David Graeber vs Peter Thiel: Where Did the Future Go 

Honestly, it's normal way of speaking by David. He does better impression arguing on paper than in real life, because people usually interpret his behavioral ticks as nervousness as such things.

Telling huh? I don’t think so and talk about reading a lot of things into that

FriedIcecreamIsAReality I think his articulation is good but his logic is bad. Very common among academics. Theil always talks like this. I don’t think he’s nervous.

FriedIcecreamIsAReality stfu

@@Thomas-re9ky I’d say the opposite

Says the dude who got tenure at Princton and had it revoked because he wanted organize a grad student union.

@@donq2957 in what way is a graduate student union "the regime"?

@@Treebark1313 Its too complicated for a stupid minds. Princeton is part of regime. They work for establishment. Thats why they canned the white dude for organizing a union. Ask me one more question and Ill tell you how smart you are.

@@donq2957 I can't believe how completely wrong this is lol. A) he was a professor at Yale B) he wasn't the organizer he just gave vocal support to a student that was the one doing the organizing C) he didn't have tenure D) the reason that the faculty voted to remove him was multifaceted and related to a lot of different things he had done or supported including his work with the global justice movement

@@purple-flowers Yes

I read Bullshit Jobs and started reading Debt a few weeks before he passed. Truly quite a loss. This next decade is going to be a bumpy ride at the very least.

@@dennyhamrick2552 I hear you. I am surprised that U.S. is not in more upheaval.

Amazing writer. Do read 5000 years of Debt by David Graeber

His thesis project is really great too. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value. It was the only resource of its kind when I did a project with a friend.

Me too! I just discovered him today and wish he were still here because I feel (for whatever that’s worth) he is spot on. Do you know any other philosophers along this same vein? I want to send his book to all my managers.

A quick summary of the vid. Pretty much Peter said in the nicest most apologetic way possible. I dont care how we get there, or how many people suffer. I want to get to Mars at all cost. In contrast, David was a beautiful humanist

@@Elcherino123 Beautiful Humanist = inconsequential human?

@@tavom6710 Yes, I suppose so - David Graeber argued against war, for preserving the environment, for giving greater freedom to workers and in particular to women in society, for opposing racism and imperialism. Things Peter Thiel viscerally opposes and of course, Peter Thiel is winning that debate.

@@tavom6710 not necessarily.

@@gamerknown I just don't understand why arguing for makes you a saint. I can argue for all sorts of things from my seat. Changing material reality is very different. Whatever your opinion you've got to acknowledge that he changed reality more than David Graeber's preening virtue ever could. in eastern mysticism one is not supposed to become involved in the world . Are you in favour of the same thing?

By paying it off through the new revenue source you've acquired. There is relatively big number of low-competition non-scalable globalization-based companies you can create living in third world countires. Take the local supply chain optimization for example. Also; if you really have a good idea, which Graeber is so concerned about, you wouldn't have the problem with acquiring capital, even though you're personally in debt. I can't imagine any investment fund telling you that as a ceo/cto of a company you can't pay yourself more than average shoe factory worker. And if you can earn even as little as the average factory worker, you can pay off your debt, by the definition of the argument.

@@Wittgenstein.you completely missed the point of everything Graeber said. You’re a fucking moron my amigo.

​@@Wittgenstein.I assure being a creative person and trying to get things across to non creative ones is like pulling teeth regardless if the system worked then you wouldn't be here defending it right now

I know a lot of people who acquired more debt doing exactly that... The new source of revenue is more debt, and so on...

@@Wittgenstein. this comment lacks much perspective. you seem to be ignoring the concept of interest. in countries where there are few laws surrounding it and fewer actually enforced many people live in what is effectively legal slavery, the debt pit deepens faster than it can be filled and the practices of creditors are designed to achieve this. the governments in a lot of these countries are deeply corrupt and work with monopolistic or oligopolistic companies, many of which are themselves multinational western companies taking advantage of the corruptable governments and lax laws. you cannot simply 'acquire some capital' if your every waking moment is spent paying not to sleep on the street or go hungry. you cannot pretend like these people have anything close to the opportunity we do here

Agreed.

Both are equally irrelevant. This is one hour of two men who are experts on one field automatically assuming they're experts on a totally unrelated one. These men have no clue what they're talking about and seem to ignore or dismiss the fact that some engineering challenges have an intrinsic difficulty that you won't solve through politics or management restructuring.

I'm totally rooting for you here...

