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 Peter
Thiel is co-founder of the online payment company PayPal, which
revolutionized how millions of people purchase items online.
He's also a long-time libertarian -- as he stated in a March 6, 2006 interview
with United Press International (UPI).
When UPI asked about his political beliefs, the 35-year-old Thiel said,
"Well, I was pretty libertarian when I started [in business]. I'm
*way* libertarian now."
Thiel's devotion to liberty goes back a long way -- all the way to the
reading list at San Mateo High School, where he encountered two classic
books that changed the way he looked at politics. Those books were
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" (which exposed
the horrors of the Soviet state) and J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the
Rings" (a parable on the corrupting influence of power).
As a student at Stanford University in 1987, he helped start The
Stanford Review, a conservative-libertarian campus paper.
Thiel has continued his writing and lecturing for liberty, in addition
to his considerable business duties.
For example, in 1998, he wrote (with David O. Sacks) "The Diversity
Myth", a book showing the harms of politically-correct
"multiculturalism" on higher education and academic freedom.
In 1999, he contributed to the Hoover Institution's book, "The
International Monetary Fund -- Financial Medic to the World?",
calling for replacing the IMF with "market-based
alternatives."
Thiel has been a television commentator for C-SPAN's "Washington
Journal" and PBS's "Debates Debates." His pro-freedom
articles have appeared in such distinguished publications as The Wall
Street Journal, The Washington Times, and Policy Review.
In 1997 Thiel helped launch PayPal, the immensely popular online payment
system that allows individuals to make cash transactions safely and
securely. PayPal now has 16 million users in 36 countries and has 90% of
the non-credit-card online-payment market.
Last year Thiel sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion. He currently is
managing director of Thiel Capital, a $100 million private equity firm.
And, friends say, he's a heck of a chess player.
(Source: Libertarian Party News:
http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0305/paypal_lib.html
)
(This article originally appeared in the Liberator Online, May 7, 2003.)
Quotable
"I'm WAY libertarian now!"
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