Last week I had two interactions with strangers that convinced me humanity was more civilized when the threat of death or violence was more present.

People feel too safe, enabling dishonorable behavior without consequences.

A driver became irate because I did not allow him to make his turn exiting a parking lot. He believed he had the right of way, and decided to drive his car next to mine, blocking the incoming lane to let me know. He threw a few insults my way then told me he hoped that I would kill myself. I told him his reaction was out of proportion for the perceived slight, but he kept going. Finally I asked what he wanted to do about it? I didn’t mean it as a threat, but I later realized it could have been perceived that way. The man was two decades my senior, I was comfortable with my chances against him in hand to hand combat.

Naturally he didn’t actually want to fight. He just wanted to dump any pent up frustration he had against the world on me, while seated securely in his truck. He drove away, which was the end of the exchange. I’m not somebody looking to get into a fight. We’ve all been taught violence is not the answer, and I liked the shirt I was wearing. Getting his blood off of it would be a nuisance. I was at peace with how the exchange ended. Then a similar incident occurred at the golf course.

I was playing a Saturday golf round at public course, which was playing very slow. It took 2.5 hours to get through the front 9. The rest of my group left and I was debating whether to keep playing or stop. I noticed at the turn there was nobody on the hole in front of me so I decided to continue. I quickly caught up to the group in front of me, which consisted of a man, his wife and young child. It was a Par 3, they weren't on the green yet and the group on the next hole had already teed off. I figured I would skip the hole and play through. I indicated this to the man as I was driving by, he didn’t react initially. Once I got up the tee box, I saw the group ahead was still in range of where I could hit my drive. I had to wait for them and they were taking their sweet time. So long that the group behind me finished their hole. The man from the group started yelling at me that he wasn’t going to wait for me to play. I hit my drive, well beyond the range where his wife or son could hit but he was still upset. He hit a ball into me and kept yelling. Now it’s common etiquette to let a single player play through and I wasn’t delaying them. His reaction was once again over the top.

He was with his wife and kid. I wasn't going to hit a ball back at them or fight the guy in front of them. Perhaps I could teach his son a valuable lesson but I play at this course regularly, it’s not worth a potential ban/getting arrested. This guy clearly only behaved this way because he didn't think he would face repercussions.

If only there was a socially acceptable way we could settle disputes such as these without societal repercussions.

Dueling. For centuries this kept gentlemen in line. Protected honor and helped settle disputes in an amicable fashion. It’s time to bring it back. Keep reading to learn why.

Book I’m Currently Reading:

1. Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Current Nightstand Book:

1. Debrett’s Guide To Etiquette & Modern Manners by John Morgan

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Necessary Disclaimer

I want to reiterate I am not a violent person. Yet there is only so much disrespect one can handle before needing to defend their honor. Although the longer the first stranger kept whining, the more willing I was to risk a few punches to the face to get him to stop. If any professional associates are reading this, I am not actually calling for violence.

In 2026 there is no rational reason to fight a stranger unless your life is at risk. The risk to reward ratio doesn’t make any sense. Any satisfaction you might get from winning a fight does not outweigh the legal and reputational consequences that come with it. It hasn’t always been this way though.

The History of Dueling

Dueling was created as an attempt to formalize violence.

The earliest traced sources go back to medieval Europe where nobles would occasionally settle legal disputes with Trials by Combat. Similar to what we saw in Game of Thrones. Instead of a Judge and Jury, they put it in Gods hand to decide. If the losing combatant died, it’s because God wanted him to, therefore he was guilty.

The modern gentleman duel started during the Renaissance in France and Italy (of course). The aristocratic culture was obsessed with personal honor and reputation. A public insult could not stand unaddressed therefore noblemen began settling private disputes through arranged combat.

By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dueling was common among European elites. It was usually associated with swords, Zorro style. Allowing somebody to insult your honor was a challenge to your masculinity.

Despite the authorities attempts to ban it, France became the great center of dueling culture. The Crown and the church agreed that it was destabilizing and wasteful but they couldn’t stop the elites from doing it. Refusing a duel made someone look cowardly, and for an aristocrat the social penalty was worse than the legal risk.

By the eighteenth century, dueling had spread as far as the American colonies. The weapon of choice gradually shifted from swords to pistols. This also changed the nature of the game. Sword duels required skill and training, whereas pistol duels were more a question of luck. Who could get the shot off first without the gun jamming. The weapon quality wasn’t very reliable back in those days.

This leveled the playing field and had the advantage of shortening the duel time. Just like on the golf course, people had limits on their patience to watch grown men wave swords at each other.

The duel was not supposed to be a chaotic brawl. It was seen as a gentlemen act with rules, seconds, formal challenges, apologies, negotiated settlements and rituals designed to make the violence seem civilized. As demonstrated by the esteemed gentlemen Sir Larry David.

Dueling was so common, it was almost a right of passage for prominent statesmen. Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Lord Byron, Otto von Bismarck and most great Russian writers of the 19th century were all involved in a duel at some point.

It wasn’t all fun and games. Thousands of people died from these duels, some of whom were fairly consequential. Aaron Burr, Évariste Galois and Alexander Pushkin all died from duels. They certainly would have made more contributions to politics, mathematics and literature had they survived.

The Decline and Consequences of a Duel Free Society

Dueling began to fall out of favor in the nineteenth century. As the government became more powerful, they were able to crack down on private violence. Instead of risking potential death, aggrieved parties had alternatives to deal with reputational harm. Courts, newspapers and mediation etc.

As dueling spread from an Aristocratic activity down to the Middle-class it transitioned from gentlemanly to reckless, archaic and ridiculous. A bit like what happened to Soho House.

As societies became more bureaucratic, commercial and legalistic, defending your reputation via violence became unnecessary. Refusing to fight somebody looked more civilized then cowardly.

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, dueling had mostly disappeared in Britain and North America, though it lingered in other parts of Europe. It really ended after WWI. Enough people died that, the idea of two men arranging a private honor contest seemed less cool.

While the effectiveness of dueling as a way to contain violence is debated, its removal has not helped foster a more respectful society. My experiences with the two strangers shows, that the impetuous to avoid violence relies on the insulted party accepting besmirchment. The legal system does a bad job of punishing medium-aggressions. To sue them for damages, they would have to tangibly damage me. This seems unfair.

They would not have behaved that way if they knew I was carrying a sword.

“Trigger fingers turn to Twitter fingers” — Drake

This is not a new phenomenon. People like to talk tough on the internet or when they feel protected either by physical distance or the legal system. Few of these people actually want to fight, they just want to insult people consequence free. This isn’t an internet thing either. Without trying to spoil School Ties (1996), the premise is that Brendan Fraser, a student at an expensive prep school, is poor and Jewish. Predictably some of the rich WASP kids engage in antisemitic behavior. When Brendan Fraser challenges the people responsible to fight him, of course none of them step up. He called them cowards and that was the end of that. How embarrassed their aristocratic ancestors must have been.

Now these are high school aged boys in the 1950s. Antisemitism was rampant and there was a certain safety in numbers dynamic picking on the only Jewish kid as a way to try to gain social acceptance. I’m not sure where on the spectrum of genius to madness of crowds, did people decide insulting people’s honor should come without bearing consequences.

Open Twitter and you’ll see endless angry hateful people out there without a proper outlet. You can extend that across social media, phone calls or even Op-Eds in your local newspapers. The further people get from the consequences of their actions the more emboldened they become. When people argue about free speech versus censorship, they seem to misunderstand the right to say anything does not mean you don’t face consequences.

Free Speech does not equal Consequence Free Speech. The government should not prevent somebody from posting things on the internet, but if they post something that is against the law, the government is well within their rights to punish them accordingly. A privately held social media company is free to decide what content they allow on their platform, but the more they play this role of arbiter, the closer they get to an editorial position, making them responsible for the content they do not censor.

There needs to be some rectifying force that keeps people in line, some societies do a better job than others. While in Japan, I noted that the legal system does not need to keep people in line because societal values are already engrained. Fighting serves an important role in hockey as a release valve, to allow teams to continue playing after they feel justice has been served. In leagues without fighting, you witness all kinds of cheap, underhanded and at times dangerous behavior, that referees are not able to rectify.

A few years ago it looked like dueling was making a comeback. Mark Zuckerberg was going to fight Elon Musk at the Coliseum. It would have been a monumental moment of the 21st century, but unfortunately the fight never happened. The stakes were too high, and I’m sure both men had teams of lawyers, PR people and other professionals trying to talk them out of it. Zuck and Musk don’t even hate each other. They were in a temporary spat, that they felt they could be settled the old fashioned way.