Read a thing about Russian Cosmism and Nikolai Fyodorov, a faction of the technophile wing of the early 20th century pre- and post-revolution Bolsheviks. Their factions goal? Not just immortality drug. Nah. Too simple and easy for them. "An Immortality Drug would be an affront to all those giants and lesser men that were needed throughout the history of mankind to push Humanity to a Communist Utopia. We are immortal and live in an Utopia but what about those people!? Isn't it an insult to all those people who HAD TO die to get us to this point!? They, not us, are more deserving of immortality! So? We are going to build machines to resurrect all the dead people that were ever born! And all the people that might have been born! And all the people that never were born! Mwuhahahahaha!" The Russian Cosmists certainly didn't lack ambition.

Why did communism fail so miserably?

cdzlink because centrally planned economies lacked the ability to manage every aspect of the economy and people misappropriated Marx’s egalitarian ethic in service of state slavery.

@@cdzlink7115 because certain things are just BAD...

Debt is an excellent book.

The comparison to a child is perfect. Jesus said only those who behave like a child (in their curiosity) will enter the kingdom of Heaven.

Yeah David talked about a jubilee. I'm writing a book about a jubilee. He read and liked the linked intro a few years ago. The plan is more complete now, in dedication to David. www.Common-Planet.org/plan

David Graeber's book is available as a free PDF download: blindhypnosis.com/debt-the-first-5000-years-pdf-david-graeber.html

can't wait to read "Debt" -- graeber worked closely with Michael Hudson who has a whole book "Forgive them their debts" that goes into great detail on the jubilee year and near east conceptions of debt and debt amnesty. He cites Graeber a lot!

Have you seen any Adam Curtis documentaries?

we = euphemism for "small government" = synonym for oligarchy

He didn't say that ..we should not change..all he said ..that changing a whole system..is quite daydreaming.. it's better and more efficient to do small things and making it larger so that rather than convincing people.

@@tanmayroy6372 agreed, leftist like to imagine their pipe dream society and then destroy everything on its way to utopia.

@@verapamil07 oh? And hyper-capitalist/pro oligarchy like thiel (but not u, because ur a pleb) aren’t destroying society on the way to THEIR admitted dystopia?

@@tanmayroy6372 while people suffer and die, because f#%$ them right?

You missed his point though, it wasn't that he was just as trapped as a poor person or something like that it was that the other high-powered high-paid lawyers thought that they were trapped... This whole class Warfare thing makes us all stupid

​@@x0rn312It is usually called class "struggle" not "warfare", which i think makes a difference. claiming that a first world lawyer and someone working in a "third world" shoe factory is essentially experiencing the same struggle, because they both "feel trapped" is ridiculous. It is popular that when someone points to inequality, and looks for someone to blame, for the more privileged party to claim some version of "but in the end aren't we all human?". you can always abstract it to a degree where everyone is equal. Of course corporate lawyers can, and are allowed to feel trapped, and they undoubtedly are in some way, but you have to see how there is a difference, no? I agree there is no point in mindlessly antagonizing each other and i dislike the current trend of thinking that being privileged automatically makes you a bad person, which it doesn't. What it does though is bestow you with a relatively higher degree of social responsibility, which involves acknowledging ones advantages and in the very least not judging those less fortunate as being of lesser character.

Thiel went to school for free.

@@Graeberwave what do you mean, please?

@@blairhakamies4132 He means Thiel was schooled in this debate, and it turns out many of his views have not held up to the test of time. Thiel himself has left Silicon Valley.

@@mgm8075 thank you for educating me. 😊

Peter just doesnt seem to care. His care seems as much as a Pharoah in Ancient Egypt wanting great temples built on the backs of others. And at the end of it all, he believes he has built them all himself, with his own two magical hands no less. I can't even begin to think like he does, but I guess some of our minds are simpler than his

it amazes me how many commenters are hyper obsessed with Peter Thiel‘s wealth. Why not drop the envy and get on with life?

@@w.harrison7277 I said nothing that showed obsession or envy. I referred to argument tatics that distracted attention from addressing injustice and corruption, repeatedly.

yeah, he was TOO nice. I came into the debate hoping that my favorite anarchist would wipe the floor with a corporate oligarch. But I don't blame him too much, if he was aggressive at all he wouldn't be himself. and he was just an amazing mind.

@@w.harrison7277 When a thief steals what is rightfully yours, is it envy to want it back?

⁠@@w.harrison7277Horrible take.

big facts

I could not disagree more , Thiel is brilliant

Both sides were being polite and not too direct. Graeber was giving a question about how to design a system that selects for talent. Thiel was saying that you let the talent self select itself in their own ingenious ways.

You're SO full of sh*t.

@@sentilopis i think both are correct in that many/most talented people dont know what to do with their lives (but still figure smth out) and that we cant really make a john lennon in school, bc the things he presents have not been seen before. the problem does reduce to giving them both the many opportunities to flourish that they need if aimless, and the basic means and freedom to go do their own thing if the things offered dont suit them.

