I first came across Peter Thiel when reading Zero To One, the go-to book for understanding Startups and how innovation and competition work in the technology world. For years after that, I found myself pouring over every interview, debate, panel and podcast I could find him on and consuming hours and hours of content in hopes to really understanding what he’s for and how he thinks about not only business and finance but America and our place in the world. Sharing many Libertarian views, it wasn’t hard to figure out that he was one of the brightest, most intellectually honest and courageous people in that community if nothing else. Backing up his character further was his outspoken and contrarian views on many geopolitical and social issues, at home and abroad which generally make sense at a logical level no matter where you fall on the political spectrum and his success in founding companies, investing and becoming wealthy speaks for itself.

At this point I was convinced that this man is a polymath and deserves every praise and accommodate he gets. Whatever views he holds and is confident enough to publicly speak about, if you value personal sovereignty, progress through science and technology and the American idea, you’ll delight when listening in. You won’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but you’ll think better having heard the opposing view articulated so well. But there’s many people who believe Peter Thiel is evil and that the man is irrefutably bad for the world. Billionaires for some reason are easy to hate, but the hit pieces we’ve seen recently on Peter have been disappointing at best when trying to thoroughly represent his views and broader ideas of merit. Let’s walk through the primary criticisms and praise so that you can get an idea of what the man is about and in my opinion, similar to Kanye, he’s just so misunderstood.

Why people criticize him

People love to hate billionaires for some reason

Peter has certainly wisely invested his money to make a lot of it over the years. Recently it came out that he took full advantage of his ability to leverage his Roth IRA with early startup funds to accumulate massive wealth tax free, all according to the tax code. Some call this greedy, but respectfully I’d say he didn’t do anything that other people couldn’t do if they so chose to. He played the cards dealt and won. Controversially, he even used his bankroll to destroy Gawker, which was an objectively bad tabloid company that defamed and tried to destroy the personal lives of many people (yes, celebrities are people too) by first outing him and then invading Hulk Hogan’s privacy. Some call it bullying a media company by a billionaire or an attack on free speech, others say they had it coming and the things Gawker did were an invasion of privacy and it would be filthy to claim any constitutional relief. Either way, he made his money fair and square and he can use it as he sees fit within the legal framework and being a libertarian, it would be ironic if he would go against his own values so heavily supporting absolute freedom and individual rights.

His contrarian views by nature go against the grain

To be suspicious or skeptical that how most people do things isn’t quite the right way to do things is healthy and a pure form of thinking that is (funny enough) rare these days. We naturally want to be agreeable with others and conform or fall back to what we see others doing or thinking. Peter challenges the big topics and usually comes out either on top or making a really good point in his lectures, such as how university tuition has went up tremendously but the quality of education has gone down or at best stayed the same, so he started giving grants to exceptional people to drop out and start an innovative business or project. He also talks about how competition is for losers and that its better you aim for monopoly in business (while not harming consumers) so that you can maximize returns and grow it to be very successful business. He backs these things up with example after example, so its hard not to consider the merit to these ideas.

He funded Trump's campaign

People love to “orange man bad” and many hold resentment over anyone associated with our former president. Peter donated one million dollars late in Trump’s campaign which may have helped him secure the presidency, so if nothing else he’s guilty by association by aiding in an event which they despise. If you’re ok with or at least neutral on Trump, acknowledging he said some weird things and had many unforced errors while in office, you wouldn’t have such a bad first impression of Thiel.

He founded Palantir

This company that provides intelligence services for the government which may find controversial, especially in the age of surveillance post-911. However, his reason for founding it was to help fight terrorism in the wake of how unprepared the nation was for the attack, a way for the private sector to partner with intelligence agencies to do some good. Inevitably it will always be come under scrutiny as while intelligence can be used for good, it can of course be used to get around due process and violate civil rights without a significant measure of accountability.

Why people like him

He's a fantastic thinker
You may not agree with his ideas, but he will make you think about it and thinking is always healthy whether you change your mind on the topic or not. As a Contrarian, he's courageous and often goes against popular view, group think and “the madness of crowds” where he’s often right as he gets to the truth of many complex situations.

He truly values individual rights

Peter doesn't want the world to go to socialism or the "you won't own anything and be happy" stuff. He pushes back against the idea of a “world without individuals” and is a pragmatic libertarian in many respects.

He wants to make progress in science and technology

Various lectures and debates in large part are discussions on how we’ve made significant progress in bits, but not with atoms (space travel, nuclear energy and such). He calls about companies like Google who are just spinning their wheels on certain products or do unpatriotic projects or otherwise bowing to communist governments. Instead of the lazy, infinite growth mindset “things will improve regardless of what we do, we just got to sit back and new stuff will happen” (it actually takes foresight and effort by visionaries), he believes there will be two mode of progress in the 21st century: globalization (copying technology) and actually discovering new things to create technology. We want progress to excel, not stagnate.

He's a patriot

That’s one of the biggest reasons Palantir exists today: keep America strong and ahead of the game. He cares about the US and wants it to remain the dominant superpower and beacon for hope and freedom in a world where free societies are becoming harder and harder to find.

FT.com puts it well in their article, “Mr. Thiel has been highly critical of wasteful government spending, high debt levels, and US spending on foreign wars. He has also spoken out against the Patriot Act and against net neutrality rules, which ensure equal internet speed for different types of content“.

He's a great investor and innovator

Especially lately with his investing in platforms against censorship, like Rumble, which aims to solve social media censorship and to take market share away from YouTube who just casually cancels dissenting voices from the leftist viewpoint at will and autonomously with AI.

Of course he’s funded or directly founded many successful companies over the last couple decades. Some of his big ones include PayPal, Facebook (regardless of how you view the business model today, its been extremely successful), LinkedIn and Stripe, all tech giants and unicorns today.

He’s a great lecturer

Peter actively speaks on a variety of topics regarding business and technology as well as being outspoken against woke extremists, weakening of freedom and individual sovereignty, nonsense investments and similar unhealthy movements affecting companies and societies in the US and abroad.

He likes crypto

And believes in Bitcoin’s future (ticker tape video referencing Satoshi near the end), invested in blockchain startups like Bullish Global and Bitpanda.

So there you have it: Peter is a free thinker, intellectual and businessman, investor, libertarian with a unique (but often right) mindset. He challenges the status quo, thinks for himself by first principles and hopefully he puts his wealth into solving a lot of these complex social and capitalist problems we have today so the America of tomorrow will be as bright as it ever was. If you look closely, you might actually like Peter Thiel!