Entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel spoke to a group of student entrepreneurs at Stanford this evening, and at the end one student asked him what he thought the U.S. government should be doing to spur innovation.


His words seemed calculated to shock, but his point was that the government is "huge" but ineffective because it acts randomly.



The student followed up by asking him to summarize his desired five-year plan in a few seconds.

"Make the government much more technologically efficient," he said. That's the "low-hanging fruit."

The moment was ironic because Thiel's entire investment philosophy is based on making bets on big, world-changing technologies like space travel and electric cars -- the kinds of things that governments used to do. But here, he seemed to be endorsing MORE government interference.

Unless this was all a backhanded way of saying that the government should be much smaller -- in other words, get rid of the "socialism" part altogether.