This essay to be found here:
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/
Core Takeaway
The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.
To Thiel. Capitalism in it’s purest, least regulated form is freedom. However, as he stated earlier, “capitalism simply is not that popular with the crowd” and therefore will be under constant and continuous siege by the proletariate as long as democracy is extended to them. Specifically he fears the “increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise [of democracy] to women” because they are “two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians”.
Other Key Points
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.
Facebook’s caustic effect on democracy was not a negative side effect. Rather it was its purpose
(1) Cyberspace. As an entrepreneur and investor, I have focused my efforts on the Internet. In the late 1990s, the founding vision of PayPal centered on the creation of a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution — the end of monetary sovereignty, as it were. In the 2000s, companies like Facebook create the space for new modes of dissent and new ways to form communities not bounded by historical nation-states. By starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world.
The future of technology is not pre-determined, and we must resist the temptation of technological utopianism — the notion that technology has a momentum or will of its own, that it will guarantee a more free future, and therefore that we can ignore the terrible arc of the political in our world.