The Peter Thiel Paradox (also the name of my new wave band) “It’s inevitable/you’re only fighting progress, and any regulations will turn it into an authoritarian nightmare. Which is what it’s turning into anyway because it’s simply inevitable. So stop trying to resist by forcing regulations on this inevitable authoritarian nightmare that we had no way of stopping.”

I ended up looking into it

Vance and Thiel’s relationship dates back to 2011, when the senator met Thiel following a talk the venture capitalist gave at Yale Law School that Vance has characterized as “the most significant moment of my time” at the institution, according to a blog post he wrote for Catholic magazine The Lamp.

🙄 That dude is such an ass kisser

Thiel is currently in the limelight for having mentored, financed, and boosted Vice President Vance. In sum, Thiel employed Vance in his Silicon Valley venture capital firm right after law school, helped Vance start his own venture capital firm, introduced Vance to Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2021 and got Trump’s endorsement for Vance’s Senate race, and contributed a crucial $15 million to Vance’s Senate campaign.

Does anyone know how Vance ended up in silicon valley after law school? Was he recruited at Yale?

I have wondered for a while if Peter Thiel saw him as a chance for a rube/dark Jimmy Carter.

Why not just run a decent business?

Bc propaganda sells and corporations have entire teams that exist to market a brand as a value. That’s why Dove and Axe are both owned by the same parent company.

One exists to empower women and one exists to empower men by objectifying women. It’s not that either are really run by anybody with those values. They’re both faceless corporations, and it’s all just a marketing ploy.

This is Propaganda

“It’s the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world,” Thiel told the New York Times’ Ross Douthat on a podcast. “In our world, it’s far more likely to be Greta Thunberg.”

“I feel like that Antichrist would maybe be using the tools that you are building,” replied Douthat.

Douthat was referring to Palantir, the government contractor that Thiel co-founded in 2003 during the height of the war on terror. Today, Palantir is “in the white-hot center of the latest trend reshaping the global order,” according to The Wall Street Journal, receiving more than $322 million from government contracts in the first half of 2025.

It’s equipping the government with tools to sift through massive data troves to identify patterns and hunt down illegal immigrants. It’s helping the Feds deploy facial recognition technology, and has created AI tools to “predict” where crimes might happen in advance.

“Like, wouldn’t the Antichrist be like: Great, we’re not going to have any more technological progress, but I really like what Palantir has done so far,” Douthat asked Thiel. "Isn’t that a concern? Wouldn’t that be the irony of history, that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival?"

When Thiel replied that hastening the Antichrist’s arrival is “obviously” not what he thinks he’s doing, Douthat agreed that it was unlikely but pressed, “I’m just interested in how you get to a world willing to submit to permanent authoritarian rule.”

No I totally don’t think that’s what I’m doing. Why would you even suggest that? You’re crazy! Somebody sue this guy!

I’m starting to think there’s probably a growing rift between the traditionalists and the technologists, but both sides are in the Epstein files.

The traditionalists like Mike Johnson are hoping Trump stays in power, and the technologists are hoping JD Vance replaced him.

For all of his many faults, I think JD Vance might be one of the few people not in the files, but he’s definitely funded by people who are and that’s who’s interests he will always be looking out for.

I also think Peter Thiel believes as long as his team (Vance, Kahnna, Massie) are in control once the files are released, he can keep his own financial ties to Epstein from receiving too much attention.

They definitely already are though. That is why they’re trying to cut all regulations on technology.

There is a private company that got caught doing this in my city and using live facial recognition tech to track people in real time.

They didn’t even ask for permission they just did it, and the only reason anybody found out about it is bc some journalists at the Washington Post exposed them and published an article about it.

Police secretly monitored New Orleans with facial recognition cameras

The cops can provided them with a name and photo and this company will scan cameras all over the city then text an automatic notification of the location to the cops when they get a match

The picture on the left is one of the cameras in my city

Experts warn that, in light of the Trump administration’s threats to crack down on “far-left” groups, the scope of application for Palantir’s tools could only grow. Already, a new report from the Intercept revealed HSI subpoenaed and received information from Google about international students who were being investigated over their pro-Palestinian activism.

“Now [with access to more federal databases] Ice can use this type of surveillance apparatus on anyone – not only anyone who is undocumented but anyone who this administration wants to criminalize and anyone who the administration wants to put under surveillance,” said González of MediaJustice.

"Time and time again, you’re seeing Ice act in ways that are incredibly violent and aggressive. It does have a chilling effect. When you know they have a technology that can track relationships, your conversations, and your organizing activity, that can be a silencing force.”

Meanwhile we have Peter Thiel telling us we can’t have regulations applied to tech bc doing so will lead to authoritarian rule. Trump’s science advisor Michael Kratsios is helping him make sure there is no red tape standing in his way.

But if we don’t have regulations, what he is building will also clearly lead to an authoritarian rule. But I guess he will be in charge, so it’s ok?

Additionally, with the help of Thomas Massie, he gets rid of the federal reserve, destroy the U.S. dollar and replace it with gold and crypto.

So the dollar will collapse, and with Thiel as our unchecked authoritarian leader, our entire lives will be constantly surveilled, our data will be collected and exploited, and it turns out Thiel has a crypto company he’s started with all those billions in soon to be useless American dollars that he stole or received in government contracts. Like our forefathers always dreamed about.

My bad article just says abortion pill. Not sure what drug it is

Remember that guy from Trump’s first administration that looked like he’d been copied and pasted from a late 90s video game?

Not him

This one:

He brought his pregnant girlfriend a smoothie with a Plan B abortion pill? crushed up inside of it to force her to abort without her knowledge.

