This is Part 3 of my series on Peter Thiel, based on his recent interview with Ross Douthat in The New York Times. In Part 2, I explored how Thiel uses populist rhetoric to shield billionaire power and resist accountability.
Peter Thiel is not unique. He is an example. The script is the same one we hear from other elites: talk about disruption, frame yourself as the brave truth-teller, and sell a vision where democracy, regulation, and public power are always in the way. It is a “let them eat cake” version of progress. Grand. Shiny. Useless if you cannot afford food, child care, or a roof over your head.
Same Script, Different Billionaire
Listen to enough of these men, and it blends together. Peter Thiel talks about stagnation and decadence and the need for risk. Elon Musk calls modern life a “woke mind virus” and promises salvation in space and code. Jeff Bezos praises bold bets and “Day 1” thinking – his mantra that companies should act with the relentless urgency of a startup, even if it means burning out workers or discarding stability in the name of speed.
Bill Gates promotes “creative capitalism,” a concept that lets the rich pretend markets can save the poor without the wealthy or powerful having to sacrifice a cent or an ounce of control. Mark Zuckerberg talks about connecting the world, then builds systems that atomize communities and flood public life with manipulation and lies.
The themes are constant. The future must be faster and bolder. Caution is cowardice. The public sector is an anchor. The visionary must lead. You must fall in line.
The result is not public progress. It is increasing private control with moral window dressing.
The Tactics That Keep Them In Charge
There are a few moves that show up every time.
Hype as shield. Promise moonshots and immortality. Pivot to the next big thing when the promise fails. The spectacle is the point.
Populist cosplay. Pose as outsiders. Tell people you are being silenced by elites while controlling the most powerful platforms on Earth. Peter Thiel does this in the interview by aligning with disruption as if disruption is a public good. It is not. It is a tool. It removes guardrails that protect ordinary people while it frees the wealthiest to do as they like.
Scapegoat real critics. Turn “woke” into a catch-all enemy. Call accountability censorship.
Philanthropy as camouflage. Donate strategically. Build a hospital wing named after you while lobbying against the taxes that would fund a health system for everyone. Announce a climate fund while defending the industries that are cooking the planet. The message says, “I care.” But the money says, “I don’t give a shit.”
The Cost Of Believing Them
The bill for this theatre is already due, and it’s the middle class paying it.
Wages have stagnated for decades while housing prices have exploded. College tuition has ballooned. Stable jobs with benefits have been replaced by contract work, gig jobs, and part-time positions that come without security or a living wage.
Housing is treated as an asset class, with corporations buying properties in bulk. Debt is the glue holding the system together: mortgages, student loans, credit cards, and medical bills. Eg. They own you.
“Innovation” means turning public goods into private subscriptions: replacing a free library with an e-book service for $14.99 a month, eroding public transit so you’ll pay for an Uber subscription, or swapping one-time software purchases for yearly fees that quietly drain your bank account.
“Efficiency” becomes a synonym for layoffs, thinning the workforce until communities are hollowed out, and framing it as progress.
Billionaire ideology depends on keeping people close enough to stability to keep working, but never far enough from the edge to feel secure. But it’s a lie that hides the truth: the system has been deliberately reshaped to funnel wealth upward.
Why They Cling To Power
By the time you’ve accumulated more wealth than you can spend in ten lifetimes, money stops being the prize. What’s left is the story you tell yourself about who you are and what the world supposedly needs you for. For Thiel and his peers, that story is important.
It’s a myth that they see more clearly, think more boldly, and act more decisively than the rest of us; that without their guidance, nothing good could happen. It’s not just ego, it’s their armour. Break the story, and the armour shatters. Without it, they’re not visionaries. They’re just people with obscene amounts of money and the receipts for the damage they’ve caused.
That’s why they avoid the ground-level realities – food banks, wildfire smoke, eviction notices – and stick to the cosmic stage: Mars colonies, immortality quests, end-of-days prophecies. In that theatre, they can always cast themselves as the hero.
They’re not only protecting their position. They’re protecting the myth of themselves. Because if that myth dies, so does the justification for why they get to keep running the world while hollowing it out.
The Rot We Let Run
The rot runs through both sides of the aisle. The right tears down regulation and public capacity. The center-left outsources, privatizes, and defers to markets. The slogans change, but the structure does not.
The pattern persists because our institutions keep perpetuating the premise. For decades, we have let billionaires decide what counts as progress. We have let them pick the metrics and the timelines. We have allowed them to shape our future in a way that serves their image and legacy. We’ve settled for the lie of trickle-down, when the only thing that ever trickles down is the bill.
What Real Progress Looks Like
Real progress is boring on camera but beautiful in real life. Clean water, wages you can live on, affordable housing, free libraries, short commutes, accessible childcare, and medicine that heals without bankrupting people.
There is nothing anti-technology about this. It is anti-delusion. Technology can help, but it must follow human priorities. It should serve the majority and not act as a vehicle for billionaires to amass wealth and power while leaving the rest of us bankrupt.
Break The Spell
We have been bamboozled long enough. These men are not prophets. They are salesmen with unlimited budgets. Strip away the fortune, and what remains is the pitch. Without the pitch, what remains is a person like any other, responsible for the harm he helps create.
Peter Thiel is useful here because he says the quiet part louder than most. He admits that he wanted the crash more than the outcome. He treats risk as a virtue without naming who pays. He calls caution decadence while our planet cooks. Thiel broaches loaded concepts like “the Antichrist” to make politics and governance seem doomed or corrupted by nature, as if democratic systems are inherently traps that prevent “real” progress.
Peter Thiel is not an outlier. He is the message in its clearest form.
Stop letting billionaires like Peter Thiel define progress. Stop treating their boredom as our emergency. Stop rewarding their theatre with our attention. Stop letting billionaires define progress.
Progress belongs to all of us, not to the few who sell chaos as vision.
Inside the Cult of Progress – All Three Parts
This series pulls back the curtain on how Peter Thiel and other billionaires frame themselves as visionaries while hoarding power and resources.
In Part 1, “Peter Thiel and the Myth of Stagnation”, we look at how what’s framed as a crisis of innovation is really resistance to inequality and unchecked techno-capitalism.
In Part 2, “How Peter Thiel Uses Populism to Protect Billionaire Power”, we dig into how faux “outsider” rhetoric hides a grab for control.
And in Part 3, “Why Peter Thiel’s Vision Leaves People Behind”, we confront how his so-called progress ignores the needs of the majority.