Violence is not the answer, but the more society tries to erase it, the more permissive it becomes of disrespectful actions that fall short of illegality. The more often this behavior occurs, the more it becomes normalized and that’s how we lose our civility.

We do not need more violence but we need better substitutes for it. Honor, shame, manners, reputation and social consequence all existed because law alone cannot govern every interaction between human beings. A society where nobody is ever afraid to be rude is not a peaceful society. It’s one where the decent are expected to absorb the indecency of everyone else.

We probably should not bring back dueling but people should twice before acting like they deserved to be challenged to one.

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Have you heard the story of Barney the Bureaucrat? Barney had established himself throughout his long career making a comfortable salary, while working reasonable hours, with minimal stress. Barney has a formal sounding job title and defined responsibilities, yet when new acquaintances ask them what they do for work, it takes them at least 5 minutes1.

This is not to say that Barney is lazy or shirks responsibilities. Barney’s role has been designed to make it structurally impossible for him to use his expertise to advance the goals of his organization above a replacement level. If Barney is doing a good job, nobody is complaining or is even aware of his existence.

When there are complaints, Barney has no decision making authority or role in shaping company policies, therefore he’s not held responsible, but likely gets hassled by his boss(es). Since there’s no reward in doing things well and only downside when things go awry, Barney’s goal is to not deviate from company policy, even when he doesn’t think it makes sense. There is no incentive to think critically. He just needs to follow the playbook and so long as there are few incidents, he can remain employed indefinitely. Perhaps with luck, Barney the Bureaucrat can gradually ascend to a more senior level. He still won’t have any role in shaping company policies, but at least he can earn a better salary and have a more impressive title.

Reading this, you might think I was describing a government position, but this applies to most jobs. This is rarely because of the employees themselves; the workforce is made up of Barney’s by design. This article will explain why, who benefits and how to avoid falling into a bureaucratic role (or enterprise).

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Bureaucracy: A Love/Hate Story

Bureaucracy gets a bad rap as a system of inefficiency, but in large organizations, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Big companies and governments intentionally design bureaucratic systems because they provide stability, reduce risk, and ensure continuity, even if this comes at the cost of innovation, agility, and individual autonomy. Here is why bureaucracy is deliberately embedded into large organizations and how it serves their long-term interests:

i. Centralizing Risk and Responsibility

One of the primary reasons organizations embrace bureaucracy is to centralize decision-making authority and limit the autonomy of lower-level employees. The idea is simple: If fewer people make decisions, there’s less room for error. To ensure individual employees cannot make their own choices, firms create rigid structures where decisions flow through layers of approval. This concentrates decision making into the hands of management.

Management is assumed to have a better understanding of the "big picture." Not to mention more experience, expertise, looks, Rolexes etc. Management makes the decision once, then sets it as the firms policy, until the next time they revisit that choice. Some firms frequently revisit and adjust policies if they aren’t working well but many don’t. Naturally this system will frustrate employees who actually care about doing what’s best for the organization, the customers or their colleagues.

These rigid approval layers make employees feel disempowered, because they are. The organization wants to ensure that they are insulated from individual mistakes. It’s impossible for any individual employee to understand every financial, legal or reputational ramification of a decision, but since decision makers generally sit at the top, in theory they should have the better grasp (the big picture).

This standardizing of processes and creating multiple levels of approval exists to mitigate the risk that employees behave outside the confines decision makers have created. The downside, of course, is that this approach stifles creativity and innovation. Lower level employees generally have more interactions with different departments, customers or constituents than upper management, giving them valuable insights about what works and doesn’t.

Bureaucratic systems handcuff their ability to act on these insights. Their job is to follow the playbook, not rewrite it. Most employees are better off this way, because star employees are rare.

ii. Star Employees are Rare & Expensive

In the 2011 film Moneyball the talented Brad Pitt portrays Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics Baseball team. In Major League Baseball (MLB) there is no salary cap and a wide disparity in the spending power between big market teams (New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox etc.) and small market teams. Oakland is a small market team, with a cheap owner. The film starts with Billy Beane attempting to convince his team’s owner to give him more money to retain one of his best players, Johnny Damon. They already lost Jason Giambi, another top player, to the Yankees and without Damon, they would have a large void to fill.

With much difficulty, he convinces the owner to authorize a higher offer, only to learn that Damon was still going to leave for the Red Sox, because they came in with another offer well above what Billy got. A few scenes later, Billy is in a room filled with player scouts and managers, attempting to find replacements for Damon and Giambi. After listening to the people in the room propose different players, Billy eventually out of frustration, tells them they need to accept the reality that there is nobody available as good as Damon or Giambi. Even if there were, they couldn’t afford them and they need to re-think their approach. The rest of the film chronicles the quest to field a competitive baseball team without star power. Without ruining too much of the film, they use analytics to spot undervalued players that fit their budget.

While Moneyball is a sports movie, Billy Beane’s plight is similar to what many hiring managers and recruiters face in large organizations. Despite many organizations claiming to be a family, the truth is, they are more like a professional sports team. Like Billy, managers have lofty department objectives, yet operate in a salary cap environment, dictated by their finance and HR departments. When the possibility of a new headcount opens and the job description is drafted, what is the first thing HR does? They benchmark what people in similar roles within the organization make and look for external benchmarks to try to determine going market rate to hire somebody with the target expertise required. While this is what virtually every HR department does, this approach almost guarantees they will not end up with a star.

A star is a known commodity. When the Oakland A’s lost Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi they were all-star players, considered to be among the best at their positions. The going market rate for players of their caliber was among the highest in the MLB, and well beyond what Billy could afford. This is why when they hit free agency, Billy had no chance of keeping them. If you are trying to hire a star, you won’t lure them with an offer that is consistent with what an average performer makes.

(for more on this see Why Benchmarking is Lazy: An Alternative to Benchmarking)

When a Linkedin post claims a company is looking for a star, you should ignore it. It should really say “We are looking for the best person who falls within these salary bands we’ve set for the role based on x-y years of experience!”. If somebody is a star performer, they will want to be paid like a star. The problem is, you won’t know if somebody is a star performer until after they join. Forking over a star salary for somebody who is only okay is the quickest way to ruin any financially constrained organization, whether it’s a professional sports franchise or business.

This is why organizations rarely make star level offers, unless it’s for the most critical roles ie. the executive level.

iii. Board Man Get Paid

“I am not a system player, I am a system!” — James Harden

There is a certain logic to this. Some roles a more impactful than others. The prevailing belief is that it’s impossible to win consistently in American Football, without a good quarterback (QB). It’s a very difficult role and few people can do it, which is why average QBs get paid more than top performers at other positions.

The CEO role is the most important job within a company and since each organization needs to believe they are hiring a star CEO, they justify going above market. For other roles, HR departments are rarely authorized to offer above market rates, making it difficult for them to land a star. Their best case scenario, is to try to find a diamond in the rough, just like Billy Beane. Unfortunately, HR can’t use analytics on potential hires like the Oakland A’s, therefore they can’t be confident they’ll consistently find and retain these future stars at scale.

Instead they try to recreate this performance in the aggregate by breaking complex jobs into smaller & standardized tasks. This makes it easier to find workers, and replacements can step in with minimal disruption. Instead of searching for unicorn candidates with rare skills, companies can hire from a larger pool of average candidates who meet baseline qualifications. While this reduces the upside potential of stronger performers, it ensures stability and continuity.

Rule of thumb to remember: The harder an employee is to replace, the less bargaining power the organization has. If you have tens of thousands of people who can step into a role immediately with no training, on a moments notice, it will be much easier to secure new hires at the market average price.

Since this approach requires more employees, you need more managers, levels of hierarchy and codified processes & procedures for these workers to follow. Great employees, by contrast, often thrive in environments where they have the freedom to figure things out on their own. They don’t need rigid guidelines or micromanagement to succeed. Unfortunately great employees like this are hard to find, more expensive to hire, and more likely to leave for better opportunities. Big organizations, faced with the challenge of hiring at scale, opt for the safer route: hiring competent but unexceptional employees who can follow instructions.

Bureaucracy: Helpful For Most People

This system actually works well for the majority. Most people are not star performers, so they benefit from the increased availability of standardized job opportunities. Managers and executives can justify their value by overseeing large teams, and bureaucracy adds more rungs to the corporate ladder, creating clear paths for advancement. Additionally, employees at all levels can often avoid individual accountability when things go wrong. Blame can be shifted to processes, other departments, external circumstances, or even the customers themselves. Over time, bureaucracy’s focus on minimizing mistakes rather than driving improvement erodes any sense of individual ownership.