Name some of the great inventions created in anarchy

@@onetwo3411 anarchism is a political stance, not a form of social organization. So zero, since there is no such thing as living "in anarchy." But if your question is "name some of the great inventions created in forms of social organization other than the one we live in today," the answer is almost boundless: the compass, agriculture, all simple machines, inoculations, cookery, the arch, the dome, columns, knives, steel, trumpets, flutes, roads...

@@onetwo3411 anarchy is a relationship. U want examples tho: printing press, the x-Ray, the automobile, cryptocurrency, thousands of surgical procedures and Medicines…I could go on, but even an NPC like u gets it.

One two. The sex pistols. Case closed.

@@onetwo3411 agriculture, the wheel, fire, etc.

I almost sense Theil understands the just aspirations of the public and prefers to leverage advantage of spoils while in their elitist bloody hands and ensure nothing interferes by preaching his accelerationist meritocracy myth hype.

Why should he care?

@@w.harrison7277 Hey, it's a eugenics Nazi. Hi Mr Nazi!

They can both be right! Thiel's prescriptions are meant to get the ball rolling, but his vision more or less converges with Graeber in the long run. They have the same basic objectives, just different ways of getting there.

@@segasys1339 The guy who runs a company devoted to mass surveillance, named after the evil seeing stones of Sauron, does not converge with Graeber. At all. Can't happen.

@@ernststravoblofeld Relax bruh. If that's your takeaway from this discussion, you're just recreationally outraged. They both agree on an end state of techonological abundance and human prosperity but disagree on how to break out of the sclerotic oligarchy in the near to medium term. If you think Thiel opposes Graeber in any intractable, irreconcilable way, you need to chill out.

@@segasys1339 Fuck off chud.

fascists www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/revealed-trump-backers-spy-firm-lobbied-gove-hancock-before-winning-key-nhs-contract/

And the regime just silenced Graeber.

It's the key moment of the whole thing

@K O Autopsy results not yet produced. Up to 40 days in a case like this. Natural causes at the moment. Which seems unlikely. If he had an illness or condition we would have expected an announcement by now.

The kings of the button-down shirts.

I think what he means he doesn't fetishise his political beliefs. he doesn't start every sentence with " coming from antiauthoritarian political movement" or some of her pretentious tribal statement. His limitation is that he will not entertain anything he doesn't think has some possibility of success. maybe that's a limitation of imagination. Maybe that's why he has been so successful.

Seems like an apt description for someone who steps way back to get an all encompassing view.

@@tavom6710 Sounds very "postmodern-isy" if there can be any such term. If I understand, what you are saying is, he is as cold and dead politically as a pile of money is...yaani Capital has no soul and therefore no beliefs, pure pragmatism...yes? I am not convinced, but I hear you. On thinking more deeply about it, I think he expresses his beliefs through his money, through actually altering the political landscape to suit his political beliefs... ...where we for being powerless are compelled to proselytize our beliefs till the masses and powerful hear them and hopefully alter the landscape to fit them. I think he does not needs to get in a public tussle with us because he has the relevant audience he needs to live his particular political beliefs. I believe you saw what he did to Gawker?

@@ArkAnudDinYaSin he is considerably less cold and dead then David Graeber. Honestly I've never heard of that guy until I watched this video. Gawker lost a lawsuit based on their publication of a sex tape without the consent of the person the tape. If there is a moral high ground to be had there I can't see it. He and his followers speak with such absurd self-assurance. It's like wandering into the Christopher Hitchens, fan boy dark web. They are both dead let's move on!! I will leave you guys to your circle jerk.

@@tavom6710 That's rude. It's not our fault you can't hold yours up.

Damn. True.

Yeah, but to be fair to them, that's just how terrible it is out here in late capitalism. They need to make a living too, and sometimes they really have to sell themselves, and their work. Sometimes, that amounts to a relatively harmless assignment involving their book in their lectures. Other times, it can involve blatant manipulation of research to reframe certain true facts and create harmful false propaganda.

Luckily not all academia in the world is like this. America has lost the ability to question.

Well.... it's what they understand and have studied so they are more effective at teaching it. Why not assign something they have written? I had a teacher share her master's thesis with us and we would debate with her about it and it helped us all develop a better understanding. It isn't all about self-promotion. Unfortunately she got fired and they hired some new underpaid adjunct to teach for minimal wages

@@aliceinwonder8978 I've been hanging around universities about 25 years, working as an academic for more than 10. The institution where I work is in the global top 20. While the university I attended in my undergrad years was certainly not in the top 20, the quality of education I was given there is sadly, better than what I am able to offer my own students in the apparently prestigious institution in which I now work. Part of the distinction is that the teachers used to give us a good idea of their own research and there'd indeed be lively debates and thoughtful reflection around the work they generously shared: it's what set me on the path of my own academic journey (can't really call it a career). Nowadays I guess there's been a shift into building static courses that can be more easily tracked over time, readings that give a general understanding of the topic but little opportunity for provocation or reflection; more of a self-service environment for students etc. In short, it's become more like a McDonald's. While the amount of work/pay I receive is a bit of a problem, it's the crisis in university culture that will see my out the exit before this year is through.

