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Under this theory of benevolent monopolies, government regulations and laws are unnecessary. Taxes are in effect replaced by monopoly profits—everyone pays their share to Google, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal. And in contrast to the government, these profits are allocated intelligently into research and…

Thiel’s complaint against eBay wasn’t so much about its monopoly powers, but that it was becoming a monopoly in online payments instead of PayPal. According to Thiel, a truly free market, with perfect knowledge and perfect competition, leads to failure for everyone. “Under perfect competition, in t…

These two distinct pools of candidates for PayPal resulted in an initial staff that was nearly all white and nearly all male. Of the six original founders, the one nonwhite person was an immigrant from China. All were men. All but Thiel were twenty-three or younger. Four had built bombs in high sch…

“In the multicultural allegory, the wealthy are per se oppressive, because their success creates misfortunes for others. The other two possible causes of poverty—bad fortune or bad choices—are rejected a priori. Quite naturally, multiculturalists conveniently overlook the fact that without producti…

[...] it appeared to Thiel and his comrades, multiculturalism had the single, overarching purpose of coddling the weak. Stanford students, some of the most talented young people of their generation, shouldn’t need to be shielded from occasional strong language or from the uncomfortable fact that th…