Pattern Matching
‘Competition Is for Losers’: How Peter Thiel Helped Facebook Embrace Monopoly
The roots of Big Tech’s antitrust problem can be found in his bestselling 2014 business book, ‘Zero to One’
“Only one thing can allow a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival,” Peter Thiel wrote in his bestselling 2014 book, Zero to One. That one thing, Thiel stated outright, is “monopoly profits.”
In the book, which was embraced as a business bible in Silicon Valley and beyond, Thiel made the case for monopoly as the ultimate goal of capitalism. Indeed, “monopoly is the condition of every successful business,” he asserted. With it, you’re free to set your own prices, think long-term, innovate, and pursue goals other than mere survival. Without it, you’re replaceable, and your profits will eventually converge on zero. Thiel went on to describe economists’ valorization of competition as “a relic of history” — an “ideology” that “pervades our society and distorts our thinking.” His core thesis was summarized in a 2014 Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined “Competition Is for Losers.” Thiel apparently liked that phrase: It was also the title of a talk he gave at Stanford that same year.
