Dunno about the balances, but the cheques are all pre-signed, and all blank.
> Enter Peter Thiel
I've seen Peter Thiel described as "arguably the high priest of frontier thinking", in an article in A&G* about the dark side of the "frontier mentality" so beloved of the high technorati. It is no coincidence that the article is peppered with illustrations of bullet holes.
More substantial quotes on request; let it suffice for now that it quotes the historian Frederick Jackson Turner, speaking about said dark side in a presentation in 1893. Yup: the same Frederick Jackson Turner whose 1898 essay, so beloved of the high techorati, popularised the "mythology of the 'frontiersman'".
* "The celestial rubbish dump": Astronomy and Geophysics, June 2025, vol 68 issue 3, pp 3.36--3.42.