My core beliefs remain unchanged since my teenage years: authentic human freedom is the essential foundation for achieving the highest good. I continue to oppose oppressive taxation, totalitarian systems, and ideologies that deny the significance of individual life. It is for these enduring reasons that I still identify as a libertarian.
However, my perspective on how to realize these ideals has undergone a significant transformation over the past two decades. Crucially, I have come to question the compatibility of freedom and democracy as pathways to these goals. By outlining the evolution of my thinking, I aim to shed light on the challenges facing classical liberals in today’s world, a world that increasingly echoes concerns voiced by thinkers in the tradition of Cato.
During my philosophy studies at Stanford in the late 1980s, I was naturally drawn to the dynamism of debate and the potential of political action to advance freedom. I launched a student newspaper to challenge the prevailing campus orthodoxies, achieving some limited successes, notably in dismantling university speech codes. Yet, in a broader sense, our efforts yielded modest results considering the energy invested. Much of it felt like the static, grinding battles of World War I’s Western Front – intense engagement with minimal progress. In retrospect, we were largely preaching to the converted, although this did serve the important purpose of reinforcing the choir’s commitment for the long term.
Alt text: College students engaged with campus newspapers, reflecting the spirit of intellectual debate and free speech advocacy reminiscent of Cato’s emphasis on open discourse.
As a young lawyer and trader in Manhattan during the 1990s, I began to understand the widespread disillusionment experienced by many post-college. The world appeared overwhelmingly vast and resistant to change. Instead of battling the seemingly indifferent forces of the universe, many of my more pragmatic peers opted to cultivate their own personal spheres of influence. A higher intellect, ironically, often led to increased pessimism about the efficacy of free-market politics – the reality that capitalism, in its purest form, lacks broad popular appeal. Among the most astute conservatives, this pessimism often manifested in heavy drinking. In contrast, the most intellectually liberated libertarians, perhaps drawing on a Cato-esque skepticism of overly prescriptive laws, sought escape not just in alcohol, but in realms beyond conventional boundaries.
Fast forward to 2009, and the outlook for a libertarian political agenda appears decidedly bleak. Exhibit A is the global financial crisis, triggered by excessive debt and leverage, and exacerbated by government policies that fostered moral hazard. The response to this crisis, predictably, involved even greater levels of debt, leverage, and government intervention. Advocates for free markets found themselves unheard amidst the storm. The events of recent months have extinguished any remaining hopes for politically focused libertarians. For those of us who remain committed to libertarian principles in 2009, our accumulated experience culminates in the sobering realization that attempting to broadly educate the body politic on these matters is likely a futile endeavor.
Indeed, a more pessimistic assessment suggests a long-term negative trend. Looking back at financial history, the last economic depression in the United States that did not result in massive government intervention was the downturn of 1920–21. This crisis was sharp but brief, characterized by the kind of Schumpeterian “creative destruction” that paves the way for genuine economic booms. The subsequent decade – the roaring 1920s – was so prosperous that the preceding depression has been largely forgotten by historians. The 1920s represent the last period in American history where genuine political optimism might have been justified. Since then, the significant expansion of welfare programs and the enfranchisement of women – two demographic groups historically less inclined towards libertarianism – have rendered the concept of “capitalist democracy” increasingly paradoxical, a tension perhaps foreseen by classical liberal thinkers predating even Cato.
Faced with these realities, despair would be inevitable if one’s focus remained solely on the political sphere. However, my hope persists because I no longer believe that politics defines the entirety of our future possibilities. In our era, the paramount task for libertarians is to discover avenues of escape from politics in all its manifestations – from the catastrophic extremes of totalitarianism and fundamentalism to the unreasoned impulses of the masses that drive so-called “social democracy.”
Alt text: A world globe symbolizing the complexities of global politics and the enduring libertarian quest for individual freedom beyond geographical and political constraints, a pursuit Cato would likely recognize.
