Peter Thiel

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      America’s billionaire class is funding anti-democratic forces | Robert Reich

      by

      America’s billionaire class is funding anti-democratic forcesRobert ReichBillionaire donors are pushing an unsettling agenda for America – backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting and even questioning the value of democracy itself Decades ago, America’s monied interests bankrolled a Republican establishment that believed in fiscal conservatism, anti-communism and constitutional democracy.Today’s billionaire class is pushing a radically anti-democratic agenda for America – backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting and even questioning the value of democracy.Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech financier who is among those leading the charge, once wrote, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”Thiel is using his fortune to squelch democracy. He donated $15m to the successful Republican Ohio senatorial primary campaign of JD Vance, who alleges that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy has meant “more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”Thiel has donated at least $10m to the Arizona Republican primary race of Blake Masters, who also claims Trump won the 2020 election and admires Lee Kuan Yew, the authoritarian founder of modern Singapore.The former generation of wealthy conservatives backed candidates like Barry Goldwater, who wanted to conserve American institutions.Thiel and his fellow billionaires in the anti-democracy movement don’t want to conserve much of anything – at least not anything that occurred after the 1920s, which includes Social Security, civil rights, and even women’s right to vote. As Thiel wrote:
      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.
      Rubbish. If “capitalist democracy” is becoming an oxymoron, it’s not because of public assistance or because women got the right to vote. It’s because billionaire capitalists like Thiel are drowning democracy in giant campaign donations to authoritarian candidates who repeat Trump’s big lie.Not incidentally, the 1920s marked the last gasp of the Gilded Age, when America’s rich ripped off so much of the nation’s wealth that the rest had to go deep into debt both to maintain their standard of living and to maintain overall demand for the goods and services the nation produced.When that debt bubble burst in 1929, we got the Great Depression.It was also the decade when Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler emerged to create the worst threats to freedom and democracy the modern world had ever witnessed.If freedom is not compatible with democracy, what is it compatible with?Last Tuesday night, Doug Mastriano, a January 6 insurrectionist and Trump-backed big lie conspiracy theorist, won the Republican nomination for governor of Pennsylvania (the fourth largest state in the country, and the biggest state that flipped from 2016 to 2020). Mastriano was directly involved in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election by sending an “alternate” slate of pro-Trump electors to the electoral college – despite the fact that Trump lost Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.If Mastriano wins in November, he will appoint Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, who will oversee the 2024 election results in one of the most important battleground states in the country.Meanwhile, the major annual event of the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) – the premier convening organization of the American political right – was held this past week in Budapest.That’s no accident. The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party have become a prominent source of inspiration for America’s anti-democracy movement. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, describes Orbán’s agenda as that of a “Trump before Trump”.Orbán has used his opposition to immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion and religions other than Christianity as cover for his move toward autocracy – rigging Hungary’s election laws so his party stays in power, capturing independent agencies, controlling the judiciary and muzzling the press.He remains on good terms with Vladimir Putin and has refused to agree to Europe’s proposed embargo of Russian oil.Tucker Carlson – Fox News’s progenitor of white replacement theory – broadcast his show from Budapest. Trump spoke remotely. Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows also spoke (although he refuses to speak to the House committee investigating the January 6 assault on American democracy).If America and the world should have learned anything from the first Gilded Age and the fascism that began growing like a cancer in the 1920s, it’s that gross inequalities of income and wealth fuel gross inequalities of political power – which in turn lead to strongmen who destroy both democracy and freedom.Peter Thiel may define freedom as the capacity to amass extraordinary wealth without paying taxes on it, but most of us define it as living under the rule of law with rights against arbitrary authority and a voice in what is decided.If we want to guard what is left of our freedom, we will need to meet today’s anti-democracy movement with a bold pro-democracy movement that protects the institutions of self-government from authoritarian strongmen like Trump and his wannabes, and from big money like Peter Thiel’s.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionRepublicansSilicon ValleyPeter ThielcommentReuse this content More

