The Facebook Effect

“The most important investment theme for the first half of the twenty-first century will be the question of how globalization happens,” Thiel told me. “If globalization doesn’t happen, then there is no future for the world. The way it doesn’t happen is that you have escalating conflicts and wars, and given where technology is today, it blows up the world. There’s no way to invest in a world where globalization fails.” This is a bracing thought, coming as it does from one of the world’s great investors. “The question then becomes what are the best investments that are geared towards good globalization. Facebook is perhaps the purest expression of that I can think of.”