Peter Thiel, Paypal co-founder and early Facebook investor, on politics and women:
Thiel announced: “
I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible
.” The public, he says, doesn’t support unregulated, winner-take-all capitalism and so he doesn’t support the public making decisions. This anti-democratic proclamation comes with some curious historical analysis. Thiel says that the Roaring 20s were the last period when it was possible for supporters of freedom like him to be optimistic about politics. “Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the
extension of the franchise to women
—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have
rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron
,” he writes.
[from a delightfully vicious Slate profile]
It’s scary to think that this guy’s wealth and power are orders of magnitude above anything I could ever come close to attaining.