Saturday, May 19, 2012

With Eye On Future, Billionaire Investor Bets On Paul

So a libertarian funded PayPal and Facebook. Well, that explains their high quality, concern for their users, integrity. [sarcasm]

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/19/153002892/with-eye-on-future-billionaire-investor-bets-on-paul?sc=fb&cc=fp

by Richard Gonzales May 19, 2012

In the race for the Republican presidential nomination, only one candidate remains to challenge presumptive nominee Mitt Romney: Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

Even Paul has said he will no longer campaign in states that have yet to hold their primaries. And Paul has always been considered a long shot to win. But that hasn't deterred many of his hard-core supporters, including the Silicon Valley billionaire who has bankrolled the superPAC backing Paul.

Peter Thiel is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal. He hit the jackpot again when he gave Mark Zuckerberg the money to launch Facebook.

Thiel's half-million dollar Facebook investment is now worth more than $1 billion. His success and his smarts have made him a virtual rock star in Silicon Valley.

.....

[My comments: A period of very fast innovation is inevitably going to be followed by a slower period. When there are new advances in scientific knowledge, it can lead to a period where this new knowledge leads to new technology. It can't go on forever at this pace. When the easier, more obvious applications have been explored, progress will slow down. New scientific advances on a predictable, convenient timetable. Also, business cannot continually invest in new technology before making a profit from existing investments; they would run out of money.

And sometimes "progress" needs to be reined in. We have continually rushed into technological innovation, only to discover that there are unexpected consequences that are harming us. Environmentalists and others are reacting to this fact. What would be the good of having some new technology if the making of them gives us all cancer, or destroys our food supply, etc. Thiel is an example of the fact that you don't have to be really intelligent in a broad sense in order to be good at making money.]


"Whether we look at transportation, energy, commodity production, food production, agro-tech, nanotechnology — that with the exception of computers, we've had tremendous slowdown," he says.

Thiel acknowledges that computers are getting faster, cheaper and better. But he says that's the virtual world of bits and bytes. In the real world of stuff, Thiel insists, there's been a slowdown.

"I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years — part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion," he says. "And all the engineering disciplines that had to do with stuff have basically been outlawed one by one."

In other words, he says government regulation stifles innovation and, without innovation, there is no economic growth.

No comments:

Post a Comment