    • 225 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      The Ohio primary shows that Trump still has a tight hold on the Republican party | Lloyd Green

      by

      The Ohio primary shows that Trump still has a tight hold on the Republican partyLloyd GreenJD Vance once pondered if Trump was the next Hitler. Then he kissed Trump’s ring – and has been rewarded with the Ohio Republican Senate nomination On Tuesday, JD Vance won Ohio’s Republican nomination for US Senate. After lagging in the polls for months, Vance hit the tape first after garnering Donald Trump’s endorsement. Although Vance received under a third of votes cast, more than half of Buckeye state Republicans voted for a candidate who made his personal devotion to Trump a political cornerstone. The Republican party still belongs to 45th president.By contrast, Matt Dolan, a state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, the area’s Major League Baseball team, finished third with less than a quarter of the vote. Dolan publicly accepted the outcome of the 2020 election. He is the latest in a series of cautionary tales.In snagging Trump’s backing, Vance reset the template for winning his favor. You don’t need to have loved Trump forever. Bending the knee in the moment may be sufficient – as long as you have the right mix of attitude, backers and lies.Regardless, groveling is key. An ex-marine and a Yale Law School graduate, Vance now contends that the 2020 election was rigged. It wasn’t always like that. Once upon a time, Vance lauded Ohio’s voting procedures.Likewise, Vance has taken to trashing Joe Biden as something less than a legitimate president. Biden is a “crazy fake president who will buy energy from Putin and the scumbags of Venezuela but won’t buy it from middle-class Ohioans”. As for Trump’s past embrace of Russia’s strongman and war criminal, crickets.In the run-up to the primary, Vance hung out with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. Pressed on Greene’s recent attendance at a white nationalist conference, Vance offered his full-throated support. She is “my friend and did nothing wrong”, he declared. Being “in” with the Republican party’s extremes helps more than it hurts.As for campaign cash, Vance, a venture capitalist, enjoyed a financial edge supplied by Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantir and Vance’s business partner. By the numbers, Thiel donated at least $13.5m to a Super Pac that had Vance’s back. Thiel also served as a conduit to Trump world.In 2009, the German-born Thiel questioned the wisdom of expanding the right to vote to women and minorities. “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,” he wrote.There is also the matter of owning the libs. Last summer, Vance made clear that some Americans were more equal than others, and that he was unperturbed by Republican efforts at voter suppression.Instead, he embraced the politics of natalism. “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the children,” Vance announced.“Yes,” he answered, when asked whether that meant that non-parents would get a smaller say in how and where the US goes next. If the mainstream media took exception to Vance’s views, it was their problem. Not his.To be sure, Vance didn’t always groove to Trump. Vance nursed plenty of reservations about the one-time reality show host back in 2016. Six years ago, Vance oscillated between comparing Trump to the Führer and the only person to resign the American presidency.“I go back and forth between thinking Trump might be a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he might be America’s Hitler,” Vance texted his former roommate. “How’s that for discouraging?”Fortunately for Vance, Trump let bygones be bygones. “He’s a guy that said some bad shit about me. He did. He did. But you know what? Every one of the others did also,” Trump told a rally in late April.“In fact, if I went by that standard, I don’t think I would have ever endorsed anybody in the country … Ultimately, I put that aside.”Come the fall, Vance will square off against Representative Tim Ryan. On Tuesday, Ryan resoundingly won the Democratic primary with about 70% of the vote. In 2019, Ryan announced his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. His candidacy lasted less than seven months.Vance’s win may also be a harbinger of what comes next. If past is prelude, bet on the TV doctor Mehmet Oz to capture the Republican nomination for senator in Pennsylvania’s 17 May primary.Like Vance, Oz snared Trump’s endorsement – and, like Trump, Oz is a celebrity. “He has lived with us through the screen and has always been popular, respected and smart,” Trump said in a written endorsement.David McCormick, Oz’s nearest opponent, served as the CEO of Bridgewater, a major hedge fund, and in the treasury department under George W Bush. His wife, Dina Powell, worked in the Trump White House. But for Trump and his minions it is sizzle that matters. One thing is certain: Trump and Vance have it.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York. He was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDonald TrumpPeter ThielRepublicansOhiocommentReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and Trump ally, to step down from Meta board

