It means just because somebody is rich and/or successful in business you might not want to think of them as a worldbeater. Because look at Trump.

Man, the election wasn't that long ago, is it wise to try to retcon it like this already?

I know why Ivanka did it during the election, lying about issues not being on Hillary's website when they clearly were, but why do people still go along with this lie after this short a time?

Maybe the media only highlighted her talking about how terrible trump is, but that's not close to all she talked about. Go watch her acceptance speech if you don't remember.

Also, the only thing trump said his product was vague nothing, "it'll be the best, the greatest" and spent most of his time crying about Hillary, as do his fans still to this day.

So now people ITF think Trump is a successful businessman? Srsly?

Did you miss the "and/or"?

You kept on praising Thiel for supporting Trump, e.g.
and ****.

Thiel was most notable for popularizing the "take Trump seriously, not literally" theory of how Trump's Muslim ban and anti-gay rhetoric and hard right policieswere all just a smokescreen for his true beliefs of shaking up a system that no longer serves the vast majority of the citizenry.

How's that take aged, Subfallen?

So FlyWf's point is that because Trump inherited a lot of money and didn't lose all of it through dumb luck, therefore the most successful founder/CEO of our generation would make a poor political executive?

Great point. Compelling, and rich.

The Bayesian likelihood was you evaluated the odds of Trump being a vessel for Thiel's bold visionary innovation as being high, while I said Thiel was just a reactionary crank who supported Trump because both of them are super racist and loathe the poor.

Trump's administration was, at that time, an unknown value. We've now got Jeff Sessions as AG and we're on the third serious effort by the administration to push through an Obamacare repeal that takes away 20 million people's health insurance, and a proposed budget that slashes NIH funding. Maybe I just missed the infrastructure bill to build Elon's Hyperloop tho.

I think the point is that dubiously successful businessbros with no political experience are not great candidates for executive office, cf. the last 100 days.


People are marching in the streets in record numbers and filling townhalls for bread-and-butter Democratic party **** like environmental protection, women's rights, and the ACA. Maybe find someone who's a credible advocate for those things instead of a Juicerobro?

If he did this and made a serious run at it, Trump wouldn't have to leave the White House to win re-election.

Does Zuckerberg even have a signature issue? Bill Gates at least is on record as opposing malaria.

Zuckberberg has, AFAIK, had almost no engagement on public policy thus far in his life.

It looked promising that Elon was getting so much access; and that access was clearly due to Thiel. (C.f. how tiny Tesla/SpaceX are compared to the other companies represented at that meeting.)

I still don't see what this has to do with my question about whether Zuckerberg would run as an Independent or Dem.

"Dubiously successful"? Facebook now has nearly 2 billion active users. What else do you want?

Subfallen I'm trying to teach you how to use critical thinking to avoid embarrassing yourself in the future, and yet you're still defending another techbro's honor from the slings and arrows of book readers and their disturbing lack of faith.

Did it? Because that's not how I remember it. I remember book readers lecturing you from their painfully impotent base of "remedial civics understanding" and you stubbornly correcting us that Thiel had founded TWO billion dollar companies.

Literally but not seriously vs. seriously but not literally is a bet that has enough data to close, Subfallen. Who was right? Me, with zero billions but the advantage of sometimes reading the newspaper, or you, with your limitless faith in the vision of Peter Thiel?

You quoted einbert, so I'm not sure what fly has to do with anything.

What books do you read that lead you to such an aggressive rhetorical style? Really curious.

Stop whining and answer the question. I'm not actually curious in the answer qua the question, in that we all know what it is, but I'd like to see if you can grapple with new information in an intellectually honest way.

What is the new information? Trump seems exactly the same to me. He still says so many not-even-wrong and contradictory things that a literal interpretation of his words barely exists.

I didn't agree with Thiel that Trump is seriously concerned about the future of the America; and besides, I'm all-in on the side of the globalists. Nationalism is so 20th century.

The one thing that has kind of surprised me since the election is the degree to which everyone from Trump to Obama, right to left, crazy to sane, is just so in bed with Wall Street and Goldman specifically. Ordered this book.

Was I right, or were you right?

If you need a reminder, here's Thiel:
Then Trump literally tried a Muslim ban.

So answer my question.

That didn't surprise me, though! Literally any exposure to any political coverage since 2009 would've put you on the road to easily predicting that Trump would staff his admin with finance industry cronies.

Reading: 1
Inexplicably assuming Peter Thiel is smart and that therefore his support of Trump is wise: 0

Steve Wozniac for POTUS!

Thought ZUCK blew like $50m on Newark schools?

Political experience? Hasn't the Trump administration told us that business skills aren't directly transferable to the political arena?

Like, I get that we're all shook after Trump, and it's tempting to think that we can duplicate his success by maybe finding a babyface businessbro who isn't a geriatric racist ******* ********mopper with a Neo-Nazi sidekick, but let's remember that Trump's popularity is at historical lows and he just barely squeaked out a win against the most despised candidate the Dems have ever fielded.

I guess what's rubbing people the wrong way is that you're essentially conceding the argument to William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan: that gov't is always the enemy and business is always our friend, so any politico out there who's actually put in the legwork of being a civil servant and providing responsible governance should be passed over in favor of a guy who runs a social media platform or does neurosurgery or manages hotels. It's an enormous step back for liberals if we concede that Republicans were right all along: that government isn't a serious, important profession that requires skill and demonstrated competence.

I'm old enough to remember when Ross Perot told us that government should be run like a business and we all thought he was a clownshow doofus and laughed him off the stage. Now we're all like "But what if Jeff Bezos..."

To be fair to Ross (he said I could call him that), he did warn us about giant sucking sounds.

Timely article re: why government isn't like business and shouldn't be run like one

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...siness-company

As much as I lol'd at Ross Perot, he really did have the winning recipe twenty years ahead of his time. It just took twenty years of the GOP working the leg of the opposition and selling the idea that government is a completely illegitimate enterprise to clear the path for Trump to come in leaping off the turnbuckle with Perot's signature move.