For those who lack intrinsic motivation for their organization’s mission, this structure offers protection. The lack of accountability provides job security, as one under-motivated employee rarely disrupts the system. However, as more roles are filled with workers seeking minimal responsibility, the organization as a whole becomes less effective. Many companies unknowingly fall into this trap by designing jobs that are inherently unmotivating or that primarily attract candidates looking to avoid accountability. By cultivating a culture overly focused on risk reduction, they end up with teams dominated by "Barney the Bureaucrats" rather than an all-star squad capable of driving real progress.

Avoiding The Siren Call of Bureaucracy

If you are someone who cares about making an outsized impact on your organization, industry, or the world, the most important thing you can do is ensure that your motivation and drive are not stifled by a role designed to limit your individual contribution. Choose companies, career paths, and managers that empower star contributors. Your goal should be to identify the most critical role in the company that you can reasonably step into within a short to medium time frame. While this role might not immediately come with much autonomy, if you perform at a high level and make yourself indispensable, your company will likely do everything it can to keep you long-term.

When you identify meaningful areas for improvement within your organization, don’t just diagnose problems—come prepared with solutions. Better yet, start solving the problems and let your manager and others know that you’re working on them. Making your manager look good can be a valuable strategy if you trust they will reward your efforts. However, it’s even better if many people know you as the person who takes initiative and consistently adds value to the organization.

Over time, you will become too valuable to constrain, and people will naturally want to give you more autonomy. While this might not immediately lead to a higher salary, it will position you for more senior roles as they open up. In the nearer term, it could also grant you more influence over department or company policies.

Achieving this can take time and may require switching roles or companies several times before you find the right fit. Even then, your role or organization won’t be entirely free from bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is like weeds, it grows slowly beneath the surface until it eventually suffocates everything beautiful around it. Some bureaucracy will always be necessary, and there will always be a place for roles like Barney’s. However, don’t let the weeds outgrow the flowers.

Concluding Thoughts

Bureaucracy is a pervasive force, but it doesn’t have to define your career. To rise above its constraints, focus on solving meaningful problems, taking initiative, and demonstrating your value through action. Build a reputation as someone who makes things happen, and over time, you’ll position yourself as indispensable.

While bureaucracy has its place and will always exist, it’s up to you to ensure it doesn’t stifle your potential. Cultivate a career that aligns with your ambitions, and let your work bloom despite the system’s limitations. Don’t be like Barney the Bureaucrat, take action, and leave your mark.

If you are interested in maximizing your impact within your organization, check out this great article from

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From what Hollywood’s idols of masculinity have taught us, ambitious young men can only pursue four paths:

1. Become a capitalist unconcerned with civic strife —> Patrick Bateman

2. Become a capitalist concerned with doling out social justice —> Bruce Wayne

3. Become a nihilistic anti-capitalist, looking to break the system —> Tyler Durden

4. Burn out and give up. Let circumstances decide your fate —> NPC

Luigi Mangione has captured the internet’s collective attention these past weeks after he was identified as the prime suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Thompson was shot, at close range, outside the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel, on his way to a conference. Even before the suspect was known, there was a mixed reaction to his death. Most were naturally shocked that an executive, relatively unknown outside his industry, would be killed in such a manner.

On the other hand, a small but vocal group took the internet in celebration of his death. They saw his killing as retribution for what they consider a broken and corrupt US healthcare system. Since many people die or are severely debilitated because of this system, some saw Thompson, as a representative of healthcare, as deserving of his fate. I disagree with this line of thinking, but all I will say on the topic is: I would suggest not killing executives or anyone from companies you disagree with.

If the internet was not already invested enough, once Luigi Mangione was unveiled as the prime suspect, all hell broke loose. Today’s article will provide a recap of the best memes related to the event, and explain why LM was faced with a metaphysical decision and decided to go with the most extreme outcome. To become Tyler Durden.

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Who is Luigi Mangione and where are the memes?

Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of Thompson, is an Italian-American, the last group socially acceptable to make racial stereotypes about1. Once his name/photo were revealed and people found his online presence, the internet broke. Luigi is not what people would have expected. He comes from a wealthy family, was valedictorian at a prestigious prep school, and graduated from UPenn. Upon graduation he worked as a Data Engineer at tech company for a few years. None of these attributes would generally align with what people would expect from somebody who murdered a healthcare executive, with no direct association.

Besides some wonderful shirtless pics and internet comments, the most revealing item from his internet history was his list of rated books on Goodreads, including The Unabomber Manifesto (which he gave 4 stars, didn’t quite stack up against the 5 star rated Lorax). Mangione was intrigued by Ted Kaczynski, at one point sharing some online takes he found interesting, including "when all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive."

This made many wonder, why a rich, Dave Franco look-alike with a promising career and active social life, choose to do this? There are many speculations, depending on if you trust the internet, it either had something to do with a back surgery he had undergone a few years ago, some bad trip after taking drugs or mental illness. When Mangione was caught, he had his own Manifesto with him. This was posted to Substack by Ken Klippenstein. In the three page handwritten document, he writes:

“Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it.”

Irrespective to what led him to this, Mangione was angry with the system, and chose to do something about it. What were his choices?

The Paths available to the Young & Ambitious

Mangione had his choice between ending up as any of Patrick Bateman2, Bruce Wayne3, Tyler Durden4 or an NPC5 (For the uneducated among us, see footnotes to learn who these people are). As a wealthy, well educated, muscular and ambitious young man, Luigi’s had the rare possibility to become Bateman and Wayne; most can only choose between Durden or being an NPC.

Becoming Patrick Bateman would have been the easiest route for him. Mangione could have gone to work in his family’s real estate development business, securing a mid-six-figure salary by his late twenties. Any anger or frustration against the world, could have been taken out in secret, with various extracurricular hobbies. Mangione had the option to remain generally apathetic to what was happening in the world around him; he had enough money that none of it needed to matter. Like our pal Patrick Bateman, the greatest issues in his life could have been securing a table at Dorsia, or having the best business card. This is the path most people born into Luigi Mangione’s position take, which is why we never hear about most of them.

For those that are privileged but unwilling to turn a blind eye to the troubles of the world, they can pursue the path of Bruce Wayne. Wayne himself was once at a similar crossroads; if not for Rachel Dawes, he likely would have become Gotham’s version of Patrick Bateman6. Instead of traveling the world with his billions or slinging it with the fat cats, he overcame the trauma from his youth, and chose to save Gotham. He took his privilege and made life better for everyone, at his own expense. Instead of accepting the way things were, he decided to change them into the way he believed they should be. He managed to do this largely without murder (my apologies to Ra’s Al Ghul, The Joker and Bain).

If Wayne decided that Gotham was not worth saving, or if his vigilante efforts couldn’t improve the lives of its citizens, he might have embraced an alternate path. That path is Project Mayhem. Project Mayhem was an organized campaign to dismantle modern consumer culture and corporate dominance through acts of vandalism, destruction, and chaos. It is positioned as a rejection of societal norms and as a way to achieve liberation from materialism. It was the brainchild of its charismatic leader, Tyler Durden.

Little is known about Durden’s background before the events of Fight Club. From what we know, in addition to leading Project Mayhem and organizing Fight Club, he worked various jobs: as a projectionist, soap salesman, and part-time anarchist. Tyler embodies many desirable traits. Not only is he cool and attractive, but he also has agency. You can’t threaten Tyler with anything, because there’s nothing you can take from him that matters.

Like Wayne, he is an idealist, yet where they differ is that Durden does not believe that the current system is salvageable, and society needs to be re-made. This cannot happen through the conventional channels, therefore society in its current form needs to be deconstructed and rebuilt. This is done by destroying the pillars keeping the system in place. In Fight Club, Durden decided the banks and credit card companies were to blame, so he blew up the buildings containing the credit records, wiping the slate clean.

Conclusion

Luigi Mangione saw a problem with the US healthcare system and rejected the paths most people in his position would take. He didn’t slip quietly into the Bateman life of wealth and apathy, nor did he try to reshape the world as a Bruce Wayne. Instead, he chose Tyler Durden’s path of destruction over reform, action over inaction.

Disillusioned with a system he believed was beyond fixing, Mangione’s decision was as extreme as it was final. Where others vented their frustrations online or looked the other way, he took a drastic action. Perhaps he feels justified in doing so but instead of fixing this broken system, UnitedHealth will find a new CEO, the healthcare system will not meaningfully change any time soon and he turned himself into a cautionary tale. One that leaves us questioning not just his choices, but the systems that created them.

He chose the path of Tyler Durden but he forgot something crucial. Tyler Durden does not exist. He lives only in our minds. Tyler Durden is not going to jail, Luigi is. Keep this in mind the next time you try to decide between staying as an NPC or becoming Patrick Bateman, Bruce Wayne or Tyler Durden.

