Thiel moves family to Milei's libertarian Argentina

5/30/2026 at 7:03:51 PM

by mmarian

5/31/2026 at 12:45:56 PM

But I thought they were making America great

by thiht

5/31/2026 at 7:49:59 PM

It’s done, it’s great, fantastic and even unparalleled. Thiel is gonna do the same with Argentina, the acronym even remains the same so the China-made hats can be reused.

by port11

5/31/2026 at 2:19:10 PM

I doubt he’ll stop shaping America into what he thinks is great for him.

by rbanffy

5/31/2026 at 7:40:09 PM

Why’s he leaving then?

by thiht

5/31/2026 at 3:48:11 PM

Thiel is using Bad Bunny’s definition of America

by citadel_melon

5/30/2026 at 8:53:46 PM

Interesting. I could speculate as to why, but has he said anything besides the anti-christ thing? That thing wasn't illuminative in any way. So is it:

* fear of new wealth taxes in the US styled in the California way

* fear of being shot like UHC CEO

* legal retaliation from a new adminstration

Perhaps a little of each but what weighting? And what else? Personally, I'm definitely working to ensure my wife and children have OCI status and their Taiwanese citizenship locked in so that we have escape hatches.

by arjie

5/30/2026 at 8:57:26 PM

> so that we have escape hatches

From what? Those 3 things you point out above?

by pan69

5/30/2026 at 9:02:31 PM

My wife is Taiwanese and I'm Indian. I'm certainly not stupid enough to read the average HN/Reddit thread on Indians and believe that things cannot rapidly change around me.

by arjie

5/31/2026 at 12:56:16 PM

[dead]

by aaron695

5/30/2026 at 9:12:44 PM

Yeah Taiwan isn’t under any sort of threat these days, good thinking /s

by cr125rider

5/30/2026 at 9:32:46 PM

You'll find that Americans tend to vastly overestimate how much people in Taiwan actually think about the threat of China. Is there a threat? Yea. But its likelihood is very much still unknown.

In the meantime, Taiwan offers a pretty excellent quality of life, and it's a great option to have in your back pocket, if you're fortunate enough to have a legal pathway to live there.

by the_gastropod

5/31/2026 at 6:13:27 PM

> “This idea of wealth taxes on the super-rich has a clear connotation of envy,” Milei told Neura. “We consider taxes to be theft.”

> “The billionaires of the world who want to flee increasingly high-regulation and high-tax countries are very welcome to come to Argentina, the new land of freedom,” Adorni said.

How true is this in practice? Argentina's income taxes are not low by any standard (35%), capital gains are not zero (15%), and there is a wealth tax if you hold foreign assets.

I happen to be Argentinean, and got out of the country around 2 decades ago because of the trouble and practical taxation when working remote for foreign companies.

I definitely like what this article says, but it doesn't seem to hold true at the moment? That said, I might be missing something, as I've been mostly detached from Argentina's economics and politics for a long time now.

by jviotti

5/30/2026 at 8:44:41 PM

  “This idea of wealth taxes on the super-rich has a clear connotation of envy,” Milei told Neura. “We consider taxes to be theft.”

I guess that makes things like roads, schools, and hospitals a ‘handout’

by laweijfmvo

5/31/2026 at 6:18:32 AM

I guess that makes things like roads, schools, and hospitals a ‘handout’

In an interview with Joe Rogan on YouTube, Peter Thiel said that if people want roads, they should come together and build them or pay for them to be built.

https://youtu.be/klRb0_BAX9g?si=6GPB2Edq12Xzl3AY

It's 3.5 hours and I can't give a timestamp where exactly he said that and I really, really don't want to watch that again, so here's the transcript if you want to search: https://podcasts.happyscribe.com/the-joe-rogan-experience/21....

by frm88

5/31/2026 at 8:02:35 PM

If any corporation wants a bailout, it should… I don’t know, actually. In their model, it should simply go bankrupt? Okay, let’s do that.

by port11

5/31/2026 at 9:14:32 AM

> come together and build them or pay for them to be built

That's just taxes!

by 113

5/31/2026 at 2:20:32 PM

That is what we used to call a government. We pool together, choose who’ll manage the project, and fund it.

by rbanffy

5/31/2026 at 11:59:48 AM

Billionaires don't need roads, hospitals and schools for their own family.

What they do need is a large marketplace of wealthy customers to buy their products, a large pool of educated people to choose their employees from, safe global transportation, a trust based economy where contracts can be relied on, where the fallback of using the court system is reliable enough that courts or extra judicial means are very rarely needed.

