Finance & economics | The Golden State’s golden egg

Peter Thiel says California suffers from a “tech curse”. Is he right?

The state is fabulously rich and fabulously dysfunctional

Pedestrians walk past tents on Taylor Street in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Monday, Jan. 13, 2020. This year's JPMorgan Healthcare Conference comes as the city is grappling with heightened attention on its troubles, with its homeless crisis worsening, tech companies facing backlash and President Donald Trump lashing out at California's policies. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
|SAN FRANCISCO

Speaking recently at the National Conservatism Conference in Miami, Peter Thiel, an investor and intellectual, made a provocative argument. He suggested that California suffers from a “tech curse”: a play on the “resource curse”, the notion that countries with abundant natural resources often have weak economies and corrupt political systems. If data is the new oil, then California is the new Saudi Arabia—even, he said, if things aren’t quite “as bad as Equatorial Guinea”.

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Tech curse”

Should Europe worry?

From the September 24th 2022 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

illustration of a stern-faced man in a suit with a green tie, set against a bright green background. A small building with a flag is depicted in the pocket of his suit

The great-man theory of Wall Street

Why finance is still dominated by bold individuals

Hong Kong’s property slump may be terminal

Demographics and geopolitics will make a recovery harder


A float is inflated in preparation for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Why everyone wants to lend to weak companies

An unanticipated side-effect of Donald Trump’s election victory


American veterans now receive absurdly generous benefits

An enormous rise in disability payments may complicate debt-reduction efforts

Why Black Friday sales grow more annoying every year

Nobody is to blame. Everyone suffers

Trump wastes no time in reigniting trade wars

Canada and Mexico look likely to suffer