(Happy Birthday Brad Pitt and another special Substack reader)

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Dec.23 2024 Update:

For those looking to learn more about why Luigi Mangione did what he did, you should check out this insightful piece from who had spoken with Luigi earlier this year. Their conversation touched on some of the items I discuss in this article.

The Prism

The Riddle of Luigi Mangione

After the suspected killer of UnitedHeathcare CEO Brian Thompson was revealed to be Luigi Mangione, a bright young man from a well-to-do family, thousands of pundits rushed to tell us why he did it. I, however, held back, because unlike them I’d actually met Luigi, and I knew all was not what it seemed…

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2 years ago · 45 likes · 7 comments · Gurwinder

Prominent investor Marc Andreeson, went on Joe Rogan and parroted the perspective of seemingly everybody in the tech world, that this exercise was necessary and would accelerate progress within government and the broader economy. This view was not exclusive among Americans, quickly many in other countries began expressing a desire for politicians within their own country to attempt a similar exercise.

(Link to original Linkedin post)

Across the developed world, there is a feeling that governments have gotten too large, regulations overly burdensome. Not only does this cost tax payers a lot of money, it makes it difficult to do business. This is exemplified by the US fiscal deficit approaching 7% of GDP, among the highest since WWII, while most advanced economies are sitting between 2-4%. Canada is presently hovering closer to 1.5%, positioning it well relative to other large economies. The issue with Canada relates to it’s growth rate; with only 1.1% Real GDP growth in 2024, Canada is performing in line with France, Australia and the UK but well below the US (2.6%).

While I’m certain that a Canadian equivalent of DOGE, could find plenty of useless spending (we don’t need to make this about Trudeau’s ridiculous outfits), their emphasis should be on measures to grow that don’t involve running large deficits. Today, I nominate who I think would be the best people to run the Canadian DOGE.

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The Nominees

(In no particular order)

Disclaimer: I’m purposefully selecting people I do not know personally. If you do know me and are offended to have been left off this list, feel free to express your pleasure in the comments. Amounts are in CAD unless otherwise specified

A quick refresher:

• There are ~350,000 Canadian federal government employees (excluding military),

• The federal governments annual budget is around $500B per year

  • Half of spending goes to the provinces for programs, such as healthcare. Next big item is payments to individuals such as retirement, unemployment and/or child benefits etc. These programs represent about 30% of the budget.

• Canadian GDP is around $3 trillion ($2T USD) per year

  • Real GDP growth since Trudeau took office in 2015 has been around 1.8% (Excluding 2020-2022), which slightly lags the OECD average.

1. Kaz Nejatian (COO, Shopify)

There is nobody in Canada, or really, in any other country, quite like Elon Musk. Since we lack someone with experience launching multiple multi-billion-dollar companies across unrelated industries, let’s instead turn to one of Canada’s most successful tech companies: Shopify.

Founded in 2006 in Ottawa, Shopify powers e-commerce for millions of online stores worldwide. With annual revenues approaching $10 billion and 10,000 employees, Shopify generates an impressive $1 million per employee. The company was a pandemic darling, at one point reaching a market capitalization exceeding $200 billion (USD).

Founder and CEO Tobias Lütke is widely regarded as one of the greatest product visionaries in tech. Meanwhile, President Harley Finkelstein, a highly visible figure, regularly appears on CNBC and renowned podcasts. However, someone who flies relatively under the radar is Kaz Nejatian, Shopify's COO. He joined Shopify in 2019, just before the global pandemic. Kaz had previously worked as a lawyer, founded a fintech company, and served at Facebook, focusing on payments.

Kaz joined at an especially critical time as during the pandemic, Shopify experienced explosive growth as brick-and-mortar stores shut down. Once the lockdowns ended and they were no longer mission critical, they had right-size the org as the market adjusted. Since then, the company has become laser-focused on efficiency, implementing measures like showing the cost of meetings on calendar invites to foster greater accountability and increase product velocity.

The company spends $4.5 billion ($3.3B USD) per year, comparable to the budgets of federal departments like Citizenship and Immigration, Fisheries and Oceans, or Public Works and Government Services. One might imagine that if the Shopify team were tasked with the same mandates, they could achieve them for significantly less.

Kaz has previous government experience, having worked for Immigration Canada, where he helped design and implement Canada’s Startup Visa between 2011 and 2012. With his track record at Shopify—guiding the company through a critical period, improving profitability, scaling effectively, and accelerating product releases—Kaz would be a welcome presence in any government looking to streamline efficiency while delivering better results. I would imagine that Harley and Tobias would also be happy to pitch in.

2. Partners from Brookfield Asset Management

While the US version of DOGE is assembling an Avengers like crew of startup and Venture Capital people, this seems more like an job for Private Equity folks. Venture backed companies are generally less concerned with margins, as their focus is on market leadership and growth. Private equity owned companies are more mature and almost entirely focused on maximizing efficiency.

While most of the mega Private Equity firms originate from the US such as KKR, Bain & Blackstone, there are some great funds in Canada as well. Brookfield Asset Management is one of the largest asset managers in the world with nearly $1T (USD) assets under management. While they are active in many asset classes, they have a sizeable private equity portfolio worth over $100B.

Brookfield has recently made major acquisitions such as Nielson Holdings ($16B USD) and Johnson Controls' Power Solutions ($13B USD). They exhibited their abilities to streamline operations, with the turnaround of GrafTech International. They acquired the business in 2015, when GrafTech was only doing $45M USD in EBITDA. Within 3 years, they divested non-core assets, consolidated manufacturing facilities, improved quality and vertically integrated the business. These changes resulted in 2018 EBITDA of $1.2B USD.

While the government is much larger, surely Brookfield’s team could find easy wins to spend less while providing similar or better service levels. I’m sure partners from other firms such as ONEX & Novacap would be happy to lend a hand too.

3. John Ruffolo (Founder & Managing Partner, Maverix Private Equity)

To compliment the PE folks specialized on turnarounds and leveraged buyouts, to further spur the growth efforts, Canada DOGE should enlist somebody who has seen many companies effectively scale up and achieve ambitious growth targets. Achieving this without sacrificing margins or the spirit that made the company successful, is an even more impressive feat. Therefore I propose John Ruffolo.

Ruffolo is very well known in the Canadian tech scene having founded and led OMERS Ventures between 2011-2018. During his time at OMERS, he made many investments in companies which would later reach unicorn status or IPO (including Shopify). After leaving OMERS, he founded Maverix Private Equity, also takes minority positions in promising growing companies.

Fortunately, as I was writing this, Ruffolo went ahead and published his own thoughts on the matter in this article . He suggests that the next government enacts the following changes:

1. Fix Ottawa’s Spending Problem

   1. Start by cutting then focusing on how spending can enhance productivity and competitiveness globally

2. Reform the Tax System

   1. Lower taxes and with less complexity

3. Develop and execute a prosperity agenda

   1. Spurn innovation in the digital economy

Sounds like if called upon, he would serve.

4. Chamath Palihapitiya (Social Capital & All-in Podcast)

Before he became a podcaster and well known Silicon Valley investor with a collection of exquisite sweaters, or even an executive at Facebook or AOL, Chamath was a kid from Hamilton, Ontario. While born in Sri Lanka, Chamath spent his youth in Canada, shortly after graduating from Waterloo, he left for the promises of California.

As an investor, he has was early in SpaceX, Slack, Tesla and until last year was a minority owner in the Golden State Warriors. His activities have helped him forge relationships with leaders in the tech, finance and sports worlds. As such, Chamath knows Elon Musk and the people involved with the US version of DOGE, so he will be able to get an inside look of what’s being attempted in the US, and apply the best practices for Canada.

This would serve as a compliment to the efforts by the other people on this list. Given many of the views he has espoused on the all-in podcast, he would certainly be in favor of pro-growth policies but appreciates the value of the social safety net Canada offers and would be less willing to compromise. While the focus on the exercise should be on improving government efficiency, we want to ensure that Canadian’s can still get the assistance that they need.

Just make sure not to invest in his SPACs.

5. Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary & Robert Herjavec

Anyone familiar with Shark Tank or Dragons' Den knows these two gentlemen. Robert Herjavec is the affable investor who often loses deals to Mark Cuban, while Kevin O’Leary, or "Mr. Wonderful," is the sharp-tongued one known for pushing contestants to accept perpetual royalty deals.

Herjavec immigrated to Toronto as a child with his family, fleeing Communist Yugoslavia. His experience has shaped his belief in the importance of preserving Canada’s freedoms, fostering opportunity, and minimizing burdensome government regulations. After founding and selling a cybersecurity company in the 1990s, Herjavec launched The Herjavec Group in 2003, which is now valued at over $1 billion USD. Having recently stepped down as CEO, Robert has the time and expertise to mentor future generations of entrepreneurs.