The critical question then shifts to methodology: how to transcend politics not through political means, but by moving beyond them entirely. Given the scarcity of genuinely free spaces remaining in our world, I believe that the path to escape must involve novel and unprecedented approaches, leading us to uncharted territories. For this reason, my focus has turned to emerging technologies that hold the potential to create new realms of freedom. Let me briefly elaborate on three such technological frontiers:
(1) Cyberspace. As an entrepreneur and investor, my primary focus has been the Internet. In the late 1990s, the foundational vision of PayPal centered on establishing a new global currency, immune to government control and manipulation – effectively ending monetary sovereignty as we knew it. In the 2000s, companies like Facebook are forging spaces for new forms of dissent and novel community structures that transcend traditional nation-state boundaries. By launching a new Internet venture, an entrepreneur can, in essence, create a new world. The aspiration for the Internet is that these emergent digital worlds will exert influence and drive change within the existing social and political order. The limitation of cyberspace, however, lies in its virtual nature. Any escape it offers may be more illusory than real. The fundamental question, which will remain unresolved for years to come, is which of these interpretations of the Internet’s potential will ultimately prove accurate.
(2) Outer space. The vast expanse of outer space, representing a limitless frontier, also embodies limitless possibilities for escaping terrestrial politics. However, this “final frontier” still presents a significant barrier to entry. Rocket technology has seen only incremental advancements since the 1960s, leaving outer space still almost impossibly remote. We must intensify efforts to commercialize space exploration, but we must also maintain realistic expectations regarding timelines. The libertarian future envisioned in classic science fiction, à la Heinlein, is unlikely to materialize before the latter half of the 21st century.
(3) Seasteading. Situated between cyberspace and outer space is the prospect of establishing settlements on the oceans. In my view, the question of whether people will choose to live in such environments (the answer: enough will) is secondary to the question of whether seasteading technology is becoming viable. From my perspective, the technology involved is more nascent than that of the Internet, but considerably more realistic than space travel. We may be approaching a point where it is economically feasible, or will soon become so. It represents a tangible risk worth taking, and for this reason, I enthusiastically support this initiative.
The trajectory of technology is not predetermined, and we must resist the allure of technological utopianism – the notion that technology possesses its own momentum or inherent will, that it guarantees a more liberated future, and that we can therefore disregard the ominous trajectory of politics in our world.
A more accurate analogy is that we are engaged in a critical race between politics and technology. The future will be either significantly better or significantly worse, and the outcome remains genuinely uncertain. We cannot precisely gauge our position in this race, but I suspect it is exceedingly close, potentially decided by the narrowest of margins. Unlike the realm of politics, in the world of technology, individual choices can still be decisive. The fate of our world may hinge on the endeavors of a single individual who develops or propagates the instruments of freedom that safeguard a world conducive to capitalism, a sentiment that aligns with the individualistic ethos championed by thinkers like Cato.
For this reason, we should all wish Patri Friedman the utmost success in his ambitious experiment.
Editor’s Note: Mr. Thiel has further elaborated on the question of suffrage here. We copy these remarks below as well:
I had hoped my essay on the limits of politics would provoke reactions, and I was not disappointed. But the most intense response has been aimed not at cyberspace, seasteading, or libertarian politics, but at a commonplace statistical observation about voting patterns that is often called the gender gap.
It would be absurd to suggest that women’s votes will be taken away or that this would solve the political problems that vex us. While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better.
Voting is not under siege in America, but many other rights are. In America, people are imprisoned for using even very mild drugs, tortured by our own government, and forced to bail out reckless financial companies.
I believe that politics is way too intense. That’s why I’m a libertarian. Politics gets people angry, destroys relationships, and polarizes peoples’ vision: the world is us versus them; good people versus the other. Politics is about interfering with other people’s lives without their consent. That’s probably why, in the past, libertarians have made little progress in the political sphere. Thus, I advocate focusing energy elsewhere, onto peaceful projects that some consider utopian.
Alt text: Peter Thiel, a prominent voice in contemporary libertarian thought, speaking at an event, embodying the intellectual tradition that thinkers like Cato helped to establish.
