He was given citizenship by a conservative-leaning Prime Minister in the hopes that he would invest in the local tech scene, which he has. The $50 million he invested is not a lot by silicon valley standards but it is a fair amount for New Zealand, and it went to some of NZ's best startups (possible bias, I worked at one).
He just filed his plans for developing a massive compound in New Zealand.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/01/peter-thiel-files-plans-to-b...
Both are equally made up "reasons" for Thiel getting NZ citizenship.
BTW: what kind of apocalypse exactly does one hedge against with NZ citizenship? A zombie apocalypse where zombies don't like New Zealand?
Unsurprisingly, these dreams came to nothing.
One of the people he's shitting on in that sentence is Laura Deming, who's raised investment funds for companies working on stroke and biotech research as well as running a foundation that searches out disadvantaged people exhibiting special talent.
We get it dude, Peter Thiel is a jerk who doesn't vote like you and that really chafes your britches.
> ‘They were – nearly all of them – boys,’ as Chafkin points out, ‘and, almost to a person, they shared Thiel’s social awkwardness.’ One 17-year-old was hoping to extend the average human lifespan by three hundred years; a 16-year-old was developing a workaround to China’s Great Firewall. Unsurprisingly, these dreams came to nothing.
Mmmm I dunno, I looked the fellow up and I think he's more of a culotte type.
Might be worth mentioning it is life extension research it is primarily focused on. The stroke thing is great, they may have initially started out trying to hibernate billionaires like bears to let them make it to the singularity, but the enzymes may prove useful for humans too.
Further reading:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/indepth/national/how-peter-thiel-...
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/88745476/peter-thiel-is-a-n...
https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Citizenship-rel...
https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Peter-Thiel-rel...
https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Peter-Thiel-rel...
Whats interesting is that people often mention that he secretly funded a lawsuit against some low quality news website, yet in his letter to NZ asking for citizenship he stated his Founders Fund is the primary supporter of an organisation called the Committee to Protect Journalists, "a non-profit group that prmotes press freedom and defending of the rights of journalists "to report news without fear of reprisals".
First rule I've learned about persuasion is to not behave this way, but of course it's okay when you have the "correct" politics.
I found this hilarious:
"The Thiel Fellowships, which began in 2011, initially provided $100,000 each to 22 high school students with big ideas for changing the world… Unsurprisingly, these dreams came to nothing."
Because of [0]:
"He dropped out of university in 2014 when he was awarded with a grant of $100,000 from the Thiel Fellowship, a scholarship created by venture capitalist Peter Thiel and went to work on Ethereum full-time."
Which I guess is "nothing" for these sorts of people.
That last quote reminds me of this classic Dilbert: https://imgur.com/zbTJR5o
[emphasis mine]
Surely the success of Palantir is a data point in favor of the thesis of the piece?
Absolutely ridiculous characterization of "unregulated, free-market capitalism" and libertarianism in general. The logical fallacies, in particular the non sequiturs linking Thiel's decisions to some imagined definition of "free market capitalism" that allows for abusive expropriations of private property to expend on wasteful security state initiatives, is particularly egregious seeing as how the author is intelligent enough to be aware of them.
This is pure bad faith ideologically motivated sophistry.
Free market capitalism simply means markets free of prohibitions on mutually voluntary interactions, including interactions that involve the exchange of money (gasp!). If you want to claim that interactions between parties with different wealth levels are inherently non-voluntary because of power/information asymmetries or some other superficially plausible but ultimately cockamanie ideological talking point, fine we can have that debate, but don't mislead the public about the plain definition of free market capitalism.
Oh and free market capitalism is not unregulated. There are foundational regulations, encapsulated in common law and that the statutes that codify it, against fraud, assault and any other violation of others' human rights. Under this governance doctrine, the courts are the parties who determine what constitutes a breach of anothers' rights, as they are the only body capable of engaging in the impartial deliberation required to do so effectively.
But don't characterize violent expropriations of private property by the state, to enrich special interests in the security state, as "free market capitalism". This is pure sophistry/propaganda. And it's shameless/immoral when it comes from someone intelligent enough to know better.
