A 1996 speech by Peter Thiel, What is Multiculturalism Really About?, went viral:
If not for the date, one would easily think he was talking about today, but it was over 20 years ago when he gave that talk. So that’s a pretty long time ago, and gives an opportunity to test how well his message has held up.
Some things stand out:
It was prophetic. He foresaw the the culture wars that are raging today on campuses and society.
In some regard, things may have been even worse back then than now, specially the part about Stanford’s ‘blacklist’, grape pickers and the cafeteria lady being pelted by grape seeds.
But these leftists have now been in the workforce for at least 15 years, maybe 20, so why has the the US economy done so well in spite of this? One would think these people would impose a burden on the economy, and maybe they do, but it isn’t evidenced by the economic data. So what explains this?
One possibility is, these leftists are a vocal but tiny minority, especially in 1996. There just aren’t enough of them relative to the number of normal people, to cause much harm.
These leftists find employment in sectors that are mostly quarantined from the most productive parts of the economy, such as working in small non-profits or teaching.
The public sector runs parallel to the private one. So if the public sector is, to quote Jordan Peterson, ‘ideologically possessed’, the private sector has enough autonomy and competence as to not be weighed down too much.
Related to above, the productivity of the private sector is enough to compensate for incompetence in the public sector.
The Equifax data breach, however, could be an example of incompetent or unqualified employees being promoted to high positions, possibly due to affirmative action and other diversity programs, causing harm. Equifax hired a music major, Susan Mauldin, as its chief security officer, when she may not have been qualified to oversee such an important task.