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

Sep 22nd 2022|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”