He could even bring along his fellow Shark and Dragon, Kevin O’Leary. Originally from Montreal, O’Leary co-founded a technology company that he sold to Mattel in 1999, securing his initial fortune and recognition. He leveraged this success into ventures like Shark Tank, becoming a regular commentator on CNBC and other news outlets. A vocal critic of Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government, O’Leary ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 2017. Although he withdrew early, his platform focused on fiscal responsibility, including lowering taxes and reducing government spending. This plays well with the goals and motivations of DOGE and the rest of the roster I suggest get involved with the Canadian version.

The idea of a Canadian DOGE might seem ambitious, but with the right leadership, it could redefine how our government operates—cutting waste, boosting efficiency, and fostering economic growth without compromising the safety net Canadians value. By leveraging the expertise of leaders like Kaz Nejatian, Brookfield's private equity team, John Ruffolo, Chamath Palihapitiya, Robert Herjavec and even Mr. Wonderful, Canada could chart a new course toward smarter governance.

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The selection was small, but it was enough to get my hopes up. I scanned the shelves and saw the usual suspects: Capital by Thomas Piketty, a few titles by Paul Krugman, some Karl Marx classics, and other books in the same ideological vein. Despite my efforts, I couldn’t find a single book on Austrian economics. No Ludwig von Mises. No Friedrich Hayek. Not even a stray copy of Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose or anything that didn’t champion expansionist fiscal policy. The only remotely dissenting voice in the whole section was Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

To the bookstore’s employees, any school of thought against deficit spending simply didn’t exist. This felt odd, given the context. The world was still grappling with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the European debt crisis, where austerity measures were hotly debated and widely implemented. You’d think there’d be books explaining why countries can’t run endless deficits or print endless money right?

Maybe people like me just didn’t go to bookstores like this one for economics books. Or perhaps minimum-wage bookstore chain employees with blue hair were not in agreement with the Austrian school. I could never quite figure it out.

Fast forward five years. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted governments to patch up their economies with massive stimulus packages and money printing. At first, it seemed to work: spending and investing got a short-term boost but then inflation surged to levels unseen in decades. As inflation hit harder, political tides shifted. Left-wing governments were replaced by center-right or right-wing administrations. Then last year, Argentina elected Javier Milei, who ran on a platform promising drastic cuts to government spending and tearing down burdensome regulations.

To the surprise of many skeptics, early signs are indicating that Milei is delivering on his promises. The Argentine economy is showing signs of recovery, and his bold reforms have the world’s attention. Among those taking notes? Elon Musk in his new role as co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), vowed to bring a similar approach to the U.S. under President Trump’s second term. Musk, alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, promise to tackle wasteful government spending and gut regulations much like Milei has done in Argentina.

Critics, of course, are circling. Some doubt Musk and Ramaswamy’s ability to significantly cut spending, while others warn that even if they succeed, such measures could harm the economy. Based on the different schools of economic thought, what should we expect from such drastic cuts? Could this be the start of a new economic renaissance, or are we hurtling toward disaster?

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TL;DR:

The Austrian school has largely been dismissed as an economic theory because it’s seen as being incomplete; although it does a good job of understanding the causes of financial crises and inflation, its prescribed solutions are seen as impractical that no politician would ever try in real life. The thing is, no economic school is complete.

Javier Millei, has been enacting many policies consistent with the Austrian school, and has thus far brought down inflation, and improved the creditworthiness of Argentina. Elon and Vivek are going to attempt likely a scaled back version of this in the US. This could potentially save billions in wasteful spending and unlock growth, or make matters worse.

If you find this interesting, you should check out Millei’s interview with Lex Fridman

Introduction to Economics 101 by not an economist

My interest in Austrian economics began like most people. I was on a school exchange in Paris for a semester, I only knew 3 people in the city, my class schedule was far too empty and courses were only pass-fail. When I wasn’t taking weekend trips to Lisbon, Prague or Barcelona1, I had way too much time on my hands.

I decided to fill the time by reading Nassim Taleb. When he wasn’t picking unnecessary fights on Twitter, I found his insights compelling. In The Black Swan and Antifragile, Taleb made scathing critiques against the New classical and New Keynesian schools of economics. He argued they misunderstood statistics, relied on unrealistic assumptions, and were often disconnected from the real-world consequences of their bad decisions. These schools have heavily influenced government policy since the U.S. abandoned the gold standard in 1971.

At the time, watching a few Taleb videos on YouTube inevitably led to the algorithm recommending content on the financial crisis, European debt crisis, and other economic calamities. If you indulged long enough, you’d end up watching hour-long debates about government responses between 2007 and 2012. Some of these videos included Austrian economists (Austrians) dunking all over Paul Krugman, a well known Nobel Prize winning economist, who was highly dismissive of the Austrian school. He’s not alone, the Austrian school has long been disregarded as a framework to inform government policies.

I will now attempt to summarize some of the main economic schools if you are already familiar or don’t care, feel free to skip below to What is Millei doing? I am not an Economist, just a fun guy so I am making many over simplifications. Feel free to correct me/call me dumb in the comments below.

Classical & Neoclassical School of Economics

For most of human civilization the explanation for why you or your country was poor was because it was Gods will. Broke? God. Ugly? God. Fat? God but maybe you should eat a bit less this winter until Easter comes around.

This changed when a Scottish philosopher by the name of Adam Smith decided to scrutinize the concept a bit more closely. He summarized his thoughts in a book called The Wealth of Nations (1776). Long story short, he didn’t think God was solely responsible for distributing wealth. He came up with a bunch of theories and explanations that would form the basis of the study of Economics. His view and general recommendation was that unencumbered markets were better at facilitating commerce than governments, if one country was better at producing wine, they should trade with a country better at producing silk, this way each country can optimize their production. Basically governments should let the markets cook. An efficient, free trading market without the government intervention is the invisible hand. The invisible hand knows best. People consider this the start of capitalism.

Inspired by Smith, a bunch of other economic thinkers, wrote more on the topic and formed what became known as the Classical school of economics. They dominated the 18th and much of the 19th century, advocating for policies like reduced tariffs and freer trade. While these ideas led to significant economic growth, they weren’t without drawbacks. Every now and then the market would crash, unemployment would rise and inequality would grow. People did not like this. Evidently, they wanted the government to do something when they were starving. By the late 19th century, economists believed that the Classical school might have been incomplete.

The Neoclassical school built off the Classical school and had a different perspective on what drove markets but in terms of policy prescriptions, they weren’t all that different. They still thought that governments should not intervene in the economy. When the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, Neoclassical and Classical theories couldn’t explain the economic collapse, the extended period of high unemployment, or the stagnation that followed. Evidently the invisible hand liked to take extended vacations. Making the Neoclassical school also incomplete.

Not everyone agreed with the Classical and Neoclassical schools though.

Marxism

On the opposite end of the spectrum in the mid to late 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published two seminal works that rival Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in historical significance: The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867). These books delivered scathing critiques of capitalism, arguing that it was inherently prone to boom-and-bust cycles and increasing wealth inequality. Since this is what was pretty much happening, their assessment looked pretty spot on.

They suggested instead of relying on the invisible hand, the government should take a very active role in managing the economy, laying the theoretical foundation for what would later evolve into communism and socialism. This was appealing to labor movements and left-wing parties in Europe during the late 19th/early 20th century. In 1917, Lenin and the Bolsheviks established the first Marxist state in Soviet Russia by the mid-20th century, more Marxist-inspired governments proliferated globally.

It turns out, people didn’t enjoy living in these kinds of countries as much as Marx would have expected. Marxist may have reduced inequality, but it came at a very steep cost. We don’t need to get overly detailed but boom and bust cycles could still happen, many people died of starvation and restrictions on freedom were not limited to economic choices. Eventually former Marxist states introduced reforms that loosened government control and embraced elements of market economies. While Marxists believe the Classical schools were flawed, their own track record also left much to be desired. Turns out Marxism was also incomplete.

*Keynes Enters the Chat

The Great Depression killed the Classical and Neoclassical schools. Following their suggestions, US President Herbert Hoover did not want to intervene in the economy, allowing the prolonged economic stagnation for most of the decade. In 1936, a British economist by the name of John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Keynes said the Classicals and Marxists had some elements of truth but were in some ways very wrong. On the spectrum, Keynes was closer to the Classical schools, believing in Capitalism but trying to improve upon the shortcomings that could result in extended economic stagnation and high unemployment, if the government didn’t intervene.

