Peter Thiel and David Graeber Debate Technology’s Future - NYTimes.com

Is this not where Chapel Hill, especially, finds itself?

"The two men, unsurprisingly, parted ways sharply on the kind of politics that would unleash innovation. To Mr. Graeber, the key is replacing what currently passes for democracy with a genuinely participatory system of the sort prefigured by the Occupy movement. The problem isn’t a lack of good ideas, he said, but that “the overwhelming majority of people are constantly being told to shut up.”

Mr. Thiel, describing himself as a “political atheist,” said that people should spend less time trying to change the system than simply creating things outside it. And the key to progress, he said, may not be more democracy.

In the real world, innovative organizations are often “shockingly hierarchical,” he said. “A start-up is really far from a democracy. People don’t get to vote on things.”"