Thiel on Rand

I’d always assumed Peter Thiel would be part of the Silicon Valley Ayn Rand fan club. But I’ve been reading Zero to One (more on this later) and he’s actually pretty damning, albeit with feint praise.

“That we need individual founders in all their peculiarity does not mean that we are called to worship Ayn Randian “prime movers” who claim to be independent of everybody around them. In this respect Rand was a merely half-great writer: her villains were real, but her heroes were fake.”

I don’t think I’d even give her ‘half-great’ to be honest. Still amazes me that people rate the books (or the philosophy) at all.