I think I ate that mushroom

Decentralization is only ok when he approves of it. He has the monopoly on decentralizing even.

great name

lol, this is almost certainly purposeful dishonesty from Thiel. He at one point identified as an ancap, and they are all about decentralization.

Really? The definition of organization is: > an organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as a business or government department. Since people don't spontaneously *happen* to agree on their goals and how to achieve them, surely organization implies *some form* of centralization; even if informal and unconscious. Its easy to see organization can happen in ways that are not purely top down and autocratic -that is to say, not formally centralised; however co-ordination certainly means that there was some level centralization(no matter how informal and dynamic); lest how would one sign or imperative be given a greater imperative than all the other signs put forward by the constituents of the organization that would be required for such co-ordination or shared attention towards a certain goal? People don't merely happen to agree that 9am is the time for work and 5pm is clock off - but that wasn't organised by one pure top down autocracy either - it is to some extent decentralised, but since it IS organised, it must be centralised to some varying degree... What am I missing here?

He's about that pyramid life, top of it actually, he probably has no idea what the bottom layers go through

It's very upsetting.

God dammit, I literally just found out... Had no idea. What a loss and what a damn shame.

I accept cookies 😋

That t-shirt didn’t age well did it?

The word libertarian has been appropriated by liberals like many other words

you dont understand what libertarian means

@@Ryan-xq3kl anything that can be reasonably described as Orwellian is fundamentally incompatible with any definition of "libertarian", but I'd love to hear what you got.

American Libertarianism basically just means "unchecked corporate power". They think liberty for the rich is the only liberty worth caring about.

@@Icameron259 that's a totally objective unbiased definition for sure

“Changing the whole system” is the basis of every shallow and incoherent plan. It’s like the platonic form of shallow incoherence. The original sin. It’s the goal of every movement that ends up making zero impact.

Not want to be rude, but your summary is a good window into a typical leftist central planning mind. Idealism that never becomes reality.

Most people don't have a passion and there's value in finding passions through doing difficult and unenjoyable things

@@informationsuperkhan it doesn't have to happen like that though, in a large sweeping manner. I have some first hand experience with this happening to me (a mere component of the whole). When covid hit I got furloughed from my job at a restaurant, went on government assistance, and was able to start organizing musicians to fight for fairer wages in a city that brings in billions from music every year while its musicians barely survive- or have to work in other jobs in addition to the music industry. If it can happen to me (a part of the whole), then it can happen to other parts of the whole without needing some sort of utopic revolution. The only thing really utopic I keep hearing is the idea that this corporate capitalist world is somehow sustainable, and guarantees individual freedom.

@@informationsuperkhan perhaps. But in the least we need to create local communities that “the system” has very little control over. That’s what I’m about. Forget “the USA”/ federalism. It’s a decaying gold plated turd.

Justice?

@@craigkelly8369 if history has taught me anything, it's that a three letter agency is to blame if anyone left of truman dies before 70

@@abstractalien12345 Home Owners Associations can be difficult entities to get along with but murdering academic anarchists ...?

So many facts, so many hurt feelings.

It is also amazing how you and I know what the shape of the Earth is. Yet, why do people want to "debate" otherwise? And to all the Thiel and Musk knobs, I'll remind you: that was a rhetorical question.

I was enjoying this until I got called a knob

The way you described his career is technically accurate but doesn't really do it justice. Saying that he was just a banker who happened to be the first to do it online is like saying that rockets are just big fireworks. Lots of people tried to create viable online payment systems but it proved very difficult and PayPal was the first major success largely because of Thiel's philosophy and leadership. He's also been one of the most successful venture capitalists ever, so writing the rest of his career off as just speculative investment is also underselling what he's done, problematic entanglements with the security state aside.

@@frankjennings4489 He also funded JD Vance, the latest Trumpanzee to jump on the fascist bandwagon, who just won their primary! Thiel just can't stop winning!

In fact it leaves many to be ground down by poverty, disease, and addiction. Perhaps most considering the vast majority of society lives in abject poverty.

OpiatesAndTits well said and sadly very true.

great quote!

Theils direct response to this quote is " it's a lack of imagination" wtf.

