American government is not dominated by engineers, it is dominated by lawyers. Engineers are interested in substance and building things; lawyers are interested in process and rights and getting the ideology correctly blended. And so there is sort of no really concrete plan for the future.
Peter ThielOne of the reasons I think people are increasingly nervous about U.S. debt is because they think that we are not actually digging ourselves out of the hole, but instead are digging ourselves into a deeper and deeper hole and will not be able to pay it back because we're not actually creating the new technologies that will enable us to pay back and the money somehow is not really being invested in the future or in progress.
Peter ThielTwitter is hard to evaluate. They have a lot of potential. It's a horribly mismanaged company โ probably a lot of pot-smoking going on there. But it's such a solid franchise it may even work with all that.
Peter ThielThe business model piece is we're always talking about competing more effectively. If you're starting a company or career you don't want to compete. You want to create a monopoly. We want to invest in a company that has a good plan to create a monopoly.
Peter ThielNow itโs either about technology that doesnโt work or about technology thatโs used in bad ways. The anthology of the top twenty-five sci-fi stories in 1970 was, like, โMe and my friend the robot went for a walk on the moon,โ and in 2008 it was, like, โThe galaxy is run by a fundamentalist Islamic confederacy, and there are people who are hunting planets and killing them for fun.โ
Peter ThielSuperior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. The converse is not true. No matter how strong your product-even if it easily fits into already established habits and anybody who tries it likes it immediately-you must still support it with a strong distribution plan.
Peter Thiel