Podcast: (english): „How Big Companies Collude with Governments Since Competition Is for Losers“
Author’s Preface
Public-Private Partnership is a satirical novel that addresses how political companies harm small and medium-sized businesses through public-private partnerships.
The eminent Austrian economist and politician Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) coined the term „creative destruction,“ among other things.
Less well known is the fact that Schumpeter described two contrasting types of businessmen: the „entrepreneur“ and the „arbitrage businessman.“
According to Schumpeter, entrepreneurs in the real economy create economic added value and increase prosperity (gross national product) through innovative concepts, products, processes, and services.
These entrepreneurs are characterized primarily by their constant desire to improve their economic position through innovation. This entrepreneurial spirit generates innovation, drives economic growth, and spurs social change. The focus of an entrepreneurial businessperson’s thinking is creating profit through customer satisfaction. Goods and services exist to fulfill needs. If goods and services do not meet needs or are produced too expensively, economic entrepreneurs will disappear from the market. Thus, economic entrepreneurs are incentivized to completely satisfy customer needs.
According to Schumpeter, the second group of entrepreneurs are arbitrage entrepreneurs.
„The arbitrage entrepreneur uses information to his advantage.“ In the real world, there are always information differences between „insiders“ and „outsiders.“
Recently, arbitrage entrepreneurs have increasingly entered the political arena.
Benjamin Mudlack, author of the book Neues Geld für eine freie Welt, describes Schumpeter’s arbitrage entrepreneurs as „political entrepreneurs.“
Political entrepreneurs do not own any means of production. Instead, they engage in hostile actions, such as creating and enforcing laws that establish rights with the threat of violence. These laws indirectly give political entrepreneurs access to the means of production. This takes the form of levying taxes or creating bureaucratic measures. Like politics, lobbying should be regarded as political entrepreneurship. Political entrepreneurship is diametrically opposed to the voluntary/market economy. It does not generate production or prosperity. Instead, it feeds off the prosperity created by economic entrepreneurs. Therefore, political entrepreneurs cannot exist without the productive forces of economic entrepreneurs.
Political entrepreneurs exploit the productive forces of economic entrepreneurs and small-to-medium businesses to gain political influence. As they do not own any means of production, political entrepreneurs, such as capital pools or asset managers, form public–private partnerships (PPPs) with politicians and are contractually protected from competition in their specific areas.
Data from Transparency International Integrity Watch shows the rapid advance of this PPP business model.
In PPPs, it is difficult to distinguish where the private sector ends and where the government begins. Private monopoly corporations, or „strategic partners“ as the World Economic Forum calls them, have become government enforcement agents against their citizens. The surveillance corporation Palantir works with government organizations, intelligence agencies, large corporations, and quasi-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Why have these PPP models become so popular that they have become the „mission,“ the raison d’être, of the World Economic Forum? There is a simple, logical explanation for this. Private corporations can do what governments are not permitted to do under the Constitution, fundamental rights, and human rights.
Although the conflict between the economic enterprises of small and medium-sized businesses and the political enterprises of monopoly corporations is clearly visible, the mainstream media are unable to distinguish between these two contradictory business models.
This is not only because political entrepreneurs finance many mainstream media outlets. Media outlets dependent on their owners and advertisers also fail to report fairly because politicians and media professionals, hardly any of whom have ever worked in the private sector, are unable to recognize the difference between the two types of entrepreneurs.
Political entrepreneurs and their organizations invest in politics and the media. Their political influence is constantly growing.
They like to meddle in politics and appreciate the discreet confidentiality of public–private partnerships. However, they seem to hate competition, as evidenced by their actions and statements.
Entrepreneur Peter Thiel has been playing an important role in US politics for around a decade.
US President Donald Trump is loud, extroverted, and clearly loves being the center of attention—always. One of his earliest supporters from Silicon Valley, German-born entrepreneur Peter Thiel, is different. Thiel prefers to operate behind the scenes. Unlike the eccentric Elon Musk, Thiel is also relatively unknown.
Thiel studied philosophy and law at Stanford University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in 1989. In 1992, Thiel received his doctorate from Stanford Law School. He worked briefly for a New York Wall Street law firm. In 1996, Thiel founded his first venture capital fund (Thiel Capital).
Thiel has been a billionaire investor for many years. Thiel co-founded PayPal and made Facebook big. He is also the founder of the surveillance software company Palantir. In 2025, Thiel was ranked 131st among the richest people in the world.
Peter Thiel is considered an influential pioneer of the current “vibe shift,” i.e., the cultural shift in the US significantly to the right. Thiel is often described as a right-wing libertarian.
Public opinion seems to have become suddenly more conservative since Trump’s re-election last year. For example, large corporations ended diversity programs immediately after the election.
In his book Zero to One: How Innovation Saves Society (Campus Verlag, 2014), Peter Thiel — one of the most successful political entrepreneurs — describes his views on innovative entrepreneurship. I have selected eight key issues from the book.