It's much easier to be principled as a professor theorizing about radical change than an entrepreneur operating on a high-level.

Frank Jennings that’s true

@@frankjennings4489 Since when is direct action "theorizing"?

Palantir the fascist tool for power www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/revealed-trump-backers-spy-firm-lobbied-gove-hancock-before-winning-key-nhs-contract/

@@frankjennings4489 You do not even realise what you are saying. Thiel can have all the principles he wants, if he wants them, which a professor has. If he doesn't want them, then he does not hold those principles... When you talk about principles, what principle are you espousing about them? That, if it is convenient, you can have principles, so long as it risks no harm to your prospects of maximising profits, you can have principle 'A', as a principle. That's not holding principle 'A', that's holding the principle of wanting to maximise profits first, with everything else coming second. Holding principle 'A' is just something you pretend. That's the principle you are espousing. You can hold this principle, but it is totally lousy, much more unprincipled than principled. What you are saying is that 'principles' are things of convenience, and that Thiel does not maybe have the convienience of having all the principles, that a professor might have. That is itself a principle. A tremendously lousy principle, more unprincipled than principled.

a chess game of admissions - graeber won out at 20 mins at the point thiel acknowledges screwed up aspects of bureaucracy

and then at 22:30 where graeber perfectly takes thiel down a few pegs

@@nnnnsaakadamanas218 Theils face is hilarious

Exactly.

I don't think David Graeber is that rich... jk i think they're both very interesting.

Here’s a glimpse of what could have happened if an Apollo-like program to reduce oil dependency had been initiated. Look at the steep drop in energy production cost from solar cells. cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F22d7264b-830b-47fc-94e1-22ba4b80b811_2426x3747.png Here is the source article. noahpinion.substack.com/p/jevons-paradox-wont-slow-the-energy

That Apollo-like project already exists. Several times over. The world is spending far more resources on developing clean energy than it ever did on making it to the moon. The problem is that producing a constant stream of clean energy for 8 billion people is a far more complicated task than a moon landing. No amount of political discourse will change that fact

@@w.harrison7277 Wtf are you even talking about?

@@w.harrison7277 Care to provide some scientific data to backup that beyond ridiculous claim? Correlation does not necessarily equal causation, if you know anything about science you would know that. I think it's far more likely that we tend to put our smart tech people into the business world now where all they do is research on how to get people addicted to their phones. And I see no evidence of even a correlation either as every field of study is still overwhelmingly male dominated atleast here in the usa.

keynes imagined in the 1930s that by the 2020s we'd only be working 15 hour workweeks...

It's called anarchism dude. It's gonna blow your mind.

Graeber demolished Thiel. I'm embarrassed for Peter Thiel.

I don't think he did refute the assertion that scarcity is real... I think he actually agreed with him. But, to paraphrase and use your term, he added that that doesn't mean the money is real in the way people think.... These guys are way more on the same page than the people in the comments seem to realize. This is barely a deabate: it's really two Anarchist/Libertarian type people trying to figure out how you structure a truly free Society...

Joshua Bohnert lmaoooo he did do that

42:45 I think David Graeber gave a very good answer on Peter Thiels concept of being a political atheist. I go with David on that by a long shot.

The kings of the button-down shirts.

@@davidnaef1 He's always been libertarian in general but he realized the nature of politics and the futility of trying to get things done by trying to get everyone's permission. His points make a lot of sense actually.

all libertarian's think they are political atheists, but they are just republicans who want legal weed

This discussion could have been a LOT less civil, and likewise a lot less intelligible. I really appreciated hearing these two actually debate and talk instead of the usual arguments

Agreed. All the comments in this video on the other hand... like they weren't hardly even arguing why are people talking about this like it was a street brawl.

whenever people talk about they are "centrists," your words describe exactly what they would like to "center." They never ask themselves: the center of what?

@@Graeberwave with few exceptions most Democrats are right of Nixon at this point in time. Obama considered that he himself would be a moderate Republican if he had been around when Reagan was president. Look at George Bush Sr. handling of the S&L failures compared to the 2008.

@@eottoe2001 The center is the nucleus of the neoliberal consensus: two wings of the same rainbow-colored drone

@@Graeberwave because they all went to the same colleges and universities where they took the course and with the same professors despite whether they were oriented right or left. Off topic but something to think about is that Milton Friedman went on and on about how the efforts of FDR were a failure to get the US out of the depression. (Milton doesn't explain why the business didn't do it either) But thing that he didn't address is that those reforms produced huge economic growth for the US and working people that stopped when his economics were implemented. When the US occupied Japan the implemented the same reforms and Japan had tremendous growth pretty much until they implemented "The Washington Consensus" then it all stopped. The blame it on the bubble but once those reforms were turned back, Japan was never the that powerhouse it was. Far being is a failure, it worked pretty well.

