about? Like, if we if we're to get to the other side

42:50

of the stagnation, and let's say we start breaking

42:52

through some of stuff, which we will eventually, some

42:55

society has to, I think, to

42:57

some degree, what should we

42:59

be thinking about?

43:01

Well, there are, I mean, there are

43:04

a lot of, there are a lot of different

43:06

topics one

43:08

could. I mean, there's

43:11

there's there's some that I've, you know, I feel I've

43:13

I've I've I've I've I've thought about

43:15

probably a small number that I always keep coming

43:18

back to that But

43:20

I got one I want you to come back, because I'll tell you in

43:22

a second. But I wanna hear what saying. Probably probably the, you

43:24

know, the the the big

43:26

the big one is always just You

43:29

know, I don't think our society is progressing that

43:32

quickly in that many dimensions. Why

43:34

has it slowed? What's gone

43:36

wrong? Why does that happen? And that's probably

43:39

Thiel big

43:42

topic question theme

43:44

that I've I've come back to over the last

43:46

two decades over and over again. And

43:49

and then there are, yeah, there's all

43:51

sorts of different answers one can get

43:53

to. There probably are

43:55

good reasons for us to be so

43:58

slow, but I

44:00

it pushes you out. You'd ask a lot of deep questions

44:02

about our society that it will be good for us to Thiel

44:04

about more. So the one that I I don't know

44:06

you're thinking about it all anymore. I suspect you are

44:08

at least at some level is you you were really interested

44:11

in c stating a couple probably what

44:13

fifteen or so years

44:14

ago, this idea that there could sort of be

44:16

these libertarian utopias -- Yeah.

44:18

-- sort of international waters where people

44:20

could do mental medication and

44:22

operations and things of this nature. To

44:24

me, it feels like so many people have

44:26

such a lack of faith in the system. That

44:28

there's an opportunity there again. Does is

44:31

is that registering with you at all? Is it do you feel

44:33

like the operation is gone? Has someone else picked up

44:35

maybe where you left off?

44:36

They are they are still trying to

44:38

trying to do it in various ways. It's

44:42

not that easy to do. You know, there probably

44:45

are And some of there are technological

44:47

issues where it's not that cheap to

44:49

build.

44:49

Right. Okay. And then and then

44:52

there are all these reasons where, you know, you have to

44:54

sort of if you do that, you have to you have something

44:56

that's floating, what if,

44:58

you know, you have a freak storm once every

45:00

twenty years, how do you model

45:01

that? And if you have a ship, you can move it out of the way,

45:03

but

45:04

Yeah. She said not so much. So it

45:06

turns out to be, you know, it turns out

45:08

to be quite hard. But

45:10

what was, you know, it was it was sort of the Mall

45:12

side project. I started with Milton Friedman's

45:15

grandson, Patrick Friedman, who who

45:17

pitched us on it in, I Thiel, it was

45:19

two thousand seven, two thousand eight.

45:21

And what was surprising to me

45:23

was how much it caught fire is,

45:26

you know, not as a technology, but just as

45:28

a thought experiment because Even

45:31

if these c studs are very hard to build,

45:34

it was obvious that if

45:37

we could redesign our society. If we could

45:39

somehow start over, we

45:41

would do it so differently. And they're all

45:43

these they're all these legacy

45:45

structures that are very hard to undo. Make

45:48

me You know, so we want a total revolution,

45:50

but but there are all these ways

45:52

that we're in a place that no

45:54

one no one would If you look at it from

45:56

first

45:57

principles, no one build a society like we have

45:59

today.

45:59

So so is there a way to do that, maybe just

46:01

not doing it by building structure

46:03

in the ocean, like, finding some land in the middle

46:06

of the country and just trying it at sort of a mic

46:08

Yeah. Well, there's obviously there's obviously no. There's obviously,

46:10

look, there's obviously sort of movement

46:12

between different parts the country that

46:14

has been accelerated or restarted

46:17

post COVID that think is

46:19

very important, very healthy. Yeah.

46:22

And then there are there's still all sorts of things

46:24

you can do on a city, county level.

