Billionaire Peter Theil, the PayPal co-founder, made headlines recently when he decided to relocate himself and his investment firm from the San Francisco area to Los Angeles. A libertarian, Thiel is one of the few luminaries in progressive Silicon Valley who publicly supported Donald Trump for president.
According to the Guardian, Thiel's change of address has occurred because he wants to "escape what he views as an increasing intolerance for conservatives" and "comes at a time when conservatives in the Bay Area are feeling increasingly squeezed by what they perceive to be liberal groupthink."
In a sit-down with Maria Bartiromo of the Fox Business Channel that aired today, Peter Thiel explained that technological innovation is no longer centered only in Silicon Valley and that the Los Angeles area offers a more diversified economy.
He also noted that the likes President Trump, a former Democrat and independent who ran for president as a first-time candidate on the GOP ticket, for the way he challenges accepted political orthodoxies in the U.S. such as "glib globalization."
Thiel underscored to Bartiromo that he has no issue with living in a predominantly liberal area despite his differences with that political philosophy.
The Silicon Valley tech firms have taken it to the next level, Thiel implied, in the form of politically correct groupthink, however, that is tantamount to a one-party dictatorship, The Daily Caller reported.
"I do think it's okay to be in a place where most people are liberal or most people have views different from my own. I do think there's something different when it goes from a large majority having one way to it being almost unanimous. Things are never unanimous. When people are unanimously on one side, that tells you not that they've all figured out the truth, but that they're in a sort of totalitarian place, that they're in a one-party state, where they're not allowed to have dissenting views. I think somehow Silicon Valley shifted from being quite liberal to being a one-party state. Those are clearly two very different things."