      by

      Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and Trump ally, to step down from Meta boardThiel, a major donor to the Republican party, was seen by critics as part of the reason why Facebook did not censor Trump Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, is stepping down from the board of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, after 17 years.Finally, Facebook can say it’s not the most toxic social network | Marina HydeRead moreThiel, Facebook’s longest-serving board member and a major donor to the Republican party, plans to focus on backing Donald Trump’s allies in the November midterm elections, according to the New York Times. He recently donated $10m each to the Senate campaigns of Blake Masters, who is running for a seat in Arizona, and JD Vance, who is running in Ohio. Masters is the chief operating officer of Thiel’s family office and Vance used to work at one of Thiel’s venture funds.Thiel has long been a controversial figure on Facebook’s 10-person board, particularly as one of a few major tech figures who vocally supported Trump. Thiel, who donated millions of dollars to Trump’s campaign and served on the ex-president’s transition team, was seen by critics as a part of the reason Facebook did not take down Trump’s posts that violated its community standards. Thiel is a close confidant of Zuckerberg’s. He accompanied him to a private dinner with Trump in 2019 and has successfully advocated he withstand pressure to take political speech and ads off the platform.But recently he has publicly criticized Facebook’s content moderation decisions, saying he’d “take QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories any day over a Ministry of Truth”.Thiel joined Facebook’s board in 2005, a year after the company was founded and seven years before its made its debut on Wall Street. The company said on Monday that he would stay on until Meta’s next shareholder meeting later this year, where he would not stand for re-election.“Peter has been a valuable member of our board and I’m deeply grateful for everything he’s done for our company,” said Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, in a statement. “Peter is truly an original thinker who you can bring your hardest problems and get unique suggestions.”In a statement on Monday, Thiel called Zuckerberg “one of the great entrepreneurs of our time” and praised his “intelligence, energy and conscientiousness”.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting.TopicsFacebookMetaSocial networkingPeter ThielRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Pro-worker’ Republicans are status quo toadies cloaked as populists | Bhaskar Sunkara

