Michael Gibson’s Paper Belt on Fire

1,938 words

Michael Gibson
Paper Belt on Fire: How Renegade Investors Sparked a Revolt Against the University
Ashland, Ore.: Blackstone Publishing, 2022

It is no secret that American universities are torpid, decaying institutions mired in corruption, stagnation, and bureaucracy. Despite their bloated endowments and grandiose mission statements, they have failed at the most basic level. They are no longer thriving hubs of scholarship and scientific advancement; on the contrary, they have become increasingly hostile to free thought and ingenuity. Paper Belt on Fire diagnoses the malaise plaguing academia as both a symptom and a cause of civilizational decline and — unique among books in this genre — offers a compelling solution.

Instead of training their students to create things, solve difficult problems, and advance the frontiers of human knowledge, elite universities groom their students into being careerists and bureaucrats — “excellent sheep,” in the words of Yale Professor William Deresiewicz, whose book of the same name laments students’ conformism and the dearth of “passionate weirdos” on elite college campuses. From a young age, American students, particularly in elite circles, are indoctrinated into amassing credentials and are discouraged from taking on risky passion projects. Students spend their teens and twenties — which should be a time of exploration — scrambling to gain credibility in the eyes of the establishment.

Most Ivy League graduates go into finance or consulting. They want a safe, high-paying job that will allow them to retain their elite status — and pay off their student debt. Few of them are interested in taking risks and venturing into the unknown. But these are precisely the characteristics needed to make scientific breakthroughs and create things of value.

The comparatively few students who do become scholars and innovators begin their careers much later than they did in the past. The mean age at which inventors launched their first inventions increased from 23 to 31 between 1900 and 2000 (p. 105). Grant-giving bodies prioritize established scientists with credentials and prestige: 98% of grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health go to scientists over 36 (p. 108). This breeds inertia and conformism — and nepotism, as students with academic parents often have connections that give them a head start on publishing.

The credentialism that pervades academia and elite circles in general is a major contributing factor to the technological stagnation that has plagued America since the 1970s. Once a nation of explorers and inventors, America is no longer a world leader in innovation. Median wages have stagnated accordingly, and Americans have seen a decline in their standards of living. A particularly potent illustration of America’s decline, as the author points out, is the city of San Francisco. Once one of America’s great cities, it is now ridden with syringes and feces and has higher rates of property crime than any other city in the country. Skyrocketing housing prices have killed San Francisco’s music and art scene and driven out ordinary Americans. (Steve Jobs’ blue-collar parents would not be able to afford living in the Bay Area today.) The author blames the city’s downfall on “Paper Belt” sclerosis and bureaucracy.

The “Paper Belt” is Gibson’s term for elite universities, think tanks, the publishing industry, the media, and government institutions, mostly concentrated in the Northeast:

If the Rust Belt has come to define the Midwest’s hollowed-out industries, in the next ten years the Paper Belt will come to define the paper-based industries from Washington, DC to Boston. In DC they print money, visas, and laws on paper. In Delaware, companies incorporate on paper. In New York City, they print media on paper. And in Boston, Harvard and MIT print diplomas on paper. I am dedicated to lighting the Paper Belt on fire (pp. 167-68).

Enter the Thiel Fellowship and the 1517 Fund. The Thiel Fellowship, founded by Peter Thiel in 2010, awards $100,000 to young people to drop out — or as Thiel puts it, “stop out,” referring to what investors do to limit losses — of college and pursue scientific research, start a company, and so on. Thiel’s idea was that funding talented young dropouts would encourage innovation and weaken the grip of higher education on American society.

Michael Gibson is a former academic who dropped out of Oxford’s philosophy doctoral program and worked as Vice President for Grants at the Thiel Foundation. Inspired by the Thiel Fellowship’s success, he and Danielle Strachman, who also worked for Thiel, started a venture capital fund with a similar mission named 1517, after the year Martin Luther inaugurated the Reformation with his 95 Theses:

In 1517, the church was saying this expensive piece of paper could save your soul. In 2015, universities are selling another expensive piece of paper, the diploma, saying it’s the only way to save your soul. Well, it was bullshit then. And it’s bullshit now. (pp. 179-80)

Part-memoir, part-manifesto, Paper Belt on Fire is an engagingly written account of the ups and downs faced by the duo interspersed with some musings about economics and history. As an ex-philosopher and a former school principal investing in college dropouts, Gibson and Strachman, respectively, were outsiders in the venture capital world and butted heads with the established firms of Sand Hill Road. Their unconventional approach has paid off: According to Gibson, the 1517 Fund’s returns “place it in the top one of two percent of all funds in its class” (p. 19). Their greatest success came when Thiel Fellow Austin Russell’s company, Luminar, went public in December 2020, making Russell the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. 1517 invested $17 million in Luminar. Meanwhile, one venture capitalist invested in one of Luminar’s lackluster competitors solely because its founders used to work for Apple and graduated from Stanford.

You can buy Jonathan Bowden’s Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics here.