IOW billionaires need modern Western society far more than modern society needs them.

by bryanlarsen

5/31/2026 at 2:10:29 PM

They're basically the parasite class

by ndsipa_pomu

5/31/2026 at 1:38:47 AM

Yup corporations that don't think they should pay taxes are entitled. You didn't school the populace, build the roads, provide natural disaster relief, etc to make your company possible in the first place.

by culi

5/31/2026 at 6:24:05 AM

The irony that Palantir's primary source of income is ... taxes. So clearly Thiel likes taxes, he just doesn't want rich people paying them.

by insane_dreamer

5/31/2026 at 1:59:17 PM

Strictly speaking I think palantir's income comes from borrowed money, but who's counting dollars lol not the people in charge

by halJordan

5/31/2026 at 6:27:31 AM

Taxes also pay for pol and mil that keep people, including them, safe. Capitalist libertarians like to not think about that part.

by brador

5/30/2026 at 8:53:12 PM

I wonder why he thinks Milei is going to bring continued change over time? Argentina's economy has been a mess as long as I can remember, decades and decades. Why is Milei so different that's he's willing to move there? He must really see a change he can exploit.

by WheelsAtLarge

5/30/2026 at 9:27:03 PM

"four types of countries: developed, underdeveloped, Japan, and Argentina." -Simon Kuznet.

by zulux

5/30/2026 at 8:57:08 PM

Argentina is, indeed, quite puzzling. They shouldn’t be a mess, and they should vote better, but, yet, they never get to have a stable period of progress.

by rbanffy

5/31/2026 at 1:52:00 AM

Maybe this will help

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_coups_in_Argentina

There are only two countries in the entire South America that DO NOT have the experience of having a democratically elected leader overthrown in a US-backed coup.

by culi

5/31/2026 at 4:20:03 AM

Ironically, to complete the pattern, the US has just established a (hereditary?) dictatorship in it's own green land. Via elections.

by rich_sasha

5/30/2026 at 8:54:32 PM

Well, rather him and family go to Argentina, than come to New Zealand, where he's got his citizenship for doing... nothing.

by freitasm

5/30/2026 at 11:55:24 PM

As a New Zealander, I'd like to hope he 'did nothing' to get that citizenship, but I'm afraid it probably wasn't nothing.

by PlunderBunny

5/30/2026 at 8:41:16 PM

History sure rhymes.

by ceejayoz

5/30/2026 at 9:57:34 PM

Top comment on FT:

> And he’s not the first German to have found sanctuary in Argentina!

by FabHK

5/30/2026 at 8:26:09 PM

The least he could do is keep his family in the country he’s helping destroy.

by SlightlyLeftPad

5/30/2026 at 8:31:10 PM

The whole point of destroying a country is to raid it of its wealth and to get out before it burns to the ground...

No one has the honor to ride a ship into the ground.

These days the captains would jump ship at the site of an iceberg and leave everyone to a certain death if there was a chance they'd lose 1 dollar.

by onlyrealcuzzo

5/31/2026 at 1:48:50 AM

The longer we go without a wealth tax the more we're allowing ourselves to be raided

by culi

5/31/2026 at 4:24:18 PM

The billionaires can’t handle “losing” money to taxes so they’d just never come here. Whether that would prevent the raid or enable it remains to he seen.

by SlightlyLeftPad

5/31/2026 at 1:24:32 AM

> Thiel has purchased a six-bedroom mansion in Palermo Chico, a leafy central neighbourhood full of embassies. He has also bought land to build a home near Punta del Este, a Uruguayan beach town popular with Argentina’s wealthy, said one person familiar with his plans.

Great. So he is doing to Argentina, and now Uruguay, what he did to America

by aanet

5/31/2026 at 3:12:09 PM

This guy should not be allowed to get out of america.

by penguin_booze

5/30/2026 at 8:27:57 PM

by stephbook

5/30/2026 at 9:16:33 PM

yeah, but Argentina has extradition treaty with US, he would stand better chance in Bolivia or Ecuador if it has to be America

by Markoff

5/30/2026 at 9:02:00 PM

He still has to pay USA taxes no matter where he moves.

by comrade1234

5/30/2026 at 9:06:24 PM

Sure, but he'll have optimized those away already.

by ceejayoz

5/30/2026 at 8:38:16 PM

It's pretty funny that he's fleeing the US for fear of instability and rising anti-oligarch sentiment to Argentina. As though their collapsing society will treat him much better when the shit hits the fan.

by idle_zealot

5/30/2026 at 8:53:53 PM

He can fly out when it bounces off the fan but well before it splashes on him.

by rbanffy

5/30/2026 at 8:49:32 PM

Is Argentina the new Florida because Palantir is destroying America?

by qsxfthnkp2322

5/30/2026 at 8:51:45 PM

It has been a prime destination for nazis for a long time. I guess they have a friendly government now.

by rbanffy

5/30/2026 at 9:38:39 PM

But I heard Thiel say Elon said USA is the only place left.

by qsxfthnkp2322

5/30/2026 at 8:41:51 PM

[flagged]

by PedroBatista

5/30/2026 at 9:03:24 PM

Moving to Argentina to avoid political instability is like moving to Nigeria to avoid black people.

