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Comment by Pelic4n | Hacker News Reader

>He's not trustworthy, he's a horrible manager of people, and he never pays off on what he promises.

The man was running for POTUS. Do you expect the men who lead the world to uphold your own moral standard?

From Machiavelli's The Prince:

>Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft . Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word. [...] A wise lord cannot, nor ought he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prince_(Marriott)/Chapter...

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> The man was running for POTUS. Do you expect the men who lead the world to uphold your own moral standard?

Yes?!? It’s insane to me how little some people expect of their elected officials. Yes, the cynical side of me knows it’s never going to 100% live up to expectations once they're in power but good grief.

"things can never be good, here is a 16th century essay that proves my point" is just self-fulfilling prophecy. The Prince mirrors the politics we see today because we keep electing people who read The Prince and use it as an instruction manual.

If you wish to acquire any kind of power, you cannot embarass yourself with right and wrong. Those who compete with you and won't do so will overrun you. Just like companies in a market or competing species in an ecological niche, you need to be as ruthless as possible. The universe has no regards for your morals.

And against the Putins and Xi Jipings of the world, I would not want a virtuous saint upheld by a tight moral code as a leader for my country.

Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with the content of The Prince. Studied politics and listened ad nauseam to all the wannabe politicians that worshipped at its altar. Thing is, nothing you've just stated is fact. It's just a viewpoint. Which is fine, but let's not pretend we have some absolute truth in front of us.

Relevant case in point: I live in New York, where until recently we had a governor that was all about ruthless assertion of power and ruled by personality. Then, when he ran into problems everyone turned their back on him because everyone hates him.

>Thing is, nothing you've just stated is fact. It's just a viewpoint. Which is fine, but let's not pretend we have some absolute truth in front of us.

Absolutely! I would like to see a political entity led by Kantian ethical formalists. My opinion is that such a faction couldn't come into power. Let's hope I'm wrong.

>Relevant case in point: I live in New York, where until recently we had a governor that was all about ruthless assertion of power and ruled by personality. Then, when he ran into problems everyone turned their back on him because everyone hates him.

Sure, the history is littered with the corpses of the Hitlers and Mussolinis (and the mountains of corpses they have caused), the small petty tyrants who thought brutality and charisma it was ALL you needed to rule. They meet their ends alone at a moment or another, but this doesn't make a case for the success of ethical leaders either.

It's the nature of power, you have to sell your ethical standards to compete at this level. If you think someone is above it, they've just succeeded in their marketing.

That's a selective reading. In fact, I wish more politicians would actually read the Prince, and explicitly incorporate the overall lessons. Machiavelli mostly advices leaders of not surrounding themselves with yes men, not letting their vanity cloud their judgements, lead modest and exemplary lives, be prudent with finances, prefer predictability and stability in all things, known their own limitations, not be greedy.

The popular readings for The Prince focus on the passages about scheming, ruthlessness, the palace intrigue basically. It's only a blip in the actual book.

If you do come away with a cynical reading of the Prince, it's not only about the supposed celebration of the amoral ruler, but also (maybe more) about the stupidity and fickleness of their subjects, or the gaggle of untrustworthy sycophants and rivals at court.

I agree with you and don't have a cynical reading of the Prince at all! Machiavelli simply talks about what works and what doesn't. As he explains, as a leader, helding upon your promises for the sake of it is a liability. Why be angry at successfull politicians when they apply what works?

Out of the three things listed, being a horrible manager of people is definitely disqualifying for a presidential candidate (the primary job of the POTS is managing people.)

That said, while Machiavelli has a point, the opposite is also true: that many leaders have fallen due to losing the trust of their key supporters. No king rules alone, knowing how to keep your supporters happy while still being flexible is a vital talent for a democratic leader. Even more so, many states have fallen due to their allies deciding they can no longer be trusted in negotiations, and the president is the face of the US. You can see the consequences untrustworthy presidents have had in our weakening bargaining power with many of our allies, such as the EU’s many talks of becoming more self reliant. Having a president that at least knows how to appear to be keeping their word to people that interact with them is incredibly important in our current geopolitical climate.

Basically, trust isn’t valueless. A good manipulator knows how to weigh the positives and negatives of breaching trust.

I fully agree with you.

Thanks for this shard of realpolitik in this discussion among people disappointed that their hero turns out to not be the hero they thought. Who would have seen that coming?

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