46:27

It's you know, there were also reasons

46:29

it was non trivial, you know. That

46:31

there are a lot of

46:34

a lot of cities are unusually dysfunctional,

46:37

but they also are very powerful economic

46:39

networks. Mhmm. And so there's

46:42

sort of a reason, you know, in a place

46:44

like San Francisco, you know, I lived I lived there for

46:46

a long time. It was very

46:49

dysfunctional on a governance side,

46:52

but it was, you know, it was it was also

46:54

in the middle of this gold rush

46:56

tech

46:57

boom. Mhmm. And then it it actually it

46:59

wasn't that it was that you had you

47:01

had this bad governance

47:03

sort of in contradiction to the tech boom. It was almost

47:05

like the bad governance came with the tech boom. It was

47:07

like people were fine paying this tax

47:10

because they were they were doing so well.

47:12

And so there's sort of are these

47:14

natural network effects, these natural

47:17

economies of scale that come with cities

47:20

but that also paradox, if you're not very

47:22

careful, lead to extremely bad governance.

47:24

And so, you know, there are, you know, there

47:26

are a lot of relatively unregulated states

47:30

but aren't any people, none of people

47:32

there. So it's sort of, you know, there's a way that Alaska,

47:34

Wyoming, South Dakota, New Hampshire,

47:37

they're all fairly unregulated, but

47:39

to the extent that what we do

47:41

as human beings has a social component, the

47:44

sort of network component, they

47:47

they could you can never get the critical mass of

47:49

people to move there to to make it

47:51

work. Do do you sense that the states will just continue

47:53

to go their separate ways that just sort of

47:55

see that and that will be a natural that

47:57

it'll actually kind of be okay as

47:59

long as they agree not to go to war or something

48:02

like

48:02

that. I I think I

48:04

think there's I think there's some

48:06

of it. III wish there were more.

48:08

Yeah. But but I think yeah. I I

48:10

know I think that that's that's probably what's

48:13

still very

48:16

healthy about the U. S. Is that it's

48:19

still somewhat of a federalist

48:21

system. There's still is, you know,

48:23

some degree to which the states are

48:25

genuinely different places. And you

48:28

have these fifty different experiments and

48:30

and you it's not all about politics and

48:32

voting. It's also about, you know,

48:35

economics and exit. What do you

48:37

make about what's going on culturally in the

48:39

country in terms of, you know, the Super

48:41

Bowl was a couple weeks I watched, like, I'm

48:43

watching the commercials. They didn't feel I didn't

48:46

feel any attachment to any of the cultural

48:48

references. The halftime

48:49

show, like, as Breit Bart said, you know,

48:52

politics is downstream from culture. It seems like

48:54

we don't have a culture that's unifying us

48:56

in any way now.

48:59

Yeah. I I It's always

49:01

it's always so hard. It's always

49:03

so hard to know exactly

49:06

exactly what's what's going

49:08

on. It's probably,

49:11

you know, if there was something that

49:13

would be unifying, I I don't know that

49:15

we would like it that much. Would be like

49:17

it would be would be like a crazy woke religion.

49:20

Right. And, you

49:22

know, it's I'm always hopeful

49:24

that the insanity, you

49:27

know, has crusted and is

49:29

is is receding. And so

49:32

yes, if we if we had something

49:34

that would be unifying, it would be

49:36

it would be the woke religion on steroids, shove

49:39

down everyone's throats, and and

49:41

it's probably It's probably the

49:43

the fact that it has this sort of not

49:48

very strong, slightly nihilistic feel may

49:50

actually be be relatively

49:52

healthy. Right. That's the that's the way to maybe relatively

49:54

healthy. So so in terms of better things for

49:56

people to believe in. So you are Can I

49:58

say teaching this course? Are you actually teaching this

50:01

course at

50:01

Stanford? What do you what do you guys say? Caught caught caught

50:03

caught caught caught caught. Yep. Yeah. Courses at Stanford

50:05

occasionally over the years. It's always

50:07

lot of

50:08

work, but sort of fun process to

50:10

think about things. And Yeah.

50:11

So what so what are you doing now? Because obviously, you

50:13

don't need the gig. This is what you're doing this quarter

50:16

because you enjoy it. We're just doing forbidden

50:19

topics. In this this quarter, we're doing

50:21

political theology, which means

50:24

basically what does What politics

50:27

tell us about God? And what does God tell us about

50:29

politics? And they're both these

50:32

deeply transgressive forbidden questions.

50:34

III started starting to wonder if

50:36

these questions of religion are,

50:39

you know, somehow they are I'm

50:41

not saying they're necessarily the most important,

50:43

but they're they are the most transgressive.

