Thiel compared California liberalism to Saudi Arabian Wahabbism — but it was sort of a compliment

  • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    293
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    There’s been a few of these stories lately, about billionaires “thinking about” leaving the US. Just shut up and do it already. Nobody cares. Good riddance.

    • scarabine@lemmynsfw.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      148
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      Right. Like what are we supposed to miss? The taxes they don’t pay? The money they’ve stolen? Who cares?

      I mean “job creators” is such bunk. They harvest worker’s lives for personal gain. There’d be a rough transition period if they vanished but well… we’re used to it.

      They have this vain idea that the world would grind to a halt without them, but they’re parasites. I’m sure we’d flourish.

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        45
        ·
        3 months ago

        These articles talk like we all aren’t already suffering day in and out. Like we’re all just say slap happy to be sharing a nation with 65 billionaires psychopaths and should be grateful for their presence. Fuck off, and take your election tampering and social engineering with you.

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        It’s funny because if every billionaire disappeared, there would be no meaningful consequences beyond an initial confusion and disruption…

        If every worker decided to not work for a week? The entire economy, the stock market, supply chains… Everything would collapse!

        Without billionaires the world will carry on, barely skipping a beat. Without workers the world grinds to a halt.

    • shaun@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      48
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      You’re wrong. As a New Zealander (where our conservative government bent the rules to make him a citizen), I can only emphasize how strongly I will care if that giant piece of shit moves to reside in my nation. I’m not negating your point (I upvoted you) and I don’t blame you for wanting to lose him, but just because you shovel your shit elsewhere doesn’t mean it don’t stink.

      • boydster@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        23
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        This is how the world can finally come together. We can create a New Old Australia, using the island-building techniques the Chinese government have been trying to develop but instead using it for the benefit of all. Literally no one wants these assholes. Let’s make them their own giant sand island and send them there. No Aborigines or any other nativelanders need be displaced like in the past. We just… Eject them to Billionaire Island and tell them they’ve entered the final level of capitalism, they are allowed no outside resources and must establish for themselves (brilliant and enterprising and egotistical as we reassure them they are) how to become the Ultimate Capitalist. Tell them it’s even televised. Then if they ever get too noisy we obviously need a way to forcibly erode the island etc. Engineers can figure out the details.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        Why would a totalitarian psychopath choose to go to a more progressive country?
        I can think of a reason, New Zealand is smaller, and he may think he can gain bigger political influence there.
        He paid to position JD Vance where he wanted him, imagine the damage he could do in New Zealand with the kind of money he has.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Movies/culture are the best things about the US. As long as you’re rich enough to afford them. So they’re really just punishing themselves… Bye, bitch.

  • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    224
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    He’s not an “eccentric billionaire,” he’s a psychopathic robber baron fascist.

  • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    85
    ·
    3 months ago

    Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who served as the sugar daddy for GOP vice presidential hopeful JD Vance’s Senate run, who helped kill Gawker, and who names his companies after bits of JRR Tolkein lore, said he’s considered leaving the US.

    Thiel appeared on a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience and told the comic-turned-podcaster that he had recently moved from San Francisco to LA, and was also considering leaving California or the country altogether.

    So a nothing burger? Fucking baby billionaire psychopath is going to leave the US because the fascist dictator won’t be elected?

    The funny thing is he isn’t going to leave, it’s just because he wanted to get a buzz out of it. To magahats this is a clear sign the government is “weak” and hates successful people.

  • Not_mikey@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    72
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    3 months ago

    Where the fuck is he going to go that’s progressive enough to not be hostile to his homosexuality but conservative enough not to tax his ungodly hoard. The u.s. is as good as it gets for people like him.

  • mhague@lemmy.world
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    67
    ·
    3 months ago

    Billionaires don’t live in nations. They don’t know what it means to actually live somewhere, their mental state is so warped. The whole world is their playground.

    He’s spouting propaganda, plain and simple.

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 months ago

        National boundaries weren’t as strict for the working class until around WWII, though it obviously varies by region. It’s more attached to nationalism, the ability of nation states to influence “their people” who moved to other countries to engage in sabotage campaigns and the paranoia over this kind of activity that followed this.

        One of the requirements of a free market capitalist system is free mobility of labour. So it’s not really a class thing, it’s a nationalistic thing.

        I mean if I’m an evil businessman, why would I want to limit the number of people competing to get a job?

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    59
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    Basically because he thinks he can’t totally fuck up this country any more, he want to storm off in a huff and fuck up a different country? Okay then.

  • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    51
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    The mental gymnastics this guy does to justify his ideology. “California is prosperous despite not following my dumb pet economic theories and so is Saudi Arabia. They must be the same thing.”

    Like that’s an aggressive form of terminal stupidity. Keep this up and he’ll be eating glue before the years out.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        They don’t have to. They just take the money and don’t talk about it.

        Ask Ayn Rand. That cunt is directly responsible for creating many of these morons, and she collected Social Security and Medicare when she got old (look forward to hearing about how she still deserves it even if she disagrees, yeah no shit. I think you know that wasn’t my point).

  • Swordgeek@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    3 months ago

    Let him move to a small island without modern communication of any sort.

    Then just as he leaves the US, tax him 95% of his net worth.

  • barsquid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 months ago

    Little sobbing baby bribed Donald to pick the absolute most hated person possible for VP. Now it’s time to whine since the fascism isn’t going great. Fuck off to New Zealand, then, bye, Peter.

    He is one of the worst people on the planet. The world would be better if he left existence instead of just America.

  • MolochAlter@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    3 months ago

    “Eccentric” is a weird word for the man whose writing inspired both Nick Lang and Mencius Moldbug.

    I rarely use the word because it cheapens its impact but the man is a modern protofascist and should be identified as at least the forefather of the modern right wing anti-liberalism movement.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      3 months ago

      should be identified as at least the forefather of the modern right wing anti-liberalism movement

      Thiel is a cunt but he was 12 years old when Ronald Reagan was elected and not even born yet during Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech. He is absolutely not the forefather of the modern rightwing anti-liberalism movement.

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          3 months ago

          Cut taxes (for the wealthy and corporations - while quietly raising them for everybody else through a variety of tricks), erode the separation of church and state, ban abortion, gut environmental protections, pack the supreme court, demonize liberals, blow up the national debt, destroy public education, dogwhistle racists, bust unions, overspend on the military, hate on the gays, gerrymander and suppress voters, make fun of the French … this shit has all been around since before Reagan. If it’s changed, it’s only been to become more openly loathsome.

      • MolochAlter@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        That’s not the modern far right, that’s just the current right until Trump.

        People like Lang and Moldbug are the fathers of the modern neoreactionary movement, the architects of the new fascist right, not the economically ultraliberal socially conservative right of Reagan.