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Why is Peter Thiel Moving to Argentina?
Some Irresponsible Speculation
Billionaire Investor and ideologue Peter Thiel has publicly announced that he is moving to Argentina. Among a grab bag of explanations that included nuclear war and AI risk, along with the obvious implications of the California wealth tax on his residency, Thiel reportedly was concerned about the political direction of the United States. Given Thiel's ties to much of the American political right, what does this tell us? What should our Bayesian update be from this information?
Some possibilities:
-- Get the obvious out of the way: Nothing ever happens. This is a non-event, Thiel is moving for publicity or tax reasons, and the announcements are just him engaging in punditry.
-- Alternatively, none of this may indicate anything because Thiel himself might be stupid/mistaken/prejudiced/insane.
-- Thiel is in deep with MAGA, but thinks that the wind is changing direction, the MAGA project has failed, and he doesn't want to be left holding the bag in America when the left comes back into power. This seems like a sub implication of the action even if he doesn't believe it, because his very act of fleeing and blaming the political climate will tend to reinforce the idea that MAGA has failed and increase the odds of it failing.
-- Alternatively, Thiel thinks MAGA will be triumphant, but Thiel is on the outs with The Donald, and he is concerned about being targeted after Trump turns on him. Moving to Argentina is an attempt to hedge risk.
-- Thiel is a true believer in the Argentine project, and thinks Millei-ism will succeed beyond all our wildest dreams.
It feels like something big for Thiel, who is intelligent and well informed if perhaps nuts, to make this move and publicly announce it is motivated by the state of the union.
If America falls Argentina is the likely place where civilization will be reborn. America has imported the third world and our politics will turn into Brazil. Europe is demographically dead. The southern cone is filled with Europeans. Paraguay will be dominated by Mennonites in time.
If your playing the long game on western civ Argentina is simply the only hedge to America falling.
NZ doesn’t work because it’s too small. You won’t be able to rebuild civilization there. Maybe S Brazil is better but it’s still politically connected to Brazil.
The problem with Argentina is the same as with the rest of Latin America... they always keep going back to commies.
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What are the troubles of Brazil that isn't obvious from wikipedia? Also, why doesn't Argentina have these same problems even though Argentina is relatively close?
The murder rate in Brazil is much higher. Many areas over 10x that of Argentina. Many would blame this on demographics. These issues cause many other problem throughout Brazilian society including their political institutions.
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He also bought land in Uruguay, so I'd say it's a hedge against nuclear war/de-globalization. Even though I'm sure he's on a special regime, it doesn't make a lot of sense as a Tax move.
As to why stay in Buenos Aires vs someplace in Uruguay/Chile/Paraguay/Southern Brazil, it's probably a combination of politics and (zero bias here) Buenos Aires being the best city to be in South America.
Will not dispute, 100% objective evaluation.
Anyone who disagrees can feel free to donate to an anonymous vacation fund of my choosing.
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Wait 10 years for the next Peronist government to come back into power and then he'll very quickly be moving out of Argentina.
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Argentina is one of the best places to be if the world goes to shit. There are no nuclear targets in South America. Prevailing wind patterns would prevent significant fallout from crossing the equator. Argentina has better demographics than Brazil and more space than Chile or miscellaneous Southern Hemisphere island nations.
Always good to be one step ahead.
Given that this is known, what are the odds that at least one of the nuclear powers has major population centers/rich areas of South America as some of their auto-attack targets if shit hits the fan? Nukes aren't exactly cheap things you can just throw around willy-nilly on a whim, so perhaps it wouldn't be worth it. But I know that if I were in charge, I'd try to make sure we've got a few reserved for targeting places that are of strategic non-importance for (1) spite (the big reason) and (2) making sure that they don't have advantages over us for the Mad Max-esque post-apocalypse. Better to be Immortan Joe than a War Boy. I might even devote some intelligence resources to tracking the top X richest individuals on Earth at all times and make sure that their latest-available/best-guess coordinates are targeted.
Argentina is out of range of most land-based balistic missles from countries other than the United States (I think Russia has some brand new models that can do it.) There's a lot of ocean where a balistic-missile submarine would be able to hit both Argentina and the United States from a single position, but I don't think anyone expects an isolated submarine crew to faithfully execute Plan Exterminate Human Civilization.
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"The MAGA project has failed" is far too strong wording. The Dems have proven increasingly willing to go after people they dislike on trumped up charges. There's probably a 30% chance that a state or federal prosecutor will try to indict him over the next 10 years. If he's out of the country he'll be out of mind for them.
The other thing is that it's probably possible for him to do a big construction project in Argentina that wouldn't be possible in California. He might be trying to fulfil some dream from his 20s about building a beach town for brainy gay nerds. Basically to build a Mecca for his tribe.
More than a criminal prosecution, I bet he's concerned the IRS under a Dem admin takes a look at his Roth IRA shenanigans.
