There is, perhaps, no greater opponent of competition and a free market economy than billionaire Peter Thiel. He wrote a book dedicated to decrying competition as being for losers; claiming that the existence of monopoly profits, taken out of the hands of society and the productive economy by those with exclusive market power, is a good thing since they serve as a rewards for outdoing the competition.

Except, as we’ll see soon from his own examples, these monopoly profits don’t even stem from just outcompeting others and providing a greater service to society, much of them instead stem from something far more insidious.

At the opposite corner of the ring of economics sits the Georgists, whose fundamental desire is an economy that taxes or removes the income of resources which are non-reproducible, and uses any collected revenue to untax the production and provision of goods and services for all.

There exists a fundamental impasse between the desires of Thiel and the ideology he subscribes to, and the end goal that Georgists hope to achieve. Thiel supports the same monopoly power that sources itself in the ownership of those same non-reproducible privileges that Georgists want to tax or dismantle. Despite this, Thiel directly referenced Henry George in talking about the crisis of land unaffordability. 

While George’s main focus was on land and implementing a land value tax, a deeper look into Thiel’s views will show how diametrically opposed he is to the Georgist ideal. To understand more, we need to dissect the exclusive privileges that shape Peter Thiel.

Thiel’s Protection of Monopoly Privileges

Peter Thiel has directly supported or been supported by many forms of exclusive privileges. There are several more examples than the ones laid out here, but these exclusive privileges are his most outwardly supported

For starters, Thiel has benefited tremendously from special legal backing in the form of exclusive contracts made between one of his flagship companies, Palantir, and the United States government. Several agencies of the Trump administration, including the Department of Defense, have recently granted Palantir hundreds of millions, if not billions, in the form of special deals to buy their technology that can carry out an unforeseen level of mass surveillance against the American people. 

The recent contracts given to Thiel are a continuation of a long list of exclusive and rent-racked government backing in the form of contracts that he has directly benefited from. From the military-industrial complex to the current mass surveillance aided by his company’s data collection, Thiel is the child of exclusive government aid to his corporations, better known as corporate welfare, and all the rent-seeking it brings.

This runs in direct opposition to the views of Georgists, and even George himself; who, in 1871 before his rise to stardom with the writing of Progress and Poverty, published an opinion piece that slammed corporate welfare to the big businesses of his day, the railroads. From land grants to direct payments, George despised the special privileges afforded to the wealthy and powerful at the cost of the competition of a free and fair market. Thiel, in contrast, revels in and empowers himself through them without having to fear the competitors of his industries. 

Another particularly egregious support of special privilege by Thiel is his views towards Patents. Patents are a special privilege which grant non-reproducible rights to use a particular innovation, monopolizing access to them at the cost of competition and consumers. Thiel and his companies are direct beneficiaries of monopolizing the sphere of innovation, with PayPal owning around 3900 active patents, and Palantir owning around 2800 active patents. Thiel directly owns several dozen patents by himself, and has backed companies in his attempt to expand his intellectual monopoly, including a biotech company that patented the use of psychedelic Psilocybin for anxiety treatments.

Thiel himself has come out in the past defending the unchecked monopoly profits and control over innovation brought by patents. This, again, runs in direct opposition to Georgists and George, who have criticized patents and called for their reform; to either compensate for the exclusive protection of an idea, or to abolish them and replace them with a reward system that keeps innovations freely reproducible. Thiel has shown no intention to walk back on his support for IP power, or even the gains he received from it, instead carrying on with his wealth extraction from fencing off the world of innovation.

The previous 2 examples are already a show of Thiel’s support for monopolies and legal privileges, but it is his desire for a return of Feudalism that takes the crown for anti-Georgist thought. Feudalism is the direct antithesis of Georgism, as old feudalists controlled many exclusive privileges, perhaps the most destructive being the tying of serfs to their land. Similar to chattel slavery, opportunities for work and the earning of an income were made non-reproducible, giving feudal lords the power to take the earnings of serfs for themselves.

The form of neo-feudalism that Thiel supports is part of a movement called the Dark Enlightenment, advocating for a return to a pre-Enlightenment world. One of the core views of the neo-feudalists is an ideology called neo-cameralism, where society becomes made up of so-called “freedom cities” that feature the United States, as we currently know it, being replaced by several hundreds to thousands of corporate entities that have a totalitarian control over the internal functions of the land they own. Essentially, a single corporation, led by a monarch acting as a CEO, is covered with totalitarian, non-reproducible privileges to rule their territory, granting unbridled rent-seeking powers to the owner and shareholders of the corporation in charge of the city in their quest to maximize their own profits.

In a vein similar to the feudalists of old, the crux of the neo-feudalist argument is to have a spider web of totalitarian, geographical monopolies that have nothing to fear from internal competition against their powers. The only competition, and the theoretical “fix” to the tremendous amounts of wealth extraction brought on by such a system, is that residents can move out to another free city. 

This, of course, is no respite to the reality of what’s being proposed. With totalitarian control over the people’s lives, it is entirely possible to use force to prevent people from leaving. Same goes for if poverty and other ailments plague the people and deny them mobility.

Neo-feudalism is the utmost antithesis of the competition that keeps companies in their place when respecting society, and represents one of the worst forms of monopoly privilege. Far and away, it and its old feudalist predecessors are the fundamental opposites of Georgism. George’s inspirations for his ideas were born out of the Enlightenment, primarily with economic figures like Adam Smith and David Ricardo who fought, and whose ideas helped bring about, the end of old feudalism.

Several Georgists, among them the legendary Cleveland mayor, Tom Loftin Johnson, make it clear that the special, non-reproducible privileges Thiel desires are the primary source of poverty and misery in our society and economy. As Johnson himself puts it in his autobiography:

The greatest movement in the world to-day may be characterized as the struggle of the people against Privilege. 

…

Privilege is the advantage conferred on one by law of denying the competition of others. It matters not whether the advantage be bestowed upon a single individual, upon a partnership, or upon an aggregation of partnerships, a trust-the essence of the evil is the same. And just to the extent that the law imposes restrictions upon some men and not on others, just to the extent that it grants special favors to some to the exclusion of others, do the people suffer from this evil.

To allow owners of neo-feudalist cities the power to make themselves the corporate monopoly of all aspects of life through Privilege as Johnson describes, is to give them the greatest and most terrible ability to rob the masses of all that they earn fairly and righteously through producing and providing for others in a free economy.

The Conclusion

With the 3 examples given above, it can be reasonably concluded that Thiel, despite citing Henry George, is an example of the same class of robber barons that the namesake of Georgism fought with his life against. This is far from the last we’ll see of Thiel’s support for monopoly power, but what’s been seen already sends a clear message:

While Thiel may know about the land question, his overall views stand in opposition to Georgism on the many other questions of exclusive privileges and protections that George fought to bring to an end. 

Peter Thiel supporting a land value tax does not mean he supports Georgism. While it forms the core, Georgism is more than just a land value tax. It’s a broader, anti-monopoly ideology where the cost of exclusion for those desirable resources which are non-reproducible, either by the laws of nature or people, do not form a source of profit or monetary power for its owner to wield against all excluded. 

Of course, it’s not necessary to believe in handling all rent-seeking from exclusive privileges to be a Georgist. But when you directly base your power and desires in controlling and extracting wealth through them, then it’s hard to be anything but opposed to Georgism. 

Thiel falls into that camp, and it is his rent-seeking desires that form the heart of his views, not any aspect of Georgism he may try to attach himself to.