Google Doesn't Want What's Best for Us
&gt; <i>Peter Thiel, one of the ideological leaders in the Valley, wrote in 2009 on a blog affiliated with the Cato Institute that “since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”</i><p>&gt; <i>If women should not even have the vote, why should we worry about gender diversity in the engineering ranks?</i><p>These two paragraphs read as a microcosm of this whole episode.  Think what you may about Peter Thiel, but the quote does not say or even suggest that &quot;women should not even have the vote.&quot;  It merely points out that as the voting public has been broadened, it has been broadened to include sectors that are not (historically) as amenable to limited-government policies.  Therefore, the relative popularity of limited-government policy among the totality of voters has diminished, suggesting that democracy and capitalism are presently at odds.  Reading the quote with a reasonable level of charity suggests Thiel would prefer to convince these voters of the appeal of limited-government policy, not revoke their right to vote.  Simultaneously, he is also presumably arguing, as many others have, that simply increasing voter turnout does not necessarily lead to better governance.<p>Can the New York Times point to any quote from Thiel that justifies the implication they have made here: that Thiel believes women should not have the right to vote?  Perhaps there is one; I really don&#x27;t know much about Thiel.  But this quote alone isn&#x27;t it.