Love Him or Hate Him, Peter Thiel Has Important Point

Lost in the news earlier this month that Peter Thiel was pulling his stakes out of the San Francisco region that’s home to Silicon Valley and moving his home and investment firms to Los Angeles is that the controversial libertarian had an important point.

Theil has been vilified for his lavish endorsement of Donald Trump, his attacks against the press (particularly his successful war against Gawker) and accusations of racism. But it’s hard to argue that he doesn’t have a strong eye for trends. And Theil says he’s exiting Silicon Valley because he believes the domination of left-leaning culture in the tech industry is going to impede giants like Google, Facebook, and others from navigating the surge of government regulations to come.

As Wired puts it: “The size and scale of technology companies now surpasses that of most of the industrial, energy, and finance companies that dominated the American economy during the 20th century. The Valley’s close-knit groups of funders, founders, CEOs and listed companies seem to think they can remain both insular and dominant without either government or social backlash. That was always far-fetched, and is now utterly absurd.”