this is an amazing piece of writing.. personally, I favor the ideas and alignment to the thinking written in The Prince. The Machiavelli references here are apt, but there’s a layer worth unpacking further. In The Prince, Machiavelli famously distinguishes between the lion and the fox — the ruler who conquers by force and the one who conquers by cunning. He argues the ideal prince must be both. What’s genuinely novel about the arrangement described here is that it splits the role across two parties: the barker plays the lion (loud, visible, force of nature), while the donor class plays the fox (patient, invisible, strategic). Neither has to be complete on their own. Together they cover all the ground Machiavelli said one man needed to cover alone.
But Machiavelli also wrote something that cuts the other way. In the Discourses, he warned that republics decay not through dramatic conquest but through the slow rot of institutions — what he called corruzione. He believed this was actually harder to reverse than military defeat, because military defeat is legible. Everyone can see the enemy. Corruption is invisible until the institutions it hollowed out are called upon and simply… don’t hold. The piece is right that the barker isn’t the story. The corruzione happening behind him is. And Machiavelli would have said that by the time the crowd turns around, the question is no longer who did it — it’s whether there’s anything left that can still push back.
The sobering part of reading Machiavelli on republics: he thought most of them deserved what happened to them, because they chose comfort over vigilance while there was still time to choose differently. Seriously though, he looks like a fool but he has been playing us as fools in reality. We never saw it coming.
Hmmm…this was about mechanism. I need to think about a corruzione note about prognosis. It would ask the question which is whether we have passed the point of return, and use Machiavelli’s framework from the Discourses to examine it…
I will however push back on your last point, he’s not the one who has been playing us…
this is an amazing piece of writing.. personally, I favor the ideas and alignment to the thinking written in The Prince. The Machiavelli references here are apt, but there’s a layer worth unpacking further. In The Prince, Machiavelli famously distinguishes between the lion and the fox — the ruler who conquers by force and the one who conquers by cunning. He argues the ideal prince must be both. What’s genuinely novel about the arrangement described here is that it splits the role across two parties: the barker plays the lion (loud, visible, force of nature), while the donor class plays the fox (patient, invisible, strategic). Neither has to be complete on their own. Together they cover all the ground Machiavelli said one man needed to cover alone.
But Machiavelli also wrote something that cuts the other way. In the Discourses, he warned that republics decay not through dramatic conquest but through the slow rot of institutions — what he called corruzione. He believed this was actually harder to reverse than military defeat, because military defeat is legible. Everyone can see the enemy. Corruption is invisible until the institutions it hollowed out are called upon and simply… don’t hold. The piece is right that the barker isn’t the story. The corruzione happening behind him is. And Machiavelli would have said that by the time the crowd turns around, the question is no longer who did it — it’s whether there’s anything left that can still push back.
The sobering part of reading Machiavelli on republics: he thought most of them deserved what happened to them, because they chose comfort over vigilance while there was still time to choose differently. Seriously though, he looks like a fool but he has been playing us as fools in reality. We never saw it coming.
Hmmm…this was about mechanism. I need to think about a corruzione note about prognosis. It would ask the question which is whether we have passed the point of return, and use Machiavelli’s framework from the Discourses to examine it…
I will however push back on your last point, he’s not the one who has been playing us…
Ringmaster you say? BTW today he is licking every dollar as its pressed and sent out the door.. first for a sitting president..