According to Keynes, markets were not always efficient and the government could drive additional value to the economy beyond just adding demand. Governments should intervene when the economy sucks, run a deficit until the economy improves, then gradually get back to a balanced budget, until the next slowdown occurs. Governments took his teachings to heart and since then, pretty much every government runs at least moderate deficits.

The problem is, governments ignored the piece about reigning in deficit spending when the economy was not in a recession. Whether it’s right or left wing parties, governments always spend as much money as they can. Left wing governments generally spend more and raise taxes. Right wing governments might spend less but cut taxes, which still produces a deficit. If governments don’t want to run a deficit, they need to tax as much as they spend. Since people don’t like paying taxes, governments have a tough time raising them. Cutting spending is also unpopular so governments generally try to avoid that too. So they borrow. This leads to an accumulating and eventually unsustainable debt burden, that never gets paid back.

Turns out maybe the benefit of government spending has its limits, since governments can run multi-trillion dollar deficits for years and the economy can still crash. Once you’ve borrowed as much as you can and but don’t want to raise taxes or cut spending, what can you do? Print money.

Inflation, MMT & Austrian Economics

Inflation. If you are under the age of 35, you probably only learnt what this meant recently. Don’t feel bad, many politicians and economists advocating for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) didn’t know what this was either (more on them later). Inflation largely happens when the money supply is growing faster than the aggregate value of goods and services in an economy. Each currency is managed by a Central Bank, who’s job is to ensure there is enough money in circulation and the economy is stable. They do this by setting interest rates, and buying/selling certain assets.

When governments can’t finance their spending through taxes and borrowing, they turn to their central banks (Federal Reserve in the US). Since the US abandoned the gold standard in 1971, their is no theoretical limit to how much money the Federal Reserve can print. Even before abandoning the gold standard, many countries got themselves into trouble by printing way too much money, tanking the value of their currency and hurting their economies. Despite many historical examples proving this, a relatively new theory called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) called this into question.

MMTers believe that a country that issues its own currency, can always print more money so spending is not constrained by taxing and borrowing limits. Taxes are not for determining government spending; their purpose is to control inflation by reducing demand and redistributing wealth. Moreover, they believe that deficits don’t really make that much of a difference to the economy and inflation, since if the government has a deficit, the private sector will have a surplus. Instead of setting interest rates based on the boom and bust cycle, governments should instead have a federal job guarantee that will keep the economy at full employment, regardless of the business cycle. Politicians like Bernie Sanders, AOC, Elizabeth Warren and other progressive/left wing politicians latched onto MMT, because it gave them a blank check to spend as much money as they wanted. Well, turns out, pretty much everything they believed was immediately proven wrong when global inflation reached decade highs starting in 2022. People are very quiet about MMT these days. Now back to at least semi-respectable economic theories.

Unlike MMT, the Austrian school has a coherent understanding of inflation. Like the Classical schools, they are against centralized planning but their explanation for boom and bust cycle has to do with artificial manipulation of credit and interest rates by central banks. They are against government intervention in the economy, believing actions that stimulate the economy in the short term, will eventually lead to more harm in the long term because of misallocated resources. Unlike the Classicals, the Austrians had an explanation for why the depression of the 1930s happened, however their prescriptions on how they would solve the problem, were not that different. This is why although the Austrians may have helped enhance the understanding of the Central Banks role in the economy, no country have seriously considered following their policy prescriptions…until now.

What is Millei doing?

Javier Millei is a self described anarcho-capitalist and student of the Austrian school. He inherited a country with an annual inflation rate above 200%, the most the country had seen in decades, while GDP was contracting. Instead of trying to further intervene in the economy or print more money like his predecessors, Millei has gone the other way. In the 12 months since assuming office, Millei has done the following:

1. Megadecreto: Removed over 300 economic regulations, which includes rent controls, labor market restrictions, tariffs on imports etc. He continues to removes more each week.

2. Shrinking the Bureaucracy: Let go more than 5,000 federal employees (didn’t renew their contracts) and is reviewing additional areas for efficiency. Early in his term he reduced the number of government ministries from 19 to 8.

3. Spending reductions, Monetary policy & inflation control: Monthly inflation has dropped from 25% to 2.7%. As government spending and inflation have come down, the Argentinian central bank has cut interest rates from above 100% when he assumed office down to 35% as of November 2024.

Not only have these changes brought down inflation, they have thus far been well received by the markets. Argentinian bonds are now considered much more creditworthy, and Millei’s popularity among Argentinian’s, remains high2. Although his disapproval rate has begun creeping up in recent months, he still has an approval near or above his predecessors through 12 months which ranks well on a global basis.

Thus far Millei-conomics has proven successful in taming inflation and erasing the deficit but for his policies to be successful, he will need to also reduce poverty and deliver the GDP growth he’s promising. Otherwise his term will have been ineffective and the next government will simply undo many of his changes. Millei will need to show that he can do it quickly since October 2025 is when half of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and a third of the Senate seats will be up for re-election. If voters are not in favor of Millei’s changes, they can vote to severely restrict his power for the rest of his term.

In DOGE we trust?

Elon and Vivek are watching Millei’s actions closely, to see what they could replicate in the US. Keep in mind, the US is not Argentina. Sure the US is running a large deficit, but inflation isn’t remotely near Argentina’s, the economy is not contracting and US treasury bills are still considered among the safest assets. That being said, the federal government has 36 trillion dollars in outstanding debt. That is a lot. US GDP, the largest of any nation, is only 26T per year. The government needs to pay interest on that debt, which amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Unless the US can pay down this debt, this amount will grow, further contributing to the deficit.

Most reasonable people agree that this growing debt and deficit are problems, where they disagree is how to address it. Reasonable Democrats that don’t subscribe to MMT, will suggest raising taxes, primarily at the wealthy or corporations. We will almost certainly need to do this, but that alone won’t balance the budget. Some reductions will need to happen, the question is from where?

As you can see, there are no obvious places to cut. Useless government waste is not a line item on the budget. You could just eliminate social security and defense spending, but people don’t want to give those up, so Musk and Vivek won’t go far with that approach. The Federal deficit is presently around $1.5T, to balance the budget assuming revenue stays around the same, they would need to cut near this amount.

One of Vivek’s early proposals was to simply cut every government department in half. The federal government employs ~3 million people (not including military personnel and reservists), costing around $300 billion per year (does not include retired workers benefits). Assuming they could do this, which is highly doubtful, not factoring in severance costs, this would save $150B per year. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a large sum but only 10% of what they need. Where is that other 90% coming from?

Social security is difficult to touch, and when it comes to defense spending, it’s tough to see that coming down while the US is involved in multiple conflicts. Still, Elon has been tweeting a lot about the Pentagon’s inability to pass an audit for the past few years, and can’t account for their $800B+ budget. He’s also taken aim at hundreds of billions of dollars in improper federal payments as well as pandemic relief funds abuse. While there could be explanations for this, it’s possible when Elon and Vivek take a closer look, they might be able to eliminate tens to hundreds of billions in wasteful spending that won’t be noticed by anybody outside the bureaucracy.

If that’s the low hanging fruit, would they be able to reduce the number of government departments like Millei? They can only do so much with executive orders, they would need to get many of these measures approved by the congress or senate. Many of the items they would look to cut would impact Republican districts as much as Democrats. How likely are they to go through with reductions that hurt their own constituents? It’s not unheard of. Governments have managed to engage in deficit reductions before, it happened in the late 90’s under President Clinton and a Republican controlled Senate. The difference, is that the deficit is much larger than it was then, the US is running the largest deficit since WWII.

In any case, the reflex of DOGE is the right one, given the large deficit and growing debt levels. Can Elon & Vivek achieve a balanced budget in the 18 months they have given themselves? Almost certainly not. Could they enact some deregulation that could help unlock industry, similar to what Millei did in Argentina? Possibly yes. Although, I doubt higher tax revenue from increased economic activity would be able to increase enough to fill the gap. This is before we factor in the tax cuts Trump wants. My expectation is that any spending reductions will be offset by tax cuts. The only way the deficit will meaningfully come down, is if they can prove that getting government out of the way, will help unlock more growth in the private sector. Even if they manage to prove this, I doubt their changes will be noticeable within the first 18 months, possibly even before the end of President Trump’s term.

What they are doing is not really Austrian economics. They are unlikely to eliminate the Federal Reserve and as much as they cut, the government will remain very involved in the economy, even if not to the extent that Marxists or MMTers would like. This is because Austrian economics like all the other economic theories mentioned, work better as a principal/philosophy than an actual economic prescription. If an economy gets into a slowdown, the government will naturally step in. Virtually all countries have some form of unemployment insurance or welfare, so this would be automatic. The notion of waiting for the market to work itself in to find the long term equilibrium is not practical because as Keynes famously said “In the long-term, we are all dead!”. What we can hope for, especially if Millei and the DOGE team are successful, is that book stores might begin stocking books on Austrian economics3.