      by

      JD Vance, author of the bestselling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, wants to be a senator. He’s fresh off a trip to visit Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago and he’s solicited the support of the tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel has contributed $10m to a new Pac – Protect Ohio Values – created to support a possible Vance bid for the Senate seat of the retiring Republican Rob Portman next November.While elite donations roll in, Vance is playing up his rightwing-populist credentials to the Republican base, praising Tucker Carlson as “the only powerful figure who consistently challenges elite dogma” and complaining about corporations who have opposed state voter suppression efforts. But Vance has a secret he doesn’t want voters to find out about: in form, and substance, he’s a 1990s Clintonite.Behind a mantra of “opportunity, responsibility, and community” and through institutions like the Democratic Leadership Council, Bill Clinton pushed back against liberal orthodoxy within his party. When running for president in 1992, in the same breath he called for an end to “welfare as we know it” and described his hardscrabble upbringing in the little country town of Hope, Arkansas. He admonished “deadbeat fathers” and reminded people that “governments don’t raise children; parents do”, while lamenting the fact that battles for social justice were being lost at home. In other words, he had his cake and ate it too – appealing to popular disgust with inequality, while supporting the economic policies that fueled that inequality, and blaming America’s problems on “welfare cheats” and corporate greed in equal measure.Clinton and the Clintonites – the so-called New Democrats – rejected both Reaganism and welfare-state liberalism. They offered a balanced-budget populism, hoping that free trade and deregulation would boost growth and spur job creation. But unlike Reagan, Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy and increased the earned income credit as a mild redistributive measure. As Clinton put it: “Trickle-down economics has sure failed.” Rather than restore government programs, however, he said that the government was “in the way” and had to be radically streamlined. Those within the Clinton administration who hoped to invest in public infrastructure and expand social goods, like the labor secretary Robert Reich, were ignored. The president told voters he could feel their pain, but in practice he preferred the market (and people’s bootstraps) to deliver relief.They offer Americans rhetoric about elites and hard work, but don’t actually take power away from those elitesToday, some of those searching for a new Third Way between a leftward-moving Democratic party and traditional business conservatism have found a home in the post-Trump Republican party. Hillbilly Elegy effectively took Reagan and Clinton-era rhetoric about the culture of poverty and applied it more generally – not just to black Americans, but to poor whites, as well. In the book, Vance describes how his grandparents escaped Appalachian poverty by moving to Middletown, Ohio, during the postwar boom. They and others found good manufacturing jobs and adopted an ethos of hard work and community. But by the time Vance was around, the jobs were gone, poverty was soaring, and drug abuse was rampant.In “a town where 30% of the young men work fewer than 20 hours a week”, Vance complained, he could not find “a single person aware of his own laziness”. Yet instead of seeing the Middletown’s malaise as rooted primarily in economic collapse and the failures of free-market policies, Vance mused about a Scots-Irish American culture “that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it”.“We spend our way to the poorhouse,” Vance wrote. “We buy giant TVs and iPads.”Hillbilly Elegy made quite a splash when it published in 2016, in part because it simultaneously appealed to anxious liberals keen to “understand” Trump voters and to anti-Trump Republicans who wanted to blame Trumpism on what they perceived as sheeplike and undereducated poor whites. At a time when conservative commentators such as National Review’s Kevin Williamson were claiming that white workers weren’t “victimized by outside forces”, but rather had failed themselves through welfare dependency, drug and alcohol addiction, and family anarchy, the New York Times was lauding Hillbilly Elegy’s similar narrative as “a message of tough love and personal responsibility”.Bill Clinton made it; why didn’t you? JD Vance made it; why didn’t you?Today, Vance seems to be setting himself up as the Ohio version of Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator who trumpets himself as a champion of the American worker. But Vance’s post-2016 evolution from the media’s chosen interpreter of poor whites and Trump critic (while getting rich as a tech venture capitalist) to the populist Hawley wing of the Republican party didn’t necessitate a policy shift. Sure, he has to tweet more about Dr Seuss now, but Vance’s new model, Hawley, has only a 5% rating from the AFL-CIO, the largest working-class organization in the country.Hawley and Vance try to balance pro-working class appeals with the fact that their party is funded by rich donorsWhen it comes to rhetoric, the new breed of conservative populists – Carlson, Hawley, Vance – love saber-rattling against “cosmopolitan elites”. When it comes to actual policy, they have no interest in challenging corporate power and few plans to invest in working-class communities. Take Vance’s recent opposition to universal childcare, which he called “a massive subsidy to the lifestyle preferences of the affluent”.Vance’s alternative idea to help American parents, who frequently face a crushing, Catch-22 style choice between giving up their full-time jobs or paying astronomical amounts of money on childcare? Instead of an expanded social wage through a government program, Vance lauds a plan, proposed by Hawley, to give a tax credit to married parents with children under the age of 13. Not exactly transformative, New Deal-style reform to aid struggling Americans; if anything, it’s the kind of tepid, wonkish program that the New Democrats could have very well dreamt up 30 years ago.Recall the words of the then candidate Bill Clinton, who in 1992 pined for “an America in which the doors of colleges are thrown open once again to the sons and daughters of stenographers and steelworkers. We will say: everybody can borrow money to go to college. But you must do your part. You must pay it back.”Like the Clintonites, Republicans such as Hawley and Vance are trying to find a way to balance pro-working class appeals popular with voters with the enduring fact that their party is largely funded by rich donors and powerful business interests. Their solution is to offer Americans rhetoric about elites and the importance of hard work, but not to actually take power away from those elites or, say, enact job programs.It took decades, but millions of voters came to see the New Democrats as frauds. The same, I hope, will be true of the New Republicans. More

    • 50 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      Peter Thiel’s Bitcoin Paranoia

      by

      Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel finds himself in a confusing moral quandary as he struggles to weigh the merits of his nerdish belief in cryptocurrency against his patriotic paranoia focused on China’s economic rivalry with the United States. Participating in “a virtual event held for members of the Richard Nixon Foundation,” Thiel, while reaffirming his position as a “pro-Bitcoin maximalist,” felt compelled to call his faith into doubt due to his concern that China may use bitcoin to challenge US financial supremacy.