@@eottoe2001 Wow. Friedman wrote "The Conservative Mind" right? I want to read that.

“It is a frequent vice of radical polemic to assert, and even to believe, that once you have found the lowest motive for an antagonist, you have identified the correct one.”

Could you provide an argument that's not dependent on mind-reading?

@@shannon-daygrant8754 A PRINCIPLED libertarian wouldn't support Josh Hawley and Donald Trump, sell data to NSA, FBI, and ICE, fund a candidate who wants a registry of muslims in the US, or provide ideological support for neo-reactionaries like Moldbug. Of course, most american "libertarianism" boils down to "the best government is the one that lets me make the most profit" and Thiel's actions don't deviate from Ayn Rand's egoist ideology. But he's definitely not a philosophically consistent libertarian.

​@@crystalc1ear You're still mind-reading a bit, but Ok. you're problem is he bills himself as a libertarian but doesn't fit your idea of one. Can principled' Putting labels aside, can you point to anything he has said that you disagree with?

@@shannon-daygrant8754 I actually don't disagree with much on this video. Thiel is saying innovation and good things come from the self-interested actions of a few brilliant people and that's the way it should be, Graeber says they come from collective effort and cooperation and that's the way it should be. I am closer to the latter but I can see Thiel's point. But overall I am repulsed by Thiel's sociopathic life philosophy. The obsession with exiting society (and evading taxes) once you've used up its potential, the obsession with immortality, the racism (he defended apartheid and Palantir's alliances with racial profiling in the government are shady in my opinion), the sexism (he said women should not vote), etc... I'm no SJW and some of the things he says, especially about colleges and groupthink, I kind of agree with, but in the end I think he's a vile cretin.

Yes I am biased, biased for humanity. I will not lie and pretend like I've achieved "objectivity," although I can say the sky is blue.

@@Graeberwave Bless yourself. And thanks for the video

@@dodododatdatdat A quote from Graeber (in Direct Action): Creating accord is the creation of society. Society is god. Or, perhaps, god is our capacity to create society. Consensus is therefore a ritual of sacrifice, the sacrifice of egoism, where the act bring into being that very god. We are gods.

Agree. Sadly, covid got him, I think.

Peter Thiel might be the most terrifying human on the planet and that’s saying a lot.

@@mattwooten7421 can you expand your statement, please?

He's a literal Nazi. As in, he attends their meetings.

@@thedude1373 Amazing if it is true 🤔

@@blairhakamies4132 It is. www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-donald-trump-white-nationalist-support

lmao he starts molting

Thiel is never over his head. He is the head.

@@unitedstatesofpostamerica7559 the very shiny head

Not even, to me it was clear in his opening statement.

Haha, esp funny in the end when he looks at David to what his answer to the audiences question might be... haha.

Do you think Elon Musk started Tesla?

Thiel is a poser. A slippery knob. End of story. I do like to quote Thiel though when he says "The market isn't exclusive to capitalism."

@@Graeberwave Seriously, one of the greatest "innovations" of capitalism is mass ideological social control, though perhaps this is itself an illusion in that this is the fundamental feature of "human nature" that is distorted and forced to function as a bug. Or in other words, the transformation of that underlying unifying force of imagining and chasing the 'absurd' or 'impossible' for the benefit of many that religion offers at its core through the idea of anything/everything ie "god" into a force of coercion and social bondage for the revolting benefit of a few. I mean like, one can "act like they are free" all they want, but if they're confined to a prison of possibility (or you know, literally) no amount of faith is going to change that structural domination at its base. And like, not to excuse the absolutely deserved shitting on Thiel for his obvious grotesque material comfort that he has the _actual potential_ to influence through this accumulated surplus value, but ironically Thiel himself is even a lesser (much, _much_ lesser, to be clear) victim of the confinement he apathetically enforces on the rest of us in that manufactured ideological prison that puts up subconscious imaginary blind spots to possibility purely for the sake of perpetuating its continued exploitative existence, cloaked in that distortion of the enlightenment ideals of "freedom" and "rationality" to justify itself despite a shared acknowledgement of being neither. I forget where I heard the phrase "epistemology of ignorance" but I think it is quite an apt expression of what I'm trying to get at. Anyway, hopefully that made any sense and wasn't too bathed in unnecessary jargon, really just a wordy way to say maybe Peter should look into dialectical materialism to better understand his lack of imagination and extremely arbitrary circumstantial position of financial dictator that can break him out of the assumed and unquestioned divine right of entrepreneurs mindset. Or not. Probably that one sadly (and almost insanely at this point).

