Peter Thiel, eccentric billionaire patron of JD Vance, says he is thinking about leaving the US

Thiel compared California liberalism to Saudi Arabian Wahabbism — but it was sort of a compliment

Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who served as the sugar daddy for GOP vice presidential hopeful JD Vance’s Senate run, who helped kill Gawker, and who names his companies after bits of JRR Tolkein lore, said he's considered leaving the US.

Thiel appeared on a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience and told the comic-turned-podcaster that he had recently moved from San Francisco to LA, and was also considering leaving California or the country altogether.

When Rogan asked Thiel where he might move, the billionaire said it was "tough" to find alternatives because while the US had a "lot of problems" in his estimates, other parts of the world were doing "much worse."

He said whatever move he makes, he's only going to move once, and was unsure of whether he'd move to Florida or just out of the country, naming New Zealand and Costa Rica off the top of his head.

It’s no exaggeration to say that Thiel was instrumental to Vance’s rise. As well as backing Vance’s campaign for the US Senate in 2021-22, he was reportedly the one who introduced Vance to Donald Trump, giving him the opportunity to smooth over past barbs such as calling the real estate mogul “cultural heroin” and “noxious”.

Thankfully for Thiel, while most people can't just pick up and leave a country or state they have issues with, he absolutely can. He even once dreamed of living beyond the reach of national laws by creating a floating libertarian paradise — maybe he'd have called it Numenor? — where he could mold society to his liking.

That dream, at least temporarily, fell apart when he and his Seasteading Institute realized it would be too expensive to maintain a floating city in international waters, Business Insider reports. He instead opted to try to convince a country to host the project. New Zealand bought into the project for a short time but ultimately pulled out in 2018.

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel tells Joe Rogan he has considered moving out of the US during the August 16, 2024 episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast (JRE/YouTube)

So, left without a floating city of his own creation, Thiel must now choose any other point on the planet to call home.

Wherever he goes, it seems like he'll at very least be moving out of California. Rogan and other conservatives and libertarians seeking to dodge the state's high taxes and typically more liberal culture have left the state for more friendly ideological climates in Texas and Florida.

Thiel noted that the stereotypical right-wing critique of California — that it is a poorly governed state with oppressive levels of intrusion and regulation by lawmakers — is generally off-base. He said conservatives are always baffled that the state hasn't collapsed into anarchy, but is continuously thriving.

"You know, the macroeconomics of it are pretty good. You know, 40 million people. The GDP is around 4 trillion. It’s about the same as Germany with 80 million or Japan with 125 million. Japan has three times the population of California. Same GDP means one-third the per capita GDP," Theil said. "So there’s some level on which, you know, California as a whole is working, even though it doesn’t work from a governance point of view, doesn’t work for a lot of the people who live there."

Rather than coming to the conclusion that perhaps the state’s political priorities, mixed with its natural resources and population size, are major contributors to its continued success, he instead attributed its strength to the "religion" of "wokeism," comparing it to ultra-right wing and conservative Wahhabbism in Islam.

“And, the rough model I have for how to think of California is that it’s kind of like Saudi Arabia and you have a crazy religion. Wokeism in California, Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia,” Thiel said.

Wahhabism is a puritanical form of Islam practiced primarily — but not only — in Saudi Arabia. The 9/11 terrorists from Saudi Arabia are believed to have been Wahhabists.

If that line of logic made any sense, one might assume that US states embracing conservative Christianity would be able to compete with California, but unfortunately, the billionaire’s explanation collapses almost immediately.

"And people have been saying Saudi Arabia is ridiculous, it’s going to collapse in a year. Now they’ve been saying that for 40 or 50 years," he said. "But, you know, if you have a giant oil field, you can pay for a lot of ridiculousness. I think that’s that’s the way to, that’s that’s the way you have to think of California."