50:46

They're they're the ones that somehow

50:48

we we can't ask at all. And and and there's

50:50

something there's something very generative and

50:53

in looking at that prison through, you

50:55

know, through a lot of different lenses, you know?

50:57

What what is the religion in our society? What

51:00

what is the people

51:02

What is the people value in that? And then,

51:04

yeah, how does how does that work? Yeah. So what

51:06

what would you say is the sort of broad answer

51:08

to that? What what is the religion of

51:10

the people? HERE FROM AN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE

51:12

RIGHT NOW IN A SYSTEM THAT SEEMS TO

51:14

BE VERY OBVIOUSLY SHAKING TO MOST

51:16

PEOPLE. AGAIN, IT'S ALWAYS

51:18

hard to

51:19

do these sweeping generalizations, but it

51:21

is, you know, it's

51:23

in some sense you

51:26

know, it's in some sense. I think I think

51:28

of it. I think of the

51:30

the woke liberal

51:32

religion as as a as

51:35

a kind of

51:37

antithesis, but also kind of

51:39

intensification of the Judeo Christian

51:41

tradition where, you know, both

51:43

Judaism and Christianity look

51:46

at it from the side of the victim. You know, the Jewish

51:49

people are the victims in the old testament you

51:51

know, pharaoh is the oppressor. Mhmm.

51:55

You know, there's way in which Christ is

51:57

the victim in the new testament and there's

51:59

there's something that's very

52:01

true and very powerful about

52:03

this, you know, reorientation towards

52:07

towards the victim, towards justice

52:10

against oppression. Well, that's interesting. So

52:13

I think over the course of thousands of years,

52:15

basically, it the the victim idea

52:17

was just baked

52:18

in. So, Wokeness is just an extension

52:20

of that in some ways. And then,

52:23

in some weird way, it went into, you

52:25

know, hyper overdrive or,

52:27

you know, and then there's always, you know, the Christian

52:30

version is always, you know, it's

52:32

always ends up becoming this competitive thing

52:35

where people try to be more Christian and then

52:37

the Christians. And and so, you

52:40

know, you know, the

52:42

poor shall inherit the earth, sermon in the mount,

52:44

and then told

52:46

story remarks, the nineteenth century. It's it's

52:48

it's no, we need you know, we need

52:50

to actually intensive apply that and we need to have

52:52

a violent communist revolution and accelerate

52:55

that process in in this world.

52:57

And and

52:59

And then I think I think sort of a a lot

53:01

of, you know, a lot of a

53:03

a lot of the woke religion can be thought

53:06

of this as this incredible intensification

53:08

of this. And of course, you know, there are all these paradoxes

53:11

where people use their victim statuses,

53:13

stick, which beat other people over the head.

53:15

So there's sort of all these, you know, all these

53:17

all these dynamics about it. It's obviously not

53:20

particularly Christian in that,

53:22

you know, you still have this this

53:26

a great sense of historical

53:27

injustice, but there's no forgiveness.

53:29

Yep. Right. Right. So a lot of challenges. Yeah.

53:32

Yeah. So it's it's but it's always this

53:35

it's always this revenge in

53:37

the name

53:38

of, you know, longing and justice.

53:40

How do you find teaching course

53:42

at or co teaching course at Stanford?

53:45

I mean, you are one of the guys that said, hey, you don't

53:47

have to go to college. As a matter of fact, my producer

53:49

here, I having dinner at your house once. And

53:51

I was like, I really wanna hire this guy. He wants to

53:53

go back to college. And you were like, you gotta

53:56

tell him, don't go back to college. It all worked

53:58

out. But but so there's little bit of

54:00

attention. Oh, I see. I sure. There are all

54:02

these all these things I do that are somewhat self contradictory,

54:05

but it's, you know, I don't know. It's

54:07

I'm against Social Security, but I'm gonna get a

54:09

Social Security check if it's all around. And

54:11

if, you know, if I was, you know,

54:14

if I was, you know, in a if

54:17

I if I could take advantage of diversity in

54:19

hiring, I would I would definitely use

54:21

diversity quotas to help myself. So

54:24

even so I think I think there's nothing nothing

54:26

hypocritical about Is that just the honest

54:29

version of all that? I mean, I always felt that that was Trump's

54:31

honest version of all that they'd be angry at Trump over

54:33

taxes and it was

54:34

like, well, Don't blame me. Blame you guys

54:36

who created all these stupid rules. I

54:38

think I think it's always complicated. They're

54:40

they're all these Yeah. There are all these different

54:43

dimensions going on, but I think look, I think the

54:45

– I think that there is a

54:47

way that you

54:49

know, teaching a course is a

54:52

terrific forcing function for me

54:54

personally to think about a lot of topics.

