PETER THIEL: California As Saudi Arabia. “It’s not the way you might want to design a system from scratch, but it’s pretty stable. People have been saying Saudi Arabia is ridiculous, it’s going to collapse any year now. They’ve been saying that for 40 or 50 years. But you know, if you have a giant oil field you can pay for a lot of ridiculousness… I think that’s the way you have to think of California. There’s things about it that are ridiculous, but there’s something about it. It doesn’t naturally self-destruct overnight.”