His "shenanigans" were perfectly legal. He put stock purchased with post-tax money in the Roth, it went up (bigly), he doesn't pay taxes on the gains. I wouldn't put it past a Democratic administration to reneg on Roths (either for him or generally), however.
Yeah, that's my major concern about Roth's. About the time Social Security starts having major shortfalls, an untaxed pool of capital seems likely to look very juicy.
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He already has a presence in NZ, right? Deciding he wants another plan B seems in character- and Argentina has a lot of upside, it's running pretty close to the minimum possible society it could have, difficult to see how it doesn't become a bit of a nicer place to live over the long run.
NZ is also beholden to American interests in a way Argentina is not, re: Kim Dotcom, and those interests are generally Blue-aligned.
I find it very difficult to believe that if Armageddon happens and you decamp to your NZ bunker they won't very quickly just tax you and your wealth to try and alleviate the negative effects of Armageddon on the rest of the NZ population until you aren't doing particularly better than a mid tier local elite. And if you refuse then they just siege your compound and smoke you out.
Unless you've bought out the government itself to the point it sides with you and people like you over its own people (not happening in NZ, probably not happening in Argentina either, but at least you can make the argument for Argentina) when the sky falls in this isn't a particularly good situation for you.
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Milei would gladly extradite a Kim Dotcom type for Trump and the Peronists / leftists would kick Thiel out without any American pressure.
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Argentina is also on the short list of countries that will probably be 'fine' in the event of de-globalization. So establishing an existing presence there is good as a hedge even if you generally expect things to be fine.
However, I am more concerned with how much of his time he actually shifts to spending in Argentina vs. merely relocating. Theil has been mucking with U.S. politics for a while and as ever, I want our elites to have skin in the game.
If he actually believes things are going to turn sour and he pre-emptively situates himself as far from the fallout as he can feasibly get, and stays out, I would take that as a very bad sign.
Note, I don't judge the guy if he's trying to keep his kids safer or whatever, but he should be willing to face down the consequences of his political machinations along with the rest of us.
Considering he easily has the resources to make this move more surreptitiously if he wishes, I would say that him making it so public belies it being a move motivated by fear.
Certainly, which means that by making it publicly and stating that part of the reason has to do with the state of the US vs the state of Argentina, he's making a deliberate action to make that statement.
Publicly stated? What statement? The headline is based on a story from the New York Times made up of rumors taken from "people familiar with his thinking". The Times said that Theil explicitly declined to comment. All commentary about Peter Thiel making a statement (and in fairness I've seen a lot of this kind of discussion on twitter) looks totally speculative to me.
Buying a $12 million dollar mansion is tantamount to a public announcement insofar as the attention it brings, given there are methods of doing that without getting much attention to the specific owner.
He has not made a specific statement that I can see, though, so motives are purely speculative.
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This would be my guess. I’m very concerned that the Petrodollar is going away, and hyperinflation will result as we can no longer maintain our standard of living and certainly not our generous welfare and social programs. This probably means that civil unrest will happen. The people who suddenly don’t get their welfare benefits for months are not going to give up peacefully, especially if prices are also inflating by double digits.
I don't think the petrodollar going away is worth worrying about, insofar as there is simply no competitor to replace it to our detriment.
And the U.S. is energy independent for all pursuits and purposes, and thus can weather most economic storms in a way few other countries can.
The social chaos that might result if social programs can't be sustained would not be fun, though.
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What does it mean for Thiel to move to Argentina? This is the kind of rich international person who travels for much of the year anyway. It’s not the same as someone who works a regular job moving to another country. Maybe he spends 100 days a year there, probably fewer.
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A recent acquaintance suggested to me that Argentines are hot and gay. Peter Thiel is rich and can live anywhere. Why not Argentina? That it would suit his personal tastes in some way would be much more "normal" human behavior than any deeper prognostication. Nuclear War? Does AI not accelerate in Argentina? These explanations don't really make much sense, or add much clarity. I think it all amounts to augury or haruspicy. A flock of headlines has been observed flying in a cropcircle formation, should Donald Trump postpone the invasion of Maga Graecia?
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Jokes about the right wing German tendency to flee to Argentina aside, I think it's entirely for economic reasons.
California has proposed a wealth tax recently, and I wouldn't be surprised if it went through.
Unless he gives up his US citizenship he's still getting taxed on his income and such. He doesn't gain any more protection from IRS taxes by moving to Argentina vs Texas or Puerto Rico.
He'll get taxed at a Federal level, but not a state level. The protection he gets by moving isn't from the IRS, but the CDTFA.
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My internal model is that it's a threat, or a sign that he doesn't need to remain a US citizen like some mere peasant, bound to the land.
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The The New York Times articles has some less irresponsible speculation and is how I would hedge I had the resources.
I'm not super optimistic on Milei long term but, if I had the disposable income it's a bet with a lot of payoff.
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