Gaze into the Thiel too long, and the Thiel gazes back
Last week I talked about three stages in the evolution of democracy (Paleolithic egalitarianism, early direct democracy, and modern representative democracy), how each could apply to different types of online communities, and whether the enormous scale of modern social platforms might require a fourth evolution. Unfortunately, research for that piece led me to Peter Thiel and his infamous quote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
As a quick recap for anyone lucky enough to not know about him: Peter Thiel is one of the richest men in America and a core part of the movement of online business leaders into real-world politics. He co-wrote a book criticizing Stanford called “The Diversity Myth,” made millions selling Paypal to eBay, was the first outside investor in Facebook, co-founded the data analytics/surveillance company Palantir, secretly funded the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that bankrupted Gawker as revenge for their role in outing him (Thiel) as gay, spent $15 million to elect J.D. Vance to the US Senate, and helped maneuver him to the Vice-Presidency.
Thiel’s anti-democracy bias is old news. It comes from a 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, The Education of a Libertarian. People have been dunking on it for 17 years, and even Thiel has had to walk back some of its most extreme bits. I’m going to join this venerable dunk parade by using one specific section as a straw man for my beef with a lot of popular critiques of social media.
Back In Time is a catchy song, but a bad idea
As if giving up on democracy wasn’t depressing enough, Thiel expressed wistful nostalgia for an era when 60% of Americans lived below the poverty line: “The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely 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."
Thiel was rightfully condemned for implying that letting women vote was a bad idea. There are plenty of pieces that rightfully tear this to shreds – this one from Ben Mathis-Lilley in Slate is particularly good. What I also find egregious, and sadly unoriginal coming from someone who takes so much pride in being allegedly smart, is the lazy rhetorical trope of praising some past era without considering the full context of the past and present.
The decision-making and coordination challenges of 1920s democracy were fundamentally different from the enormous, urban, constantly-connected world of today. The US population has tripled since 1920 and the world population has quadrupled. 1920 was the first year that a (bare) majority of Americans lived in cities; now that number is 80%. Electronic media was in its infancy – in 1920, only 1% of Americans owned a radio, and even by 1930 that was just around half nationwide (variable by state – from New Jersey at 63.4% to Louisiana at 5.4%).
This was my point last week – as the world changes, democracy needs to change with it. You can’t have the politics of the 1920s without the material and social culture of the 1920s. If you tried to import the politics of the 1920s to the modern United States, there’s every reason to expect that it would burn down, fall over, and sink into the swamp.
Perhaps it is the children who are wrong
If this was just about Thiel being nihilistic about modernity, it would be bad enough. Unfortunately, I see this same tendency to give up and look backward in a lot of current criticism of technology and tech companies.
Take, for example, the global trend of banning social media for kids, as if we’re saving the ozone layer from CFCs. A lot of times the argument seems to start and end with “kids were happier before social media, so let’s get rid of it.” This is another case of looking backward without context. The years that coincide with the advent of social media have been incredibly challenging for us all on many dimensions (the Great Recession, the COVID pandemic, political upheaval in the US and worldwide, gun violence in schools, and multiple wars, just for starters). I don’t know how you even begin to unpick the connection between all of those factors, plus smartphone use, on youth mental health.
Lest you think I’ve turned into a Meta apologist, this doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with kids’ use of social media. [See Why is every parent I know frustrated with parental controls?] There has been plenty of leaked evidence that Meta knows there are serious risks here and haven’t done nearly enough about it. I just don’t buy that the answer is to chuck the whole thing out the window. To me, that sounds like the complaints of the Venetian monk who hated printing.
Invent, don’t surrender
We should be solving our online challenges by coming up with new ideas, not retreating to old ones. All of us, and our governments, are struggling to adapt to the Internet age. We are facing new problems at a new scale. It’s natural to look back fondly on a past time when things seemed, and in fact probably were, simpler. But trying to use new technology to recreate that past leads us astray. [See Unchecked surveillance in the name of safety is dangerous.]
I firmly believe that we are capable of figuring out how to build a legitimate, functional Internet-age democracy. Humans have reinvented democracy many times as our societies have grown, and we see it born again every time an authoritarian regime gives way to popular power. What stays the same is a fundamental belief that we, the people, deserve a voice and control in the decisions that affect our lives. I see no reason to give up on that ideal. If Thiel and his ilk want to escape to libertarian space colonies straight out of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein, I wish them Godspeed. The rest of us will still be here on the planet, trying to make things work better.
Writing indeed, which brings in gold for us, should be respected and held to be nobler than all goods, unless she has suffered degradation in the brothel of the printing presses. She is a maiden with a pen, a harlot in print.
Ideas? Feedback? Criticism? I want to hear it, because I am sure that I am going to get a lot of things wrong along the way. I will share what I learn with the community as we go. Reach out any time at [email protected].
