Power is sought so it can be wielded. Just as no one builds a multi-billion dollar empire without some sort of savage determination and intense will to power (otherwise they would have stopped at some earlier point, taken their winnings and gone home), no one accumulates power and then declines to use it in the face of existential threats—of which Thiel counted Gawker as one to his business interests. A Mark Zuckerberg or an Elon Musk doesn’t build an empire and allow others to encroach on their borders. And yet, it says something about our reflective, childlike understanding of the minds of these people that we condemn, the Koch Brothers or George Soros for various schemes, without stopping to think about why they are doing these things. It’s not simply to save on their taxes, I’ll tell you that. It’s because they have those same “privileged claims to knowledge” and “strong claims of human agency,” that Peter was talking about.
– Ryan Holiday answering the Quora question “How powerful and resourceful is Peter Thiel?”
Categories