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Bruce Lee doesn’t fear the man who has practiced 10,000 different kicks once but one who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. This sounds sensible. Given that Lee has gotten into many more fights than I have he’s probably right. As a spectator how boring would it be go to a UFC event to see a fighter with only one move? Variety and contrast make life interesting and worth living. Trust me, I’ve lived the counter factual. Near the end of my university exchange, with funds running low I had to survive on lentils alone for a week. Wasn’t fun.

Specialists are important and have their place, but too often these people focus on their craft to the exclusion of anything else, creating a society of non-playable-characters (NPC1s) with no distinctive interests or hobbies outside of their domain. This is why we don’t like career politicians and most people can barely name a CEO; for them all they see is a rotating door of nameless, faceless empty suit/pant suits2. While a specialist will know more about their domain than a non-specialist, knowledge does not always translate into effectiveness, especially in endeavours featuring other humans. Highly successful people can often accomplish more outside their original domain than expert specialists.

Case in point: Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was successful as a newspaper editor, tradesmen, entrepreneur, politician, diplomat, scientist, inventor and author. Oh and he also played a major role in the American revolution and drafting the Declaration of Independence and US constitution. Not only did he accomplish all of this, he managed to have more fun than anybody else.

This article will summarize why varied interest and experiences are a super power, explain how Benjamin Franklin represented the ethos of America, why we need more people like him and which modern figures are most like Ben.

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If you work in a field that cannot be improved with creativity or unique perspectives, then trying new things won’t make you better at your job. This would apply if you work on a conveyer belt, as a crash test dummy or the person that writes Jason Staham’s film roles.

Otherwise if your objective is to create excess value (alpha) in your domain, you should pursue many interest or hobbies outside your profession. Not only can these other activities give you new ideas, they make you more interesting. As knowledge is increasingly easy to access, you need to do more than just share information; you need to offer wisdom.

What is wisdom? According to Chat GPT it’s the ability to make sound decisions and judgments based on knowledge, experience, insight, and an understanding of life's complexities. Based on that, the more varied situations you put yourself in, the wider pool of experience you’ll be able to draw from, allowing you to make unique connections. If you can’t think or do something new or different, what replacement value do you offer above an AI chatbot?

This is why in the future if you want to add value, you need to decide which end of the barbell you want to occupy: Be the most knowledgeable person within your respective domain or have average knowledge in many domains? If you don’t fall squarely in either bucket, your job is at risk of getting replaced by AI.

This assumes you are in a position where skills or knowledge can lead to better performance. If your role is based on appointment, like politics, you can still hope to coast by with charisma, nepotism or relying on favours/begging the right people for the position. People will need to fill these roles but ideally, they should be made up of people who already experienced successes in other domains. A bit like our favourite founding father Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin’s Importance to America

1) Early Beginnings & Tradesmen

Benjamin Franklin ended up in America because of intolerance: religious and economic. His father, Josiah Franklin was a silk dyer at a time when there was insufficient demand. In 17th century England you had to do long apprenticeships and get permission to take on a trade. Josiah had a large family to support and couldn’t afford to live without a paycheck while starting a new apprenticeship, so he moved to Boston to sell candles. Nobody knew it at the time but this just cost England one of the brightest minds of the 18th century. Their loss was America and the world’s gain.

Despite early signs of intellect, his father decided against sending him to Harvard because of a combination of the cost and believing the clergy would not be the best place for Benjamin. Ben instead went into a trade: printing. He started working for his brother as an apprentice. With his wit and incredible work ethic, he quickly learnt the trade and won the respect of his colleagues. Like many printers, his brother James decide to also found a newspaper, The New England Courant.

James wouldn’t publish his brother’s stories therefore Benjamin began submitting anonymous stories pretending to be a widowed woman by the name of “Silence Dogood”. With nothing but his imagination, Franklin did a good enough job convincing people that he was a middle-aged woman living in on the country side, despite never stepping foot outside of Boston. Anon Twitter trolls were different in those days. After realizing there wasn’t going to be enough opportunity working for his brother, he ran away, ending up in Philadelphia, working in another print shop before eventually starting his own (Notice a trend in this family)?

BF’s upbringing differed from many of the founding fathers since he was born middle class while most were born wealthy such as Washington, Jefferson and Hancock. Franklin’s held hard work and talent in greater esteem more than the social class somebody was born into. He was quite against anything that would resemble elitism, believing strongly that it was preferrable to have a society with more social mobility. This was not a view held by many of the founding fathers and politicians at the time. While he was not alone in believing this, Franklin ardent belief was always among his most important tenants while drafting and debating the constitution.

2) Entrepreneur, Author & Community Organizer

Franklin eventually opened his own print shop and along with it a newspaper the Pennsylvania Gazette, which grew to become among the most read in the colonies. He also printed books, including one he wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac. Poor Richard’s Almanac was among the best selling books at the time, selling about 10,000 copies per year (when there was only about 1 million people living in America). It included all kinds of helpful advice & maxims. The book sales were lucrative but his wealth largely came from a franchise model that he created for his business, creating possibly the first countrywide media conglomerate in America at the time.

If you aren’t impressed by that, he also founded several societies, the first public library in the country, first volunteer fire department, the University of Pennsylvania and contributed to many civic improvements to the city of Philadelphia. He eventually decided that running a nationwide media company no matter how lucrative, was taking up too much of his time so at the age of 42 he retired. Franklin sold the business to his partner, giving him an annual royalty/dividend and retired from business. Now with a steady source of income, and time on his hands, he had the conditions to make the leap from local hero to international icon.

3) Amateur Scientist, Inventor & Diplomat

“There never was a good war or a bad peace!”

Despite not going to university, Ben Franklin was an avid reader and deeply scientific in his thinking. Unlike many academics, however, he didn’t care much for theory; his focus was on the practical applications of science. He constantly conducted experiments and sought explanations for why things happened. This practical approach made him among the most important figures of the enlightenment era. He demonstrated electricity was a single fluid that could move between objects and that lightning was just a large-scale manifestation of this.

Before conducting the famous kite experiment, he had already submitted his theory to the science authority in England. At the behest of the French monarchy, it was translated into French; they thought it was the coolest thing ever. Eager to prove it, they started throwing rods over different buildings. When lightning struck, they proved Franklin’s theory. This happened months before Franklin’s kite experiment, but due to slow mail delivery, he only learned about their success afterward.

The discovery made him an overnight sensation in Europe, making him the first American international icon and American European intellectuals considered worth listening to. This newfound celebrity, made him a welcome dinner guest across the old continent. He had no shortage of topics to discuss. When not experimenting or making scientific observations, he invented items like the Franklin stove, the flexible catheter, and bifocal glasses. The man had Daniel Day-Lewis range.

Franklin’s fame granted him a stature that commanded respect. Despite France’s initial reluctance to support American independence, Franklin’s charm and intellect convinced them otherwise. When Franklin arrived in France, crowds lined the streets as if he were Bono, Kanye, or Taylor Swift. This admiration wasn’t limited to commoners; his spectacles and fur cap even influenced aristocratic fashion. Franklin regularly met with King Louis XVI and other key figures, gradually persuading them to provide gunpowder, troops, naval support, and funds. France became the first nation to recognize the United States as an independent country. Without French support, America would not have won the war—a remarkable achievement for a nation France initially hesitated to aid.

Franklin’s diplomatic style set him apart from his contemporaries. While John Adams and others preferred aggressive ultimatums based on realism, Franklin understood that approach wouldn’t work with the French. Instead, he adopted a patient, steady strategy that appealed to both realism and idealism. His understanding of French culture and his Enlightenment ideals made him the more effective negotiator. The other American diplomats, often inefficient and overly aggressive, only pushed the French away, leaving Franklin as their preferred contact.

If Franklin hadn’t led these negotiations, French support might have been minimal, or the Americans might have made concessions that would have hindered the creation of an independent republic. Franklin, while naturally conciliatory, knew when to stand firm and when to compromise. This wisdom was evident in his dealings with the French, the British, and even during debates over the U.S. Constitution. Franklin believed that refusing to compromise showed a lack of intelligence, as it reflected an unwillingness to admit the possibility of being wrong or to adapt when circumstances changed. He often accepted imperfect solutions that advanced progress, knowing he could revisit unresolved issues later. Preferring the good over the perfect. With this approach, assuming you are dealing with intellectually honest individuals, you can always return to the table and say, “We tried it this way; it didn’t work. Now let’s try another approach.”

