Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, the billionaire tech investor said the Vatican’s concerns could discourage America in the AI arms race, warned of a democratic-socialist takeover and explained why he named Palantir after JRR Tolkien’s treacherous seeing stones.
The kind of public speaking Thiel does is not aimed towards regular people. For example, the event highlighted in the article, The Aspen Ideas Festival, costs $3,000 a person for 6 days. He’s speaking to the rich and wealthy who take his absurd ideas seriously because their wealth makes them out of touch with the rest of society. These events carry big price tags to exclude people like you and me from knowing what they are talking about, what kind of agendas the Epstein Class is trying to advance. Ignoring him and his ilk does not lessen his power because the source of his power are the rich and wealthy. Theil does not derive his power from people, but from wealth.
This means that the method of removing his power requires actively casting him down from his tower. Regular people need to pool their power together and remove his influence through collective action, like using government to jail him. This is only possible through actively acknowledging the threat people like Thiel present. We cannot safely ignore people like Thiel anymore you could ignore your neighbor building a rocket launcher pointed at your bedroom.
I realize that the idea of using government to punish evil rich people seems unrealistic, what with the myriad examples of Epstein’s friends avoiding punishment. But just because it seems impossible right now doesn’t actually make it impossible. It will require a lot of people coming together to make decisions about a better future, which first requires people becoming more politically active. Part of that requires education, explaining why people should become more politically active, and I think and important part of that is highlighting how certain people in positions of power need to be actively fought against. You and I do not need further evidence that Peter Thiel is a bad person, but there are people out there who don’t know what Thiel is doing in the background so stuff like having multiple news outlets report on his evil and absurdity can help raise awareness. Though I will grant that perhaps it’s less useful on a platform like Lemmy in which a majority of the userbase is already more politically aware than the average person.
Also, I don’t think that you and I are fighting each other or that we are in hostile opposition in this discussion. We both have the same goal of removing power from people like Thiel, we just disagree about how to enact that goal. I think this kind of discussion is useful amongst allies and doesn’t necessarily need to result in a political schism or anything.
By now I feel like the Luigi way is the only way, but at the same time I know that when you cut off one head, another one, or several, will grow back. Maybe it’s time for a revolution, in which the entire system can be redrawn so it cannot be abused anymore… But that’s also far too optimistic thinking.
The kind of public speaking Thiel does is not aimed towards regular people. For example, the event highlighted in the article, The Aspen Ideas Festival, costs $3,000 a person for 6 days. He’s speaking to the rich and wealthy who take his absurd ideas seriously because their wealth makes them out of touch with the rest of society. These events carry big price tags to exclude people like you and me from knowing what they are talking about, what kind of agendas the Epstein Class is trying to advance. Ignoring him and his ilk does not lessen his power because the source of his power are the rich and wealthy. Theil does not derive his power from people, but from wealth.
This means that the method of removing his power requires actively casting him down from his tower. Regular people need to pool their power together and remove his influence through collective action, like using government to jail him. This is only possible through actively acknowledging the threat people like Thiel present. We cannot safely ignore people like Thiel anymore you could ignore your neighbor building a rocket launcher pointed at your bedroom.
I realize that the idea of using government to punish evil rich people seems unrealistic, what with the myriad examples of Epstein’s friends avoiding punishment. But just because it seems impossible right now doesn’t actually make it impossible. It will require a lot of people coming together to make decisions about a better future, which first requires people becoming more politically active. Part of that requires education, explaining why people should become more politically active, and I think and important part of that is highlighting how certain people in positions of power need to be actively fought against. You and I do not need further evidence that Peter Thiel is a bad person, but there are people out there who don’t know what Thiel is doing in the background so stuff like having multiple news outlets report on his evil and absurdity can help raise awareness. Though I will grant that perhaps it’s less useful on a platform like Lemmy in which a majority of the userbase is already more politically aware than the average person.
Also, I don’t think that you and I are fighting each other or that we are in hostile opposition in this discussion. We both have the same goal of removing power from people like Thiel, we just disagree about how to enact that goal. I think this kind of discussion is useful amongst allies and doesn’t necessarily need to result in a political schism or anything.
By now I feel like the Luigi way is the only way, but at the same time I know that when you cut off one head, another one, or several, will grow back. Maybe it’s time for a revolution, in which the entire system can be redrawn so it cannot be abused anymore… But that’s also far too optimistic thinking.