The doctrines of Peter Thiel's system are simple and appealing. Modern culture needs but does not properly cultivate real innovation. Great wealth is achieved by the invention of new services which capture de facto monopoly power. Study of the Great Books inculcates the genuine creativity that can produce such wealth. Students paying top dollar for educations leading to ordinary jobs are wasting their time.
Like many men who have gotten rich, though, Thiel tends to think that others should—and, more important, can—get rich in the same way he has. Zero to One is part Thiel's apologia pro vita sua and part theodicy. Thiel's acquisition of wealth is justified because you, too, can get rich the same way. And if you don't, you have no one to blame but yourself.
The only problem with Thiel's counsel, of course, is that it is a lie. Seeking to go "zero to one" is only good advice if there are many areas awaiting that level of entrepreneurship. However misleading such a suggestion may be, it has the advantage of allure: the doubters can't be so sure that the number of "zero to one" opportunities is limited, and their doubts hold us back. How can you be certain if you don't try?
What the Zero to One proposal lacks is any sense of risk. Its readers are supposed to forgo the comfort of an "ordinary" career—indeed, of most of the elements of "ordinary" life—in order to seek the thrill and rush of creation. Thiel or his literary agent gave his book the subtitle "Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future," a nod to modesty followed by supreme arrogance. A better title might be Zero to One: You, Too, Can Be Icarus. Supposing anyone takes the book's advice, the ground will be littered with fallen zeroes who attempted to become ones.
Thiel himself only went Zero to One once, in the creation of PayPal. After that he retreated to the normal course of those exiting successful start-ups, and started a hedge fund—probably the single most conventional move he possibly could have made. Yet his readers are supposed to feel guilty for not attempting the same feats of creativity that Thiel himself pulled off once, in the early days of the Internet, when the chance still existed. Now, sixteen years after the founding of PayPal, we are supposedly being told how to do it ourselves.
Where Thiel hasn't gone "zero to one," though, is in creating a new genre of book. Zero to One is but the latest contribution to an overpopulated and indistinct genre of American writing—the oligarch's vademecum. Notable entries in the field include such classics as Trump: The Art of the Deal (New York, 1987), Og Mandino's The Greatest Salesman in the World (New York, 1968) and Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People (New York, 1936). But Zero to One doesn't want to be just another Ninja Innovation (2013) or The Caterpillar Way (2013). It wants to be the one summary by executive abstracting agencies every busy CEO reads.
When Trump "wrote" The Art of the Deal in 1987, he at least didn't expect everyone to follow his lead. The Art of the Deal described doing business at a level almost intentionally unreachable to the average businessman. But Zero to One is marked by an overwhelming condescenion toward those who don't seek the same glory—a condescension born precisely of its intention to outline a path to the future. The Zero to One world consists of a handful of creative geniuses (or early arrivers) and the multitudes of unwashed who perform lesser tasks, like writing laws, growing food, overseeing day-to-day operations or perhaps—that forgotten act of creation—begetting children.
The deep irony of the Zero to One innovator is that even he has only one "moment" of innovation—the initial spark of heroic monopoly-seeking that begins his road to wealth. The insight "I can create a novel search engine" or "I can make money off of electronic payment-processing" only happens once, but it's enough to nurture a lifetime of mirror-gazing and meretricious "you can, too!"-ism.
It used to be said, even by praisers of democracy, that strength was found in numbers. A young doctor follows in his father's footsteps and perhaps his grandfather's, and joins a guild whose traditions at their best date back to the most ancient times. A young lawyer admitted to the bar arrives with extensive knowledge of the state of current law and—however flawed it may be—current legal practice. A young priest performs the same rituals that have been handed down since time immemorial. True, none of them has gone Zero to One. But they can pursue goals that aren't delusions, not inventing meaning but finding it.
