Having a large amount of my future determined by the whims of self interested billionaires is rough but like at least I can imagine them to be rational actors. Some of them just aren’t though. Peter Thiel has a perspective on the world so drastically removed from mine as to be nearly incomprehensible. I do not consider him to be rational and that is honestly far scarier than the bourgeois who knows exactly what they are doing and what their place is in society from a secular mechanical point of view. The idea that people like peter thiel can have that much power is intimidating. What an awful mistake it was to allow class struggle to progress to this point. If only we could have ended capitalism sooner
Maybe ol pete is the true revolutionary. Playing the part of the vilest, overreaching, bourgeois trash to whip up the working class into revolting.
I would hazard an assumption that it isn’t even individuals. Every member of the class that has a public record is certifiably detached from reality.
- Bryan Johnson keeps records of his son’s penis and steals his blood.
- Marc Andreeson believes that introspection is bad.
- Mark Zuckerberg appears to be doing his best impression of what he thinks a human being is like.
- Jeff Bezos might actually be a reptilian
- Elon Musk is so deeply preoccupied with his outward appearance that he has bought the title ‘founder’ for multiple companies, and paid people to play video games (which is also telling) on his behalf.
- Kevin O’Leary sees nothing wrong in physical terms with building a singular artificial structure that is as large as a city. (I’m sure there are other examples for this fucko)
These are just a few off the top of my dome, but I can’t think of a single example where they seem like they have a single foot on the ground. They seem so detached that they believe that the laws of physics don’t apply to them
Bill Gates was asked by an interviewer if there were any lessons he’d learned after his association with Epstein. He started fidgeting like a kid that had their hand in the cookie jar and said “Well he’s dead, so there’s that.”
Steve Jobs did not shower and started a vegan diet because he was convinced it would make him not smell and tried organic herbs or whatever to treat his cancer which is I suppose is the least detrimental to the world.
Billionaires are just the luckiest and most vicious petite bourgeoisie. If you want to know what a billionaire is like, try having a conversation with your local small business owners and landlords.
Capital sits at the throne of capitalism. It organizes the bourgeois more than the bourgeois organize capital and just like you’re noticing, it really shows!
There’s the capitalists that get how the sausage gets made, and then there’s the ones that believe their own marketing. Thiel is in the latter, albeit an extreme example. The tech industry seems to breed them at a higher rate, due to the mythos the industry has built around itself where every minor improvement and flash in the pan it makes is elevated to the transcendental.
I think it’s more than just ideological, there’s a material reason why the tech industry has this tendency. Software in the 21st century is all about obscuring labor. Taking the worker and hiding them from view, creating the illusion of surplus and service conjured through a user interface. I suspect this role has kinda overtaken the more straightforward use of computers; machines for calculating, tracking, and transmitting information. Click a button, package on the porch. What happened in between the click and delivery? Don’t worry about that. There goes a self-driving car![1] Of course, when you know to look for it, it’s obvious all the human labor is still there. But these guys don’t think about that, don’t know to look for it. The mythology and the obfuscation make for a vicious cycle.
remotely supervised and course corrected ↩︎
Yeah there’s definitely a “pay no attention to the gig worker behind the curtain” element to it. However, I think it goes beyond that to anything that could impede capital; so much of the rhetoric of fintech boils down to “let us ignore financial regulations because we can’t fully unleash the awesome power of our innovation if we have to follow them.”
Tech produces real products and fake speculation vessels simultaneously, because as much as financialized neoliberalism wants a world without workers, it’s not possible to worship fake numbers without a real computer to do the math.
People like Peter Thiel must be perpetually surrounded by yes-men to reach those levels of delusion. I assume its something that just naturally forms around people of such wealth and/or power. Like you must have close friends and family you trust to speak plainly to you or else your subordinates will naturally build a Potemkin village around you.
Remember how that TV anchor pointed to Thiel that he himself fitted all of his own descriptions of the Antichrist? It was clear no one had ever made that point to him before. Motherfucker was giving whole ass seminars on the topic and no one ever proposed that. He lives in a totally frictionless world. Its natural to become delusional under such conditions.
I don’t want to be too sympathetic to them. They sinned to get into their position. But my point is its mentally unhealthy to be bourgeois.
i suspect that i would have ended up like him if were as rich.
Alex Karp may be even worse
When Alex Karp met Louis Mosley (grandson of British Fascist Oswald Mosley) to discuss his role at Palantir in 2016, Mosley reported that Karp performed one of Oswald Mosley speeches from memory, then did some tai chi & left. There was no other part of the interview.
Louis Mosley then got the job. That’s all it took.
Remember how that TV anchor pointed to Thiel that he himself fitted all of his own descriptions of the Antichrist?
I didn’t see that, do you have a link?
Not a TV anchor. NY Times columnist, Ross Douthat.
Wait, what happened to Thiel? I haven’t actually listened to him talk in like 5+ years, but I remember him being the completely cogent Marxist analysis but choose the evil side guy.
He has long rants about the antichrist these days. Specifically he believes Greta Thunberg is the antichrist and has a lot in common with far right French philosophers who believe that violent conflict is not only the natural state but the prefered state of man.
If I had any faith in his self awareness (I don’t I’ve been given no reason to), I would surely think the antichrist stuff was a bit. Like if anyone alive today is the “antichrist” it’s you dumbass.
Pretty sure he subscribes to TESCREAL ideology, too.
How much of this is real delusion and how much is deliberate obfuscation of material relations?
I wonder this about many people but not about Theil. Genuinely think my guy is a true believer
Fucking wild.
I wish him a merry continuing to waste his time chasing demons of his own imagination.
Being the ruling class is inherently bad for your mental health.
Think about it. If someone who isn’t a part of it acts like they do, they are giving a diagnosis and told to get help. People in the ruling class? Just ignored even though everyone suffers.
Thiel has AI psychosis. He’s not the only one. Musk probably doesn’t though as far as i can tell.
His wealth-psychosis is too far advanced to leave any for the AI.
It’s kinda hard for me to think of the opposite. The world makes more sense the less of it you know and the less of it you have. How can anyone with that much wealth not be delusional?
Okay fair they all have to be delusional in some way but there is a standard deviation from typical delusion that people like Thiel are far beyond. It’s a specific level of delusion that scares me I suppose
