The economist Tyler Cowen once observed that at some point in the 1970s, Americans went from being the country that took literal moonshots to being the people who waited patiently in long lines for gasoline. It’s not completely accurate, of course, but it is a criticism that resonates with Thiel as he sits in his office at the Presidio one day looking at the Golden Gate Bridge and wonders if people will ever build something like that again. Do people even have the arrogance anymore? To test the limits? To try big things? What’s more, there is evil in
