we all live in Peter thiel's World from business to technology to politics he's used his massive wealth to shape society and control your life and he wants even more power in 2022 Teal's investment in hand-picked far-right candidates some of whom he nurtured for years shaped The Narrative for the entire election JD Vance will be the next Republican senator a victory for Peter Thiel who spent Millions backing JD Vance but teal wasn't always on top of the world in 1996 Peter Thiel was lost a law school graduate and the author of a middling book on the dangers of diversity the problems of racism sexism other forms of Oppression have been vastly exaggerated but then he found something venture capital in just a few short years teal took a million dollar investment from friends and family and created a massive amount of wealth for himself lots of tech Founders say they're going to change the world it's a big part of the VC schnick but teal is different our goal was nothing less than to replace the US dollar by creating a new digital currency for him it wasn't about making a pitch sound good to investors it was about using the philosophy of venture capital investing to forcibly shape the world to his liking and the world Peter Thiel wants to create is chilling and rooted in VC philosophy monopolization anti-democratic ideology and absolute power for corporations over American working people this is the classroom from more perfect union and today we're looking at how Peter Thiel got rich and what it means for the rest of us growing up Peter Thiel was like a classic nerd Trope obsessed with DND and sci-fi not just Star Wars and Star Trek but the real stuff Clark Asimov Heinlein he was a chess star and the head of the math team Teal's good grades and familial wealth earned him a spot at Stanford University for undergrad and law school where he got into his first Venture an alternative student newspaper aimed at conservatives the Stanford review the publication was Teal's response to what he perceived as a takeover by the politically correct it seemed designed to offend calling the school's sexual assault regulations too strict excoriating diversity initiatives and attacking anything that questioned Western culture the review was the beginning of Teal's later Network many of the students who wrote for or staffed the far-right newspaper would end up as Teal's future business partners Stanford is also where teal was introduced to philosopher and Professor Renee Gerrard who influenced Teal's worldview Gerard wrote about how humans intently imitate each other and how how that holds Society back he specifically pointed to humans competitive nature holding back scientific and technological progress teal really connected with this Viewpoint and it fueled his belief that monopolies are actually a good thing if you're a startup you know you want to get to Monopoly you're starting a new company you want to get to Monopoly before graduating teal wrote One Last op-ed for the review where he said that the PC alternative to Greed is not personal fulfillment or happiness but anger at an Envy of people who are doing something more worthwhile so what was more worthwhile to teal the money business Peter joined up with a few young Engineers building a new way to send payment digitally pretty revolutionary in the late 90s the company started as confinity a play on infinite confidence it briefly became x.com as partner Elon Musk insisted but eventually became PayPal Staffing up teal recruited some of his friends from the Stanford review the anarcho-capitalist views of that contingent were essential in the founding of PayPal he explained that at libertopia 2010 the initial founding Vision was that we were going to use technology to change the whole world and basically overturn on the monetary system of the world we could never win an election on getting certain things because we were in such a small minority but maybe you could actually unilaterally change the world without having to constantly convince people and beg people and plead with people who are never going to agree with you through technological means and this is where I think technology is this incredible alternative to politics you might think of PayPal today as a harmless mechanism for buying vintage movie posters on eBay but the real goal was to completely destroy the global order of currency well we need to take over the world we can't slow down now in a PayPal All Hands meeting in 2001 teal told staff the ability to move money fluidly and the erosion of the nation-state are closely related as they were building a system to move money fluidly but just a few months later teal took the money and ran PayPal went public with an IPO we were the first company in the U.S to file after 9 11. shortly after PayPal sold to eBay Teal's 3.7 stake in the company was worth 57 million dollars what happens when you give a guy who wants to remake the world into one that follows his own Twisted political Vision 57 million dollars well it's not great look at his investment in Patrick Friedman a young Google engineer pickup artist blogger amateur model and Grandson of Milton Friedman which don't get us started on Milton Friedman but Patrick had a big idea build artificial Islands at Sea to house Lawless libertarian Utopias Peter Thiel got wind of this and offered Friedman 500 000 to quit his job at Google and get started on the project teal truly saw starting new nations as the same as starting companies really he said it just like others room for uh starting new companies because not all existing companies solve all the problems we need to solve I think there is also uh there should also be some room for trying to start new countries new governments but starting countries is difficult what if you start over in a new country with a few billion dollars we've looked