54:56

And so, you know, I I get a lot out of

54:58

doing it. I don't read enough books.

55:00

It's a way to force me to do that.

55:02

On the other hand, in the same breath, I

55:04

can also say that This

55:06

doesn't happen in most other college courses

55:09

that most of it is in

55:11

sort of this debt driven racket that's gone

55:13

very out of control versus three hundred billion to

55:15

debt in two thousand, up to two trillion in

55:18

twenty twenty. And

55:21

yes, in the context of this larger

55:23

system that's that's very, very broken.

55:26

So I and then I think, you know,

55:28

there are sort of, you

55:30

know, there's always this duality

55:33

between exit and voice. And so there is,

55:36

you know, there is a version where,

55:38

yeah, it would be good for fewer people to

55:40

go to college and for people to vote

55:43

with their feet. And then

55:45

at the same time, there's always something

55:48

we said for still trying

55:50

to do to fight the fight,

55:52

you know. And I

55:54

went to Stanford, so I I have a certain

55:58

certain attachment to to that university and,

56:00

you know, wanna still try to do something

56:02

on the ground to to make it a better place. You know,

56:04

maybe it's like maybe it's like maybe

56:06

it's like fighting, you know, the the San Francisco

56:09

city city board or something

56:11

like that board

56:12

supervisors. Right. Although I've told you many

56:14

times it's a lot more fun to be in Florida

56:16

fighting for something than always fighting against

56:18

something, which is what I was doing in Cali, which

56:21

I would imagine there's probably

56:23

time for both of

56:23

those. Right? Yeah. Well, it's it's

56:26

but, yeah, it's there there but I

56:28

I think I think I think we should always

56:31

there's a trade off between exit and voice, but

56:34

you you wanna think of both.

56:35

Yeah. Do you think about that? I mean, just

56:37

in general, like, you can do whatever you want.

56:39

Like, you if you wanted to disappear altogether

56:41

and go to gulf gulf

56:43

It's not that easy to do. It's easy to do.

56:44

Yeah. But but, you know, roughly. It's

56:46

Aria. Aria, Colorado.

56:48

Yeah. That's that's his spot. No. No. That's the

56:50

that's the town, Gold Gold.

56:51

Oh, that's right. Of course. It was an

56:53

actual town in Colorado.

56:55

Yeah. But, I mean, do you ever Thiel, like, about

56:57

a thousand people live there? I've I've thought just, you know,

56:59

buying went to real estate there, but I'm quite

57:01

sure. Let me just ask you one

57:04

or two other things. Just

57:06

circling back to some of things we covered. So we talk a bit

57:08

about the globalist stuff and WF and all that stuff.

57:10

When you see this sort of like wide

57:12

variance, I think, between say someone like

57:14

like you and Elon who I think are are, you

57:16

know, mostly lined up together,

57:18

let's say. And then how that seems so

57:20

starkly different than someone like bill gates and

57:23

yet you guys all seemingly came out of something

57:25

roughly similar. Does

57:28

that seem bizarre to you that that people

57:30

evolved so differently? Is that the right way

57:32

to frame the

57:32

question?

57:33

You know, I ah,

57:35

man, IIII never wanna even

57:37

compare myself to Elon. That's also a dangerous

57:39

thing where you always end up end up losing to

57:41

Elon. But I think

57:43

I would say I am Well, you guys

57:45

are singly fighting against this. am

57:47

I am I'm always disturbed

57:50

by the degree to which tech has

57:52

become the sort of San Francisco Silicon

57:55

Valley. Is close to one

57:57

party state. Yeah. And, you know, there there's

57:59

a way in you know, Elon

58:02

is a dissident from that at this point.