@@Bisquick Agreed. We underestimate how influential mass media is. Check out the book Technopoly by Neil Postman if you haven't already (or anything by Vilem Flusser).

Thank you, much wiser than my comment. well stated.

Peter serves a very obvious purpose in the world today imo: to be so off base from reality and to have so much power that he is evil. He is a representation of what we must overcome in the coming years. Take a look at his "competition is for losers" talk he did at Stanford where he argues that monopolies are a must and that scientists who end up poor lived worthless lives. He is someone that has somehow never been challenged in his life. He is backed and funded and protected... somehow. You can see Peter getting uncomfortable as David unknowingly calls outs Peter's entire ethos beginning around 6 minutes in. Watch Peter's fingers. David goes on to essentially say "beaurorcary began being controlled by corporations which shifted the focus from innovation and creation to finance". Peter literally argued for this in his competition is for losers talk.

the usual "logic" from apologists for the status quo / powers that be

Has there ever been a system which has eliminated corruption? If not, what system has reduced it the most?

@@Confucius_76 No there has never been one. Corruption thrives under all systems of government and most of them are built on a foundation of corruption.

@@Confucius_76 ergo remove the system (or atleast the formal system)

You have to work with what you have unless you enjoy failure. If you want to be a radical then enjoy a bullet for your trouble.

Friday, September 19, 2014

aged poorly, peter's ideas have -yoda

Yeah the billionaire is wrong here. Seems legit

@@redboycaptures yeah that's what happens when you work for the cia

@@jorgethevanguard oh ok so he made paypal and invested in facebook as a CIA operative?

He wrote an essay on that in Reverse Revolutions. It is one of my favorites.

Damn.

All libertarian (AKA neoliberalism practicer) did that

Thiel made/makes a lot of money from Palantir but certainly not all of it. His co-founding of Paypal and early investment in Facebook were the source of far more of his wealth before PLTR hit the stock market.

@@JaredCzaia so basically "rent extraction"

@@dalton-at-work Creating a system to enable online payments is value creation. Investing in a startup would also fail to meet the criteria of rent extraction. You seem to be wielding Graeber's work like a hammer and to you everything looks like a nail.

thinking thiel had good points there is a huge self report. try consuming different content than shapiro and peterson

@@Galahaj I just concluded that from the fact that you think a fascist dude made great points in a video in which he only talked shit from start to finish^^

Spray that Fascist tag around till it loses meaning.

@@charlytaylor1748 str8 up brother. Too much vitriol = no real discussion. I don't even watch Shapiro lol and if I did why should it matter?

@@charlytaylor1748 so youre saying Thiel is not a fascist? US brain take

Take an 81mg of aspirin quickly.

Well he’s kind of a theist or a non theist hard to say really. In any case his position regarding politics seems a little bipolar but it’s completely coherent.

its like saying "i have no ideology"

Yeah and he said that all shiny from sweat, it's like watching somebody bitting his tongue for an hour and half

@@cf6713 It is not "completely coherent" at all. In one breath he is a political atheist, in the next he is a libertarian. That's not cohesion, I don't know what else to tell you.

Agreed. Thiel says a very useful quote in this discussion: The market isn't exclusive to capitalism.

@Nosferatu Zodd Just wanted you to kow that you are a voice of reason.

The guy is an unappealing Max Headroom flunky...He has no intention of respecting anyone's Inalienable rights.

Good point.

Airbnb market cap is $80B.

@@conformist So what?

I’m not so sure about that. Peter has been instrumental in creating some of the most important tech companies in human history (Facebook, Palantir, PayPal, etc.). They have literally changed the course of civilization, for better or worse (probably the latter). Guys like Graeber write about the things that people like Thiel actually *do* in the world. Graeber’s work has the occasional zing, but seems unfocused. Just my opinion.

@@thrilos7 k

if palantir and the likes gain more control davids work will be burnt akin to Nazi book burning .....Neofascist www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/revealed-trump-backers-spy-firm-lobbied-gove-hancock-before-winning-key-nhs-contract/

I want to believe that that’s true, but when has any professor assigned you to read Graeber? I think his work hasn’t really been acknowledged in academic circles,who are themselves often neo liberal bureaucracies, n’est pas? It’s true in a way. Academia is still very very afraid to speak of politics outside the binary left/right system. Graeber,Zizek-those minds who seek to criticize both sides as a single structure are often rejected...from what I see and recall at least .

@@Maziedivision I read plenty my advisors never assigned.

I think he meant to say “I hedge my bets.”

@Nosferatu Zodd Political Agnostism... he's not sure if Politics is as real as the Billions in his Bank Account, or is if it's MORE real..... Oh Peter T., i know you'll never change...