at this uh We've looked at all these possibilities um I think the basic challenges are that uh it's not that easy to get the country uh you might have it's you you might not want to be stuck with the people you already have um and then um and then actually you know the basic infrastructure may have actually cost quite a bit more you want to do something that works much more incrementally and organically Friedman eventually left the seasteading Institute and Teal's involvement seemed over but let's look at the last part of that quote do something that works much more incrementally and organically after giving up on starting a brand new country teal set about refashioning the country he already lived in this is how Peter Thiel used the Venture Capital mindset to seize political power presumably to the Chagrin of Teal's friends at libertopia he immediately got involved with the CIA his next company was palantir a surveillance and data Tech outfit and Seed funding came from incutel a non-profit Venture Capital firm dedicated to funding projects that would be helpful to the CIA The Firm isn't officially run by the CIA but there is a revolving door of Staff between the two and the firm is colloquially referred to as the cia's private Equity Firm palantir eventually did help the CIA and the FBI and the CDC and a host of of other governmental organizations that would have gotten teal booed right out of libertopia but to teal it didn't matter that he didn't live in some anarcho-capitalist Utopia because he was building his own using his enormous wealth teal exploited systems within the existing libertarian but only for Billionaire's system like his tax trick propublica unveiled in 2021 that much of Teal's wealth is held in a Roth IRA a type of tax-free investment fund meant for retirement the amount you're allowed to contribute is capped at a few thousand dollars a year but in 1999 teal turned two thousand dollars he had in his account into PayPal stock an investment which paid off when teal was the first large investor in Facebook that half a million dollar angel investment immortalized by this guy who looks nothing like teal in the social network was just a restructuring of his tax-free retirement fund he can eventually withdraw the over 5 billion dollars in the account tax-free the average IRA has .000 zero zero eight percent of that Teal's libertopia friends have to pay high taxes but teal won't on a large portion of his wealth then there's litigation financing the ultra Rich can actually gamble on court cases they fund legal fees for a lawsuit then take a percentage of the winnings if they picked the right side it's completely legal and teal used it to silence Free Speech after Gawker and online news and blogging Outlet outed teal as gay he set his eyes on destroying them when Gawker posted a shadily acquired sex tape of wrestler Hulk Hogan teal bankrolled Hogan's lawsuit against the publication Gawker was bankrupted and teal made a profit teal uses his inordinate wealth and investment principles to get richer to destroy the free speech of others and to live in his own libertarian Paradise another big investment area is in ideas pretty chilling ones let's look at the dark Enlightenment movement which quartz calls an obscure neo-fascist philosophy and media researcher David golombia calls the worship of corporate power to the extent that corporate power becomes the only Power in the world one of the movement's loudest voices is blogger Curtis yarvin teal has invested heavily in yarvin startups basically funding a big portion of the dark Enlightenment movement and it's obvious the movement mirrors Teal's beliefs complete corporate control and two of his assets long-term Investments he's been nurturing for years could help that goal 2022 Senate candidates JD Vance and Blake Masters both of them worked for teal firms and he's been bolstering their careers this whole time supporting their projects along the way Vance and Masters are long-term teal Investments as an investor entrepreneur I've always tried to be contrarian to go against the crowd to identify opportunities that in places where people were not looking and they're just two of the far right candidates teal invested in in 2022 he's been donating big for years in order to further his political goal a corporate ruled Utopia for billionaires he's also investing in tech companies that will help his dark political project like Rumble a free speech focused social network populated almost entirely by the far right so if teal is treating politics like investing what can his investment strategies teach us about what's to come well the guy loves monopolies I have a single a day fix that I'm completely obsessed with in um on on the business side which is that if you're starting a company if you're the founder entrepreneur starting a company you always want to aim for Monopoly and um and that uh and you want to always avoid competition and so uh hence competition is for losers uh something we'll be talking about today what does it mean when a nation is ruled by a monopoly one single all-powerful entity well let's just say it's not a democracy there should also be some room for trying to start new countries and that country would have a complete lack of accountability for the ultra Rich get rid of government regulation of Technology allow us to build nuclear power allow us to you know go into space supersonic planes again allow us to get rid of the FDA Peter Thiel doesn't need to build an island to have his libertarian Dreamland he can build it right here in America and he already is thank you for watching and don't forget to like And subscribe we'll be covering the stories of other billionaires and multi-millionaires to examine the policy failures that made them rich as well as the worker empowering stories and explainers you're used to