58:04

You know, I been I've been a resident

58:07

for a long time. And,

58:10

yeah, and then what what this but what this

58:12

sort of strange conformity

58:15

means, you know, it's it's in common

58:17

with sociological explanations, you know, attempt

58:19

to do something like you

58:22

know, the people were somehow

58:24

narrowly trained in computer science,

58:26

which was very, very

58:29

important and very useful but then

58:31

they never actually thought about most

58:33

of these broader social, political,

58:36

cultural issues much at all. Right.

58:38

And and I I, you know,

58:40

I don't know Bill Gates terribly well, but

58:44

I Thiel he's he's probably fairly high

58:46

IQ smart person. But III

58:48

think he never really thought about this stuff very

58:51

much and then just somehow went

58:53

with the wisdom of crowds, went with the liberal

58:55

consensus. Right? Because it's bizarre. That's he's

58:57

that that's my sociological explanation because

58:59

I can't III can't actually right.

59:02

I can't come up with an explanation. How a person

59:04

would would sort of rationally really get to these

59:07

answers? Well,

59:07

because I think then you see people seeing

59:09

him on TV all the time, and it's like he's the

59:11

largest farmland owner in the United

59:14

States suddenly or farm owner in the United States.

59:16

And he has all this stuff to do with the vaccines

59:18

and all these things. And I think most people are like, a minute,

59:20

weren't you a programmer thirty years ago? Like,

59:22

what happened here that got you to

59:24

think you can sort of be, you know, king of the

59:26

world, something like that? Well, there

59:28

are there are there

59:31

are I mean, there

59:33

are all sorts of ways you should you should probably

59:36

you

59:37

know, be be try

59:39

to sort of steal man what

59:41

what Bill Gates is doing. I mean, there was some

59:43

place where He made a lot of

59:45

money at Microsoft and

59:48

probably was not entirely satisfied with

59:50

that, certainly not with where

59:52

it was reputationally or him at

59:54

the end were sort of this, you know,

59:57

cut throat monopolist charges.

59:59

And and and

1:00:01

then there was you

1:00:04

know, this attempt over the last decade

1:00:07

and a half to reinvent himself as

1:00:09

this sort of leading philanthropist.

1:00:12

And And I so I

1:00:14

I Thiel you can I don't know?

1:00:16

And then there there versions where this was

1:00:18

sincere. There were versions where this was just

1:00:20

some sort of rebranding exercise

1:00:23

I Thiel it was probably more sincere than

1:00:25

just rebranding. But, you know, it's obviously

1:00:27

had elements of all these things. Sure. And

1:00:30

then and then I think

1:00:32

yeah, I I think there are probably ways one can also

1:00:35

be critical where my my

1:00:37

my guess is that he did more good for the world.

1:00:40

At Microsoft. Even even there was in many

1:00:42

ways, you know. All these things were problematic

1:00:44

about it as a business, but Microsoft did

1:00:46

more good for the world. The Gates Foundation

1:00:48

is done. And and then that's a very odd

1:00:50

thing. So that's not what that's not right. And I

1:00:53

I don't think that's that's interesting. That's not what

1:00:55

Gates expected. Yeah. And and

1:00:57

but it is there's something about the

1:01:00

consensus sort

1:01:03

of center left establishment that's that

1:01:05

is just really exhausted. you know,

1:01:07

it would have would have been good if he'd he'd thought

1:01:09

about these things. You know,

1:01:11

with a little bit, you know, a

1:01:13

little bit less of a doctrinaire

1:01:16

mindset. Alright. So then to ask you

1:01:18

one more question, not about Bill Gates, but about

1:01:20

yourself all that. You've been early on a lot

1:01:22

of things. You were early on getting out of San Francisco

1:01:24

and seeing what was going on there. You were early

1:01:26

on Trump. You've been early on plenty yet. You

1:01:28

were early on Facebook. All of these things.

1:01:31

Right now, do you feel do

1:01:33

you feel hopeful? Do you feel

1:01:35

that we can fix a lot of

1:01:37

the things that we've talked about here and get

1:01:40

through the stagnation and get to a place

1:01:42

where we can trust some people again and that

1:01:44

the system will start working right? Is

1:01:46

that a ridiculous exercise? I mean,

1:01:48

your general state of like belief in the

1:01:50

Thiel?