True story. Graeber talks about the Internet here, interesting. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--QgSJkk1tng.html

Unfortunately the great days of the Internet are over, and could get worse. Of course if you know where to look (or what to do) you can use that #technology in a "good" way. Also, unfortunately, we are more often encouraged (or maybe educated, corralled) to be a bunch of mouth-breathing flu klux klan types typing like keyboard drone pilots all over the place. Shout out to Instructables.com by the way.

I have not yet thought this through adequately, but the technological stagnation seems to me to be mirrored by the way small businesses develop in the United States. Let's say that you want to start a pharmacy. You go to a bank with a business plan for starting a small pharmacy in a neighborhood which has none. That's a rejection waiting to happen, because the bank deems the plan as risky. Next week, you bring a revised plan to the same banker; now you intend to start a rival pharmacy directly across the street from an established pharmacy offering all the same products. The banker will approve this loan because now she's betting on what she deems as a safer business, one which has already been demonstrated to work by someone else. In this scenario, the underserved neighbor never does get a pharmacy, and the two business owners are now dividing the available profits from the overserved neighborhood. In this world, I can see how R&D budgets are refocused get shrunk or eliminated all together, and what remains gets focused on smaller goals. There is just no courage in the world of finance.

😂😂😂😂

He really is. One evil fucker.

communism of the rich fanboys are upset.

@@Graeberwave While the perceptions of the masses got twisted by these connected satanic silver spoon twits. "I want more, please?"

@@susanray4059 Insidious pencil necked keyboard drone pilots.

@@susanray4059 Emotion is a legitimate way of knowing -some neuroscientist who wrote a book

@@susanray4059 I know, I'm just saying.

If only they had a clue what they're talking about...

Nah we want to bash Thiel because he's a fucking idiot.

very interesting perspective

@@moldypizza wow, he really makes you feel worthless right? Must be sad being you every day.

Just because there was money doesnt mean that there was technology. Money and technology are two different things. This whole comment section is just creepy and uninformed.

@@mgm8075 The guy in the comment criticized Thiel for saying that in 2001 there was no technology to stop terrorism. Which is a great point, that's why Thiel believes that if we want to prevent further erosion of personal freedom like from the Patriot act, we need technology to stop it instead, because someone has to. So I don't know how any of this serves as a criticism of Thiel, other than blind hate, which is pervasive in this comment section. Furthermore, I don't know what you mean by money diverted to him rather than something greater. Thiel earned his money for doing things very beneficial for people, and has reinvested it into ground breaking companies that attempt to do things far greater than any government would be brave enough to do. He has 3/4 of his net worth in startups and he invests in ones that go balls out and swinging. I hope you realize that just because someone has a large net worth doesn't mean that he has billions in his bank account just sitting there doing nothing. Thiel has earned the right to manage the kind of capital he has accumulated, and he does to in an extremely thoughtful and forward looking way. No government apparatchiks would be ever able to direct it better than he does. You probably have him and his company, Palantir, to thank for your freedoms not being eroded further. It's extremely good and finding terrorist networks. Because of that, I bet that some major attacks that would have happened in the US were prevented. If they weren't, we would have the Patriot Act squared.

@Nosferatu Zodd you are contradicting yourself. If the government is to be trusted then what's the issue with providing them with some tools? The government of China has implemented something much more intrusive without the help of private businesses. And Thiel is anything but spineless. He constantly puts his money in brave project, and these are already benefiting humanity and will do so in the future. Furthermore, he constantly criticizes his peers and that always takes bravery. I for one cannot imagine that someone like you, in a group of other socialists, would dare criticize the precepts that group holds to be true. Thiel does it all the time, but the only way one can see how much it takes is for a person to have done it themselves.

@@arc46789 It is pretty crazy, a huge amount of misinterpretation or blatant distortion of Thiel's views.

@@arc46789 Without the help of private businesses? Who do you think did the work lol? Even Western companies exported technology to China for the CCP surveillance programme.

Oh now this makes sense. Thiel is also your hero.

@@Graeberwave the convo was solvent. What’s wrong with enjoying them both? Ur bitter.

@@SignOfCalm if you don’t know about why Thiel is a problem and not to be adulated, then I strongly advise you log off the internet and renew your library card.

@@SignOfCalm and I’m bitter? Sure. I can’t be? You’re the taste police? Meanwhile Thiel is a crypto fascist, and backs such candidates clamoring for said fascism. There is no way you haven’t seen that in your algorithm given your adulation of him. The headlines cover his activities. But since we play who is tasting what, let me say what your taste is.

@@SignOfCalm oh no wait, I know what you will say next. Let me guess. You’ll suddenly invoke your pseudo-legal theory?