      How to Relax in a Field and Marvel at the Universe

      READ MORE

      According to Yahoo’s Tim O’Donnell, Thiel “thinks Beijing may view Bitcoin as a tool that could chip away at the dollar’s might.” He directly quotes Thiel who wonders whether “Bitcoin should also be thought [of] in part as a Chinese financial weapon against the U.S.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Financial weapon:

      The role any significant amount of money in any one person’s, company’s or nation’s hand is expected to play to assert power and obtain undue advantages in today’s competitive capitalism

      Contextual Note

      Thiel may be stating the obvious. Money is power and concentrations of money amount to concentrated power. The point of power is to influence, intimidate or conquer, depending on how concentrated the power may be. It is ironically appropriate that the event at which Thiel spoke was organized by the Nixon Foundation. Richard Nixon was known for putting the quest for power above any other consideration. He was also known for opening the relationship with China, which many Republicans today believe led to a pattern of behavior that allowed China to eventually emerge as a threat far more menacing than the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Nixon was also the president who destroyed the Bretton Woods system that set the financial rules ensuring stable international relations in the wake of World War II.

      Thiel’s thoughts are both transparently imperialistic. They follow Donald Trump’s “America First” logic, while at the same time revealing Thiel’s uncertainty about how to frame it in the context of Bitcoin. His version of “America First” has less to do with the Trumpian idea that America should worry first about its own internal matters and later deal with the world than with the idea of the neocon conviction that the US must impose itself as the unique hegemon in the global economy. In Thiel’s mind, this sits uncomfortably alongside his made-in-Silicon Valley belief that cryptocurrencies represent the trend toward something that might be called “financial democracy.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      According to O’Donnell, Thiel “explained that China isn’t fond of the fact that the U.S. dollar is the world’s major reserve currency because it gives the U.S. global economic ‘leverage,’ and he thinks Beijing may view Bitcoin as a tool that could chip away at the dollar’s might.” O’Donnell is guilty of somewhat hypocritical understatement when he claims that it is all about China not being “fond of” the dollar’s status as the world’s major reserve currency. Who besides the US would be “fond of” such a thing? Those are O’Donnell’s words, not Thiel’s. As for the idea that Bitcoin might chip away at the dollar’s might, Thiel avoids making that specific point and prefers a more vaguely paranoid reading of events as he suggests a kind of plot in which China may be using Bitcoin to undermine US hegemony.

      Thiel’s phrasing places him clearly in the realm of what might be called diplomatic paranoia. He begins with a statement of speculative uncertainty as he expresses his concern with China’s turning Bitcoin into a financial weapon. Here are his exact words: “I do wonder whether at this point Bitcoin should also be thought in part of as a Chinese financial weapon against the US where it threatens fiat money but it especially threatens the US dollar and China wants to do things to weaken it.”

      “I do wonder whether at this point Bitcoin should also be thought … of” expresses a deviously framed insinuation of evil intentions by a Fu Manchu version of the Chinese government. This is a popular trope among Republicans and even Democrats today, who vie with each other to designate China as an enemy rather than a rival. But Thiel’s admission that it’s really about “wondering” tells us that we are closer to Alice’s Wonderland than to the CIA book of facts.

      Thiel then adds the temporal detail of “at this point,” which introduces a surreal notion of time that has more to do with a fictional dramatic structure than the reality of contemporary history. It is tantamount to saying: This is where the plot thickens. And his suggestion of how it “should be thought of,” besides being manipulative, indicates that we are invited into accepting the plot of a paranoid fantasy made up of thought rather than reality.

      He then explains what he means by “a Chinese financial weapon against the US.” Though he claims to be a believer in the unfettered freedom of cryptocurrency, he accuses it of violating what might be called “the rule of law” insofar as “it threatens fiat money,” which is the privilege of every nation on earth. But that worry has little merit compared to the fact it “especially threatens the US dollar,” which — it goes without saying — China wants to weaken.

      Thiel knows where the money is. It lies in the primacy of the US dollar. That is why the US has 800 military bases across the globe.

