René Girard has died (opens in new tab)

> the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has no article on him

It might be because the SEP is (I think) geared toward analytic philosophy, whereas Girard sounds like he's more from the continental tradition.

> Economics don't tell you that competition dilutes profits, it tells you that competition drives down prices until profits are zero, which isn't the same thing.

Dilution is a process that happens over a time interval. In that sense, Thiel obviously is referring to dilution in profits per time interval moving forward. So driving the prices from X to 0 per time interval is diluting profits in that sense.

And if one looks at a very large, long term view of things, overall profit will be competed away too. So in a perfect competition, assuming the person shuts business with no loss, all capital ever earned will be competed away. Because competition typically drives prices way below the point where profits are 0, it drives it down to the point where overall profit ever earned is 0. Companies frequently sell at loss for market share.

Peter doesn't argue that competition is bad in some general sense. He's merely speaking form an entrepreneur's perspective. For whom competition is very much about diluting profit.

Peter gets a lot of flak from people interpreting his writings in the context of the general economy/society rather than the context of startups.

> Walmart is the best thing that ever happened to the US, economy-wise.

Care to elaborate? From my school of thought, Walmart is the worst thing that has ever happened to the US economy. Sure they might have that scotch tape you want for 50 cents cheaper, but that came at the cost of less small businesses and lower wages overall.

Scores of businesses and shops that were once thriving and profitable in small town main streets are now empty because Walmart opened up on the other side of town.

Walmart also only lets their buddies near their shopping centers, and charge a high premium to any mom and pop stores or restaurants to in the shopping center, which is why if you drive across the South you always see the same 3-4 stores in a Walmart shopping center.

Both of those books are great, but ISSFLL is Girard at his most brilliant, explaining the role mimetic desire plays in human conflict.

This book is very short, up and to the point. Provided you don't stop at the symbolic language that is only clarified a bit late into the book.

You should start with Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World. It's a great summary of Girard's theory, and it's easy to read.

I fully agree. His books are among the most influential things I've ever read.

I'm going to over-simplify, but according to Girard, the greatest social attempt to avoid scapegoating and civilize human nature has been christianity. The figure of the Christ, and his sacrifice, was a smart operation to replace real scapegoats by a symbolic one, allowing the community to unite against an innocent without having to kill anyone. This has been successful for centuries, but it's interesting to note that in his latest books, Girard sounds pretty disillusioned about this. "Achever Clausewitz" (strangely translated in english by "Battling to the end") is quite a frightening apocalyptic book that I would recommend to anyone interested in Girard's work.