1:01:52

Well, it's it's I always I

1:01:55

always think, you know, extreme up optimism, extreme

1:01:57

pessimism, are both equally wrong because they're both

1:01:59

excuses for laziness. They're not doing

1:02:01

anything. So I think the answer is always

1:02:03

in between -- Yeah. -- you know, as a venture

1:02:05

capitalist, I still Most

1:02:08

of my focus on individual companies, and

1:02:10

I Thiel, you know, there are a lot of, you know, there are

1:02:12

a lot of companies that can do quite well

1:02:14

even if our whole society isn't progressing

1:02:17

as quickly as I would like. You know,

1:02:20

think the broader political social

1:02:23

questions it's it's

1:02:25

very hard. It is it is it

1:02:27

is, you know, it's just gonna be, you

1:02:29

know, I think, a crazy intense fight

1:02:31

for the next decade. And,

1:02:36

you know, my my my my sense

1:02:38

is that my set my my

1:02:40

sense is that we're on this we're on the side

1:02:43

I'd wanna be on. I'm I'm not sure our side's gonna

1:02:45

win. Mhmm. But but it's

1:02:47

it's it's it's gonna be much easier to

1:02:49

be on our side than than defending all

1:02:51

this

1:02:51

stuff. Right.

1:02:52

Right. Right. It's just it's just there's

1:02:54

so much so much surface area

1:02:57

that they have to defend. Right. But that does

1:03:00

seem like why it gets increasingly hysterical

1:03:02

because they can't defend it or so it's constantly

1:03:04

Thiel You have litany of

1:03:06

lunacies. Just You have to, you know, you have

1:03:08

to if you're gonna have these massive lockdowns

1:03:10

inside, you also have to walk down debate, you have

1:03:12

to walk down speech, and you have to

1:03:15

and that there's probably some version

1:03:17

of it where it's very unhealthy. You know,

1:03:19

I always you know, if you sort of personalize

1:03:22

it in in the person

1:03:24

of the president, sort of somehow over the

1:03:26

crystallization of where society is at

1:03:29

You know, there there are all these questions about,

1:03:31

you know, you know, Biden's,

1:03:35

you know, mental acuity, and

1:03:37

maybe never had that many marbles to start

1:03:39

with. But but but,

1:03:42

you know, the the version of it I often

1:03:44

wonder about is whether you

1:03:47

know, his inability to

1:03:50

address these questions or speak with them,

1:03:52

is that actually a feature more than

1:03:54

a bug -- Mhmm. -- because if

1:03:56

you had if you had sort

1:03:58

of a very sharp

1:04:01

liberal person, like, I don't

1:04:03

like Pete Buttigieg. It would just look ridiculous.

1:04:05

It would like,

1:04:06

he would expect some answers would

1:04:08

expect explanations. He'd be trying to give

1:04:10

us explanations, and they would look so sir.

1:04:12

Right.

1:04:12

And now all we ask is that And that's if

1:04:14

Biden is just relaxing in a basement,

1:04:17

that's that's very protective, maybe.

1:04:19

You've

1:04:20

given us the best they can do.

1:04:22

I guess that's the white pill. Right? It's like our

1:04:24

end I need to go at that

1:04:25

break. I I think this. No. I think, look, I think

1:04:27

that But yeah. And it's

1:04:29

it's it's it's it's

1:04:32

yeah. And and I Thiel there's a there's a lot of room

1:04:34

for

1:04:35

for things to get better. You have to

1:04:37

keep doing the good work here doing David.

1:04:39

Well, as always, it's a pleasure to talk to you, and

1:04:41

I do wanna you know, we do this usually off

1:04:43

camera, but I do wanna publicly give

1:04:46

you a thanks for something because about

1:04:48

three years ago, as we sit here in

1:04:50

the local studio now, I got on a Zoom

1:04:52

call with you and and my partner in

1:04:54

locals who's sitting in the other office right there.

1:04:56

And we had an all cash offer to buy the company.

1:04:58

And you basically said to us, and I said Peter,

1:05:00

it's it's life changing money for me. Do you think I

1:05:03

should do this? And you said, basically,

1:05:05

you said, if you believe

1:05:07

in it and you get distribution, you have

1:05:09

a much bigger opportunity here. And we waited

1:05:11

it out. We did take the offer and then obviously everything

1:05:14

happened with rumble. So I

1:05:16

owe you on that front. How about that? How about

1:05:18

that? Very good to you, my friend. Awesome.

1:05:27

Thanks for tuning in to the Ruben Report. Don't

1:05:29

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1:05:32

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1:05:34

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