      Historical Note

      Since the dismantling in 1971 of the Bretton Woods system by US President Richard Nixon — in whose name the Richard Nixon Foundation was created — the dollar has functioned as the ultimate and most devastating financial weapon in history wielded by a single government. The Bretton Woods agreement, signed in 1944 by 44 countries, allowed the dollar to play a controlled role as the world’s reserve currency thanks to its convertibility with gold. When the growing instability of the dollar, due in part to the Vietnam War, threatened the order established by Bretton Woods, Nixon unilaterally broke the link with gold. Instantaneously, the US was free to weaponize the dollar for any purpose it judged to be in its interest.

      Nixon produced one of the greatest faits accomplis in history. As with many successful unnoticed revolutions, Nixon’s administration presented the uncoupling of the dollar and gold as a temporary measure, the response to a momentary crisis. It took two years for the world to notice that Bretton Woods had definitely collapsed. The era of floating currencies began. Money could finally be seen for what it is: a shared imaginary repository of value that could eventually become the focus of what Yuval Noah Harari has called the religion of capitalism in his book, “Money.”

      .custom-post-from {float:right; margin: 0 10px 10px; max-width: 50%; width: 100%; text-align: center; background: #000000; color: #ffffff; padding: 15px 0 30px; }
      .custom-post-from img { max-width: 85% !important; margin: 15px auto; filter: brightness(0) invert(1); }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h4 { font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h5 { font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from input[type=”email”] { font-size: 14px; color: #000 !important; width: 240px; margin: auto; height: 30px; box-shadow:none; border: none; padding: 0 10px; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-pen-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right 14px; background-size:14px;}
      .custom-post-from input[type=”submit”] { font-weight: normal; margin: 15px auto; height: 30px; box-shadow: none; border: none; padding: 0 10px 0 35px; background-color: #1878f3; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-email-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 14px center; background-size: 14px; }

      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox { width: 90%; margin: auto; position: relative; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label { text-align: left; display: block; padding-left: 32px; margin-bottom: 0; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;
      -webkit-user-select: none;
      -moz-user-select: none;
      -ms-user-select: none;
      user-select: none;
      order: 1;
      color: #ffffff;
      font-weight: normal;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label a { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input { position: absolute; opacity: 0; cursor: pointer; height: 100%; width: 24%; left: 0;
      right: 0; margin: 0; z-index: 3; order: 2;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:before { content: “f0c8”; font-family: Font Awesome 5 Free; color: #eee; font-size: 24px; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; line-height: 28px; color: #ffffff; width: 20px; height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 2; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:before { content: “f14a”; font-weight: 600; color: #2196F3; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:after { content: “”; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:after { position: absolute; left: 2px; width: 18px; height: 18px; margin-top: 10px; background: #ffffff; top: 10px; margin: auto; z-index: 1; }
      .custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}

      For many people, Bitcoin has become a kind of alternative religion, or rather a vociferous radical sect on the fringes of the global religion of neoliberal capitalism. Bitcoin as a concept highlights the lesson brought home by the collapse of Bretton Woods: that the value of money people exchange, despite Milton Friedman’s objections, is literally based on nothing and therefore meaningless. That also means — though the faithful are not ready to admit it — that its value is infinitely manipulable. It appears to derive from economic reality but is anchored in little more than what a small group of people with excess cash may think of it on a given day. Elon Musk ostentatiously manipulated its value when he announced that Tesla had purchased $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. 

      For anyone with billions to throw around, it’s an easy game to play. The manipulation by Musk, Peter Thiel’s former associate as co-founder of PayPal, doesn’t worry Thiel. Wondering about whether China might, in some imaginary scenario, use Bitcoin for nefarious purposes does trouble him.

      Thiel represents our civilization’s new ruling elite. It consists of individuals who sit between two hyperreal worlds, one dominated by the mystique that surrounds means of payment (cash) and the control of financial flows, complemented by another that seeks political control and the hegemony required to enforce the now imaginary “civilized” rules governing financial flow. Since the demise of Bretton Woods, those rules have lost all meaning. That means the rules themselves can be weaponized. It’s a monopoly that Thiel, his fellow members of the Nixon Foundation and most people in Washington insist on reserving for the US.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More