Musk and Machiavelli

In 1513, an Italian politician named Niccolò Machiavelli wrote a treatise to help the newly appointed ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de Medici, the grandson of Lorenzo the Great, gain and maintain power. The elder statesman Machiavelli sought to teach the young duke everything he knew about how to be a great prince, having advised many princes before him, hence the name of this treatise, The Prince.

The work earned Machiavelli a reputation of guile and statecraft, where the ends justified the means. But this isn’t quite right—it’s not the principal part of the piece. Machiavelli was simply a pragmatist: Despite a leader’s “mission, vision, and values,” what actually works?

For example, if you have to give someone a series of bad news, it “ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavour of them may last longer.”

Machiavelli drew on ancient Greco-Roman rulers to provide examples of heroism and glory, or cowardice and tragedy. “A wise man,” he wrote, “ought always to follow the paths beaten by great men.” He then summarized the story with a principle to make the guidance clear to the young pupil.

For all the pragmatism and cunning within The Prince, however, Machiavelli advised that too much pragmatism can get you in trouble.

He tells the story of the wicked King Agathocles, the Sicilian who became King of Syracuse. The son of a potter, he gained power by luring his predecessor into a discussion about the Republic, and “at a given signal [his] soldiers killed all the senators and the richest of the people,” and declared himself the new leader, a position he held through “many hazards and dangers.”

“Yet,” Machiavelli warned, “it cannot be called talent to slay fellow citizens, to deceive friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; such methods may gain empire, but not glory.” Despite his immense capability to accrue power, “his barbarous cruelty and inhumanity with infinite wickedness do not permit him to be celebrated among the most excellent men. What he achieve cannot be attributed either to fortune or to genius.”

This story reminded me of many leaders today. They attain power by pragmatism and cunning, but they end up metaphorically slaying their own people.

Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX is an ambitious baby genius, but he slew his own customers by using their money to grow his empire, which, after the Ponzi scheme was revealed in a short Coindesk article, collapsed in a matter of days. His “effective altruism” was neither effective nor altruistic.

Both political parties suffer from leaders slaying their own members on their way to the top of the system. The Squad fights with the left’s old, white establishment. The Trumpers and the New Right fight with centrist Republicans who’d rather be left alone—to be free—than be dragged into the latest culture war.

And then there’s leaders like Elon Musk, who took over the internet’s “town square” but exhibits cruel indifference toward his own people: software engineers, techies, and futurists. Czar Elon Musk I, so-called in Ross Douthat’s column for the Times called “A Political Theory of King Elon Musk,” has gained power over a new principality in the digital world.

Whereas kings of old reigned over a physical reality limited by geographical boundaries, today’s kings reign over virtual realities that know no such limitations. King Zuckerberg reigns over a billion people with his advertising empire. Czar Musk reigns over hundreds of millions, issuing decrees of who is allowed in or out, who can keep their jobs by being “hardcore” and who cannot, even using little polls to “democratize” his own leadership.

“A principality is created either by the people or by the nobles,” Machiavelli advised young Lorenzo. Musk, though being a noble, created a principality of the people by campaigning that he serves them, a popular populist move. He’s “freeing” the town square from the incapable Silicon Valley elite.

However, Machiavelli warned, “one who becomes a prince through the favour of the people ought to keep them friendly, and this he can easily do seeing they only ask not to be oppressed by him. … but, I repeat, it is necessary for a prince to have the people friendly, otherwise he has no security in adversity.”

Yet the way his kingdom is going—with Tesla investors fed up with poor returns and Twitter employees enduring a “sick system”—King Musk may very well have little security in adversity. Though he has fortune, genius, and empire, his cruelty will not lead to glory.