Argentina is way more politically unstable than the US and has a long socialist history.

If I were an arch-capitalist techno overlord, I would move to Singapore.

by copx

5/31/2026 at 8:07:09 PM

Afghanistan has a very, very competitive tax rate, and he won’t have to sponsor road construction or practically anything else. What a dream!

by port11

5/30/2026 at 10:40:02 PM

He’s not really evading instability.

He’s evading consequences for causing it.

by ceejayoz

5/30/2026 at 9:24:53 PM

wussy

by Ancalagon

5/30/2026 at 9:00:02 PM

so anyone have anything positive to say about him?

by paulpauper

5/31/2026 at 8:08:19 PM

He is a profound believer in the absolute freedom of the individual, provided that specific individual is him, and perhaps three of his closest friends.

by port11

5/31/2026 at 2:28:30 AM

I’m glad he’s gone

by stevenalowe

5/31/2026 at 11:19:46 AM

"Peter Thiel knows about the antichrist.."

by karmakurtisaani

5/30/2026 at 8:36:17 PM

Good.

by jprd

5/30/2026 at 8:55:37 PM

Why is this being flagged? It’s the FT, it’s factual, and we can deal with misconduct by flagging the individual comments.

by rbanffy

5/30/2026 at 9:16:38 PM

> Hacker News Guidelines

> What to Submit

> […]

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

by QuantumNomad_

5/30/2026 at 9:21:19 PM

You think a major tech titan noping out to Argentina after burning down the system isn’t an interesting phenomenon?

by ceejayoz

5/30/2026 at 9:41:42 PM

I wish this were enforced broadly. Tired of seeing politics on the front page. I come here to avoid that crap.

by moscoe

5/30/2026 at 11:15:22 PM

> Tired of seeing politics on the front page. I come here to avoid that crap.

Well, I quite enjoy getting this community's perspective on current events and political topics. I wish more people would care about the ways these things intersect with their areas of interest and expertise. One man's crap, I guess!

by arvid-lind

5/31/2026 at 2:16:43 PM

I come here for a fresh perspective on a lot of things, politics being one of them. When techbros hook themselves deeply into the government, entirely bypassing the political system, gaining unchecked power without any representation to back it up, I’d think it’s well inside a hacker’s interests.

At least, they pwned the government very thoroughly.

by rbanffy

5/30/2026 at 9:56:06 PM

Can you describe what your idea of a “hacker” and their associated interests might be?

by cherry_tree

5/30/2026 at 9:44:01 PM

Yes, 100%.

by baal80spam

5/30/2026 at 10:13:14 PM

You don't get to use that selectively for things you disagree with.

by OutOfHere

5/30/2026 at 9:14:13 PM

Maybe dang can respond. I am curious if this was flagged by users or just censored by mods.

by canyp

5/31/2026 at 12:34:38 AM

Flagging is generally a user action, that mods sometimes override. I think there's a karma floor but otherwise anyone can do it.

by andrewflnr

5/31/2026 at 7:58:24 PM

> … connotation of envy. We consider taxes to be theft.

Wow. Envy. I don’t think there’s any way to refute this that would click with those that believe in it. Just… impressive.

I had some income on Germany’s 42% bracket. The marginal tax ends up lower. Regardless, I was constantly appalled by how envious everyone is. That 1% solidarity tax: envy. My public, not-for-profit health insurance: envy. I don’t know. I’m sure people at a hospital are going there just to spite people that earn lots of money.

Yeah, it’s envy. Nobody wants a good, shared society, and it’s clearly not been skewed towards making life harder for the low and middle classes. Nah. We’re just jealous mate.

I want my family to be healthy and happy. My kid to grow up in a comfortable-ish world without climate catastrophes. He’ll go to public school. Has a library card. You know, the basics. We don’t need a million euros. We don’t give a shit about the billionaire lifestyle.

Taxes are theft, sure, but one we collectively agree with in return for… well, everything else.

My partner touches the 40% bracket in Belgium. 40% hurts when you know a millionaire or even billionaire here will pay marginally less because of how we tax wealth and capital gains. But it’s alright, taxes are lower on the lower brackets; and a great deal that is, because those with less get the same benefits while paying less! Crazy, right? What a stupid system… (/s)

These people might want to put down Atlas Shrugged and read some Pratchett, maybe a Tolkien. I don’t know, something chill and heart-warming.

by port11

5/30/2026 at 8:30:46 PM

[flagged]

by Aboutplants