Then he tried to sue for libel when the story was published, but a judge ordered that he had no basis and made him pay the other party’s legal fees instead.

Trumpworld’s Jason Miller Must Pay Gizmodo Thousands for Accurately Reporting Insane Story About Him

So prolife he had to pretend to be doing something thoughtful for her and the baby when he straight up poisoned his girlfriend without her consent.

That is my point. Eventually if we keep letting everything become a giant conglomerate the choice will be a complete drop out and go live in the woods and wait for the machine to destroy itself or completely give up and just accept this is our only choice.

In the meantime, I know there are already things where this is the only choice. There is no reason to keep subscribing to Disney Plus, but when it comes to the things you can’t completely stop, just reduce where you can. It makes a difference.

I used to rely on Amazon for everything just bc it was convenient. There are some things I still do rely on it for, but I have cut waaay back on purchases from there. If I can get it somewhere else, I will.

Not to sound like a broken record, but this is again a real world example of why corporations aren’t people. The entire point of forming a corporation is to make a company completely devoid of individual responsibility. It becomes its own entity, but that entity is a machine. Each individual within the company is just following a predetermined set of rules/orders.

They’ll always just do what helps them make money over what is moral, but I don’t even believe that’s a disparaging remark as much as a factual one. It’s just how corporations are meant to work.

Corporations are absolved of moral responsibility just like any machine. Since the ends have already been predetermined, the closest to individual autonomy humans have is the decision to participate or not.

Either they make money, or they don’t survive. Starving corporations by not feeding them your money is literally the only way to force them to change their predetermined survival strategy or perish. It’s also why huge conglomerates that take away any choice in support are such a threat. If we keep allowing them, ultimately, humans will probably be forced to either just give in to the machine or boycott modern society altogether.

I’m more concerned they’ll be turning you over to the gestapo for anything you say online that goes against the administration that they helped elect and are now helping to keep in power.

The thing is, he seems to be setting up a future where technology and progress becomes his ultimate scapegoat.

The future he describes is where we’re headed if we continue down the path he’s leading us.

Once he becomes the centralized figure controlling all the nodes of authoritarian easy buttons he created across the globe, he will just claim that he tried to prevent it, but ultimately it’s just the inevitable result of progress. Like it was going to happen one way or another.

I wrote a very long comment about this, but essentially, dystopia is not an inevitable result of progress. That is why regulations exist. Look at the fears of dystopia following mapping of the human genome and the regulations that were created that have kept modern society from becoming Gattaca (although I know Thiel actually believes this too has led to “stagnation”).

Basically, there is the reality of what can and will happen when you cut the brake lines in a speeding car, and the fantasy of people like Thiel who believe that cutting the brakes will allow you to go much faster, and as long as he’s steering, his fantasy where the car suddenly flies instead of crashing might come true.

When it inevitably crashes he can claim it would have happened one way or the other, but at least he tried.

This would be infuriating no matter what, but the hypocrisy of ICE wearing masks and all the bullshit about accountability for everybody “except me and my frenz bcuz we’re too busy making America so great to worry about the rules” makes this all so much more fucking ridiculous

I’m sure once every human is replaced by shitty automated AI the entire process will become smoother than our darkest nightmares can imagine.

Book your flight. Hop into your driverless taxi, and if you survive the trip to the airport, use the facial recognition option to breeze right on through security within minutes (assuming you’re the right color of passenger) without even taking off your shoes.

No need for air traffic control, flight attendants, or even pilots. You can can walk straight on to the overcrowded plane, settle in, put on your headphones and sleep mask, then nosedive straight into the ocean without ever having to acknowledge another human being. Until the rude asshole sitting next to you suddenly bothers you with some stupid shit like “Oh God why aren’t the oxygen masks dropping? That used to be automatic! Our father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name…”

You roll your eyes and put your headphones and mask back on to enjoy the soothing sounds of autotune AI generated parody songs you made on the ride to the airport. What the fuck is that guy even talking about anyway? You don’t know and you don’t care. You didn’t pay for first class to have some rando kill your vacay vibe. You take a deep breath (but there’s no oxygen) smile and settle back in, knowing that soon you will reach your final destination.

You think any of this ends with superintelligence for us all? Is that why you’re building an underground doomsday bunker and tunnel in Hawaii?

the air industry groups said the law was a “step backward” and that facial recognition technology made security screenings far more efficient.

There’s that word again. Is there anything that can’t be justified by efficiency?

It never is, never has been, and probably never will be very efficient to slow down and consider the brand new set of issues created by efficiency. You’re just standing in the way of progress, and that’s tomorrow’s problem anyway. Let them figure it out. I’m sure they’ll come up with an efficient solution.

EPIC et al. Call on Congress to Codify Protections for Travelers From TSA Facial Recognition July 30, 2025

True, they will always play the victim even as they’re hurting and exploiting people they see as less than. Don’t allow them to have any evidence of credibility.

I think his idea of hell would probably be having to lower himself to the standard of living most people would consider normal and comfortable. Having to learn to actually survive day to day if he were to find himself suddenly without a cent of the money he was born into and all future wages and earnings garnished to pay the people he has harmed, would probably be a fate worse than any hell he could imagine.

I know there’s no justice and there is pretty much no chance of him ever facing any sort of proportional punishment or consequence for his actions. But, if I could make it happen, having to suddenly learn to survive with the rest of us mortals in the society he has helped create, in his late fifties, wondering how he will even afford something as basic as healthcare while his body rapidly ages from stress and gradually falls apart, after a lifetime of unimaginable privilege, unable to go anywhere or do anything he enjoys without being recognized and having people curse his name. That would be the fate I would wish on somebody like him.