Gibson left academic philosophy because he felt the field prioritized pedantic hairsplitting, conformity, and professional success above ideas. He likens the field to Alcatraz — “a museum prison built on a beautiful old island” — and argues that humanities departments suffer from a “spiritual sickness” (p. 48).

Arguably the most perverse illustration of this is the fact that nearly 1.5 million academic papers are published per year, but the average academic paper is read by merely ten people. 82% of papers published in the humanities are only cited once. The main function of papers is to enhance academics’ resumes, as tenure is awarded partly based on the number of publications one produces. Often professors simply cobble together old research from their previous papers and slap a new thesis on it.

Universities’ mission statements often make vague pronouncements about the importance of “leadership in a changing world” or teaching students “how to think, not what to think.” If the purpose of universities is to teach students to “think critically,” then why are they never evaluated or ranked according to this metric? Gibson points out that students’ scores on the College Learning Assessment, which assesses critical thinking, reasoning, problem-solving, and writing, do not significantly improve over the course of college. There is no evidence that a contemporary college education improves people’s ability to think. Nor do universities teach students to be leaders in the genuine sense of the word. In the past, American universities and prep schools sought to instill their pupils with aristocratic values like honor, duty, courage, and loyalty. Today their definition of “leadership” simply means climbing the greasy pole and being, to quote Deresiewicz, an “entitled mediocrity.”

Unlike some conservative figures, Gibson does not simply exhort young people not to go to college. Like most conservative prescriptions, this would accomplish nothing in the long run and would do nothing to reverse the decline of higher education. Moreover, while it is possible to obtain a thorough, rigorous education and do important research outside academia, the vast majority of people need financial support, mentorship, and external pressure to do so.

One of the traits Gibson looks for in founders is what he describes as “egoless ambition” — essentially being “in the world, but not of it,” which is applicable here as well. The Right must join the fight instead of dropping out. Gibson proposes that providing talented young people with financial support and guidance outside the context of a formal college education is the way forward. A proliferation of talented, accomplished young people without degrees would discredit elite institutions in the minds of the general public and undermine their power.

Gibson’s proposal arrives at an opportune time. Because of the decline in births during the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the population of 18-year-olds will drop starting in 2025, decimating colleges around the country (in the literal sense; their student bodies will shrink by 10-15%). This will have the greatest impact on small liberal arts colleges in the Northeast, the Paper Belt’s center of gravity, where the population decline will be most acute. Colleges will experience steep budget cuts, and many face an uncertain future. So higher education is ripe for disruption.

A recurring theme throughout the book is Gibson’s contention that the “dynamism of the American frontier” is the antidote to institutional decline. Citing economic historian Joel Mokyr, he argues that one reason why Europe surged ahead of China in the early modern era was that innovators and dissidents could find sanctuary in nearby countries if needed, while in China, there were no checks on the emperor’s power. This provides a useful argument for nationalism from a techno-utopian standpoint. A one-world government would squash dissent and innovation. Thiel argues that this threat is under-recognized by libertarians, who often support globalist policies in the name of free trade. He turns to the biblical concept of the katechon, or “that which withholds” — the force that restrains the Antichrist, who is associated with the idea of a one-world government (see the temptations of Christ). For Gibson, this restraining force is the checks and balances inherent in a mixed constitution, which can “reopen” the frontier

Gibson revels in skewering upper-middle-class sacred cows. My favorite moment in the book is when he compares a college degree to Marcel Duchamp’s infamous Fountain: “Is it art? Or is it just a toilet?” (p. 281). Fountain is considered art on the basis that it was hailed as a masterpiece by the art world. But is it really? (A running joke in the book is Gibson’s coworker’s cheeky attempt to pass off a drawing of his own as an esteemed work of art.) This ties in with René Girard’s idea of mimesis, which is central to Thiel’s worldview — people’s estimation of what is valuable is influenced by what others around them value. At a certain point, they lose sight of the fact that the emperor has no clothes. Today’s institutions of higher education are like the art world: They lack accountability and are no longer trustworthy.

This phenomenon is pithily summarized by computer scientist — and possible developer of Bitcoin — Nick Szabo’s mantra that “trusted third parties are security holes,” which was the impetus for Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer technology and decentralized ledger bypass central banks and make it more trustworthy than any other currency. Ventures like the 1517 Fund could be to higher education what Bitcoin is to money. Both pose existential threats to Paper Belt institutions.

As with Bitcoin, the Thiel Fellowship and the 1517 Fund have been scapegoated by the press. According to Gibson, his manuscript was rejected by leading publishing houses in New York, one of whom hilariously described Thiel as “a borderline evil conspiracist” (p. 19). Others professed their loyalty to higher education, describing themselves as “educationalists.” It’s afraid.

Ideally, every talented and driven young white person in every scholarly discipline would have the opportunity to benefit from a fund like 1517. Whether one is a techno-optimist or a curmudgeonly paleoconservative, this is something that anyone who cares about the future of America and the West in general should get behind. Investing in the young and freeing them from the clutches of decaying institutions is crucial to the project of renewing our civilization.

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