> Genuine questions: what can be done in a democratic setting to stop him?

Thiel is only "relevant" because he's wealthy.

In a system that allows wealth to equal political power, systematically weakening the impact of wealth on civic and political systems is an effective method. Whether that can be done in America, with the current understanding of the constitution and the current philosophy that many take towards taxation/wealth is questionable; but the idea that we can do nothing is just not true. We don't need to slide back into an era of 19th century robber barons and pseudo-aristocracy. If we do, it's because we largely gave up or allowed it to happen.

The difference to robber Baron this time is that those companies have gone global, so a new Teddy Roosevelt being elected in USA wouldn't help, because these multinationals can just extend outside jurisdiction. Which is very similar to the actual dynamic of states/federal that Teddy tackled [1]

Unfortunately the political rhetoric have smeared "the globalists" and equated people that want global coordination to limit those multinationals with power, with the ones abusing it. Even the platform that was promising to drain the swamp turns out was just another swamp, so one would need to start from the scratch for that political movement.

[1] https://youtu.be/ItKtQCAZHhg

Not sure your country but the internet isn't the USA. Secularism very much touched the hearts of Americans. Talarico's words are pretty good at embodying actual American Christian belief on it.

The dixiecrats mascarading as Christian Republicans who HN treats as all American Christians don't even believe in the larger USA/Constitution/Human rights so yeah they ignore/are anti a lot of basic American beliefs. They are from a long line of loser traitors to our beliefs.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Kjah99E1fIo

Ask yourself - where does his wealth (power) come from and how do you stop that?

In his case - I assume most of it is from Palantir these days. Therefore stop your governments from contracting with them.

> what can be done in a democratic setting to stop him?

What are you prepared to do to contain/restrain a person who is non compos mentis?

Not agreeing as a society that money == speech would be a good start.

I like that.

I also like a two-pronged approach which includes taxing the billionaires out of existence. I haven't heard any significant downside to doing that. All the more so when weighed against the possible upsides.

I think what frustrates me above all else is that we, as a society, as a people, could have it so much better.

We could all be living in such a better world but for the allowances we make for the most sociopathic and greedy among us.

I sometimes think there should be a completion state to capitalism.

When you reach an arbitrary score, like $100 million, you get presented with a cup that says ‘congratulations, you won capitalism’ and are given the choice of either playing again from the start but this time on hard mode (no emerald mine or parents that are friends with the IBM chairman this time), or keeping your winnings on the condition that you and your family fuck off somewhere and are never seen or heard of again.

Seriously though, that billionaires can exist, that so much power and wealth can be concentrated in the hands of so few while so many have nothing is utterly repugnant.

Repugnant it may be, but you're leaving better sells on the table: it is extremely wasteful of human capital, both because the winners after having taken all, tend to spin out and add only negative value to societies. Also the many pre-determined losers, having to waste so much of their energy on survival, mostly cannot contribute positively either, sometimes also drifting into serious negative value generation.

So yes: as a system, "wealth" is demonstrably extremely wasteful of capital, in wouldn't take much on both edges to improve it significantly.

We are not in a democratic setting in America any more, the people in power are willing to start wars to protect pedophiles, they are willing to hire Nazi thugs to shoot your wives in the face. They are willing to bribe supreme court justices and dismantle democracy, and they will if not stopped by force.

Thiel has been obviously and evil sack of shit for decades but more than half of HN viewers revere him. I fear we have no hope, and the good people asking how we can democratically solve this problem makes me feel even more hopeless. Yall don't get it.

We defeated the incredibly rich southern slave owners. We can defeat these shitty traitors.

If voting didn't work, they wouldn't poor money into it. If voting didn't work, they wouldn't be trying to force their horrible new ID poll tax laws.

It wasn't voting that "defeated" southern slave owners, it was a war. A war that leveled cities and killed more Americans than any before or since. Also, I'm pretty sure this man and everyone in his class control a larger percentage of the economy than any plantation owners. Saying we should just vote out way out of oligarchy ignores the history of every oligarchy in the world, and makes you at best and unwitting pawn of the pedophile ruling class.

LOL. I'm no pawn. I'm at best a democracy supporting, western Liberal society loving American.

Spreading fear in this way since 9/11 has dramatically changed America into something worse. I'm sad you've lost faith in Liberal thought and are preaching replacing it with reactionary nothingness.

We literally defeated the people who owned the system AND owned the workers, because we elected the right people and we fought. If we had instead burnt the system down how the heck would we win the war? This system was build for people like us. The first of it's kind. We aren't going to get a better playing field. The oligarchy WANT it burnt down. Stop doing their work and put your effort/energy into useful change, don't be a tool for them.

It's sucks we have to fight, but it's idiotic to seed the best battlefield we are going to get to fight them on to some nebulous, reactionary unknown one like you seem to want. Don't give up! And fuck the anti-American traitors!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsKu3Jh5IAs

The purpose of a system is what it does. The purpose of capitalism is to enrich the capital owning class, people like Peter Thiel, who will do anything to gain power over the working class. The civil war is a great example of how voting in a leader who is perceived as being a danger to the owning class lead to an attempt to destroy the democracic process that threatened their power. It didn't work that time, but looks at Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, Chile, Iran, etc to see what happens when a democracy tries to oppose capital. This belief that people who gained their position by exploiting the deaths of millions of people will peacefully give up that power is naive, and American propaganda from both parties pushes it to silence any real chance at change.

"What it does" is a thing that can be changed.

This is the only answer that has any reference to an actionable approach that has been proven to work.