Yeah, both sides have problems. And we are caught in the same systems. The sides are not equally bad.

Modern billionaires have more wealth (adjusted for inflation) and therefore more power than any human being has ever had before in history.

Do you like feudalism? Because that's how you get feudalism.

You're right, we've previously had enormous power concentrated in few hands. And it resulted in such a terrible society that we spent a century fighting wars to build a better system. And Thiel et al want to bring us right back to the old way, and they might succeed.

I don't think this is because the author is a Muslim himself; but rather that he has bought into the frame that Muslims are marginalized and Hindus are not, and therefore any technological phenomenon in the world that seems like Hindus use successfully to advance their interests is fascist, and any technological phenomenon that seems like Muslims use successfully to advance their own interests is not worth talking about in the context of fascism.

There's a talk somewhere ont the internet where he explains that you don't want to build a do-it-all product, at least not right away. Don't compete with everyone for everything. Find a more niche market where you can have a monopoly, get comfortable, then you branch out, diversity, and tackle broader markets.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-...

https://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f/497CapStone/Peter%20Thiel_%20...

The title is “Competition is for losers” and the sub-head is “If you want to create and capture lasting value, look to build a monopoly, writes Peter Thiel”.

Gawker had a lot of issues; they were not exactly the AP. But whether they are allowed to exist as a business should not be up the whim of one billionaire with a fragile ego.

It can both be true that Gawker's individual bankruptcy was no big loss but that the way in which an ultra-wealthy person was able to crush a news outlet for reporting things he didn't like set a dangerous precedent for all journalism outlets.

Of course, the whole thing seems rather quaint now that nearly all media is owned by a handful of billionaires who are actively and increasingly controlling what gets released to the public.

Like China.

I agree, but it's too late.

After all, once one has firmly reached billionaire status, what is one supposed to do? Just sit around and sip martinis by the pool?

As we've discovered, the billionaire class, having achieved unimaginable wealth and been convinced of their own intellectual superiority by a coterie of sycophants, have an apparently irresistible drive to meddle in affairs of state, especially when those affairs are well outside their domain of experience. And no matter how badly it goes, they will never be convinced that they are doing bad.

The real argument for taxing billionaires out of existence is not that the money would benefit other people more (although that is true), but because such accumulated wealth in such few hands results in too much concentrated power without the need to care whether it's being applied well, because either way, they will still be rich and powerful. The argument for democracy is not that the "people" always choose the best leader, but that the leader must do at least something well in order to maintain their support.