Too often in politics or business, people refuse to compromise or support measures introduced by opposing parties, viewing such actions as weaknesses rather than strengths. The sign of great thinkers, is they understand the limits of their knowledge. Check out the Dunning-Kruger effect. The DK effect was not published during Franklin’s time but he was skeptical of people or institutions who believed they could not be wrong, whether this be Monarchs or Religions.

Conclusion

Benjamin Franklin’s life reminds us that cultivating diverse skills and pursuing varied interests, can give us a unique ability to solve real-world problems. Specialists will always have their place, but the ability to bridge domains, think creatively, and adapt to new challenges is what makes someone truly irreplaceable. As automation and AI reshape the job market, the Franklin ethos of curiosity, adaptability, and breadth of experience becomes even more valuable.

While we’ve explored modern figures with impressive achievements, none come close to Franklin’s unparalleled success and impact on the world. His contributions as a scientist, inventor, statesman, and philosopher shaped not just the United States, but the very Enlightenment ideals that continue to guide humanity. Franklin wasn’t just great because he excelled in many areas, he was great because he sought to improve himself and the world around him.

Whether you aim to master one kick or explore 10,000, the key is to maintain a mindset that values growth, experimentation, and wisdom. The future belongs to those who can connect the dots across disciplines, inspire others, and lead with both idealism and pragmatism. So, whether you’re in science, business, art, or diplomacy, ask yourself: how can you think and act more like Franklin? Because in a world increasingly dominated by AI and specialists, the ultimate differentiator is a mind that dares to wander.

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If you haven’t already stopped reading, that last line was a joke; my writing coach told me I needed to start with better hooks (although the P’Nut thing did happen). As a way to get it out of my head, hopefully permanently, in a departure from regularly scheduled programming, this post will be a medley of short musings on what happened in last week’s US presidential election.

I am sure you are sick of reading about the election, let this be the last thing you read about it, then we can all go back to worrying about important topics such as fall weather, creating shareholder value and how to survive the holiday season. Like with anything published from Serviceable Insights, my hope is you will learn something new/interesting, or at least find my writing enjoyable.

If I missed the mark on this post, there’s always next week.

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Lukewarm US Presidential Election Takes

Donald Trump won the US presidential election last week making him the Presidential elect until inauguration day, January 20th when he reassumes office. There are millions of hours worth of content discussing his first term, January 6th, the indictments, his political comeback, and the campaign against President Biden and VP Harris. You can find better perspectives on all of those topics elsewhere, instead here are some interesting themes that stood out to me from the election:

1. Republicans have re-taken the Hispanic vote

With 40% of the Hispanic Vote, President Trump had the highest share from this voting group for Republicans since President George W Bush in 2004. W beat his opponent John Kerry by 35 electoral votes and the popular vote by 3 million, which was the biggest popular vote margin for a Republican this century, until 2024.

This 40% is meaningful because Presidents Reagan and H.W Bush, won the Presidencies from 1980-1988 in relative landslides, yet failed to reach this mark. McCain, Romney and Trump in 2016 & 2020 all failed to reach above 31%, Hispanics are the second largest ethnic group in the US, representing ~20% of the population.

Hispanic voters make up a much larger percentage of the population than they did when Reagan and HW Bush won and they will continue to make up an increasing percentage of voters. If Republicans can maintain or further close the gap with Democrats, they become increasingly competitive. Republicans historically outperform Democrats with White voters by a margin of 5-10%, since Whites are the biggest Demographic group, with the largest voter turnout %, Democrats need to win big with the other ethnic groups.

If the Democrats can’t win Hispanic voters by a wide margin, they suddenly become uncompetitive in swing states with large Hispanic populations, such as Florida & Arizona. How did Trump manage to do well with Hispanic voters?

2. It’s the economy AND immigration stupid!

"It's the economy, stupid." — James Carville, political strategist to Bill Clinton, 1992

There are many motivating factors that get people to vote, the highest on that list concern safety and the economy. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs dictates that physiological needs (air, water, food, shelter) and safety (financial & personal security) are the two first rungs on the ladder. Without these, you can’t focus on the rest. If people don’t feel confident they can pay their rent or safely walk the streets at night, other issues are irrelevant. This is exactly how Latinos and the American electorate feel.

For all of Trump’s flaws, he successfully convinced enough voters that he would do a better job managing the economy and getting the border under control. Border security was among Trump’s most ardent promises since he entered politics. He began his bid for the 2016 Republican nomination by promising to build a wall between the US and Mexico, while at the same time referring to illegal immigrants coming from Mexico as bad hombres, r@pists and murderers (and some fine people).

Who would have thought 8 years later, 40% of Hispanic voters would choose him? Stats can be a bit murky when it comes to this topic but according to the government, the number of border apprehensions, which is a proxy for the volume of illegal immigrants, have effectively doubled since President Biden took office.

(chart is from New York Times, sourcing US Customs and Border Protection)

In early 2021, Biden anointed VP Harris to address the root cause of illegal immigration between the US and Mexico, some dubbing her the “border Czar”. Democrats and their voters might not liked the idea of building a wall between the US and Mexico but their alternative solution, appeared to be do nothing. The economy was the most important issue for voters overall, but immigration was still high on the list, especially for people voting for Trump. If you are on the wrong side of key issues for voters, you will have a difficult time getting them to vote for you.

3. Paid media advantage didn’t matter

"We now have a political situation where billionaires are literally able to buy elections and candidates… Democracy is not about billionaires buying elections." — Bernie Sanders, 2015

For the past few years, marketing and sales executives have been lamenting the declining effectiveness of advertising on Google, Linkedin, Facebook etc. Smart companies have understood that they need to earn traffic and recognition other ways or their business won’t be viable. The Democrats had to learn this the hard way.

Despite having a big spending advantage, somewhere between 2-3 times, the Democrats failed to capitalize and pick up any of the key swing states. This is where you need to make gains to win elections. I’m certain they paid handsome fees to expensive strategists but this only added to wasted spending.

The money advantage could not overcome the fact that they had the wrong message, candidate or campaign strategy; likely a combination of all three. They found themselves in a difficult spot with voters when it came to immigration. Decades high inflation hurt their credibility when it came to the economy. These were going to be hurdles to overcome regardless of the candidate. Biden dropping out as late as he did, gave Harris a short window to win over voters. Given her high unpopularity ratings prior to getting the nomination, she was facing an uphill climb. Harris likely needed a flawless campaign to win but she didn’t have that.

What does a successful Trump Presidency look like?

Anytime a politician runs for office, they make lofty promises during their campaign but even with the best intentions, few will come to fruition. In the case of President Trump, we should not expect him to be heavily involved at a policy level. Prior to the 2016 election, former Ohio Governor John Kasich, the final candidate for the Republican nomination, claimed his team was approached to be Trump’s running mate. When making the offer they promised they’d make him the most power VP ever, that he would have two important mandates: foreign & domestic policy. Kasich asked what Trump was going to do? To which they replied: “Make America great again”2.

In any case, Mike Pence joined Trump on the 2016 Republican ticket before going on to win the election. Whether you believe Kasich’s account or not, President Trump seemed to delegate many of the important policy matters to trusted advisors and/or family members. Pence was replaced by JD Vance, but some of these trusted advisors will be back for his second term. He picked up some new people along the way, such as Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy Jr. Some of these people have made many media appearances outlining what they would aim to accomplish with a Trump victory.

A lot can go wrong during President Trump’s second term in office, but if we were to take an optimistic view, based on some of his promises, what would success look like?

1. Foreign Policy

   1. A successful end to the Russia-Ukraine war

   2. Lasting cease fire between Israel & Hamas with the return of the Hostages

   3. At least temporary de-escalation of tensions across the Middle East3

   4. Avoid hot war with China

2. The Economy

   1. Inflation remains between 2-4%

   2. Meaningfully lower Government spending

   3. Minimal deficit expansion4

3. Domestic Policy

   1. Return the rate of illegal immigration to pre-2021 levels

   2. No meaningful escalation in racial tensions or culture wars5

If President Trump can achieve most of these items, it will position VP Vance or some other Republicans for another 4 years in office. If not, perhaps they will be the ones going back to the drawing board looking for a way to win in 2032. Regardless of who you voted for and where you live, you should hope that that Trump and his team can deliver on these items, as it will be better for America, and likely the world (hopefully).

I’m interested to see how the Democrats respond to this defeat. Will they do serious introspection, adjust their platform and run an open primary free of manipulation from super delegates? Or will they simply chalk up the defeat to electoral college, racism, sexism or the common myriad of excuses they make when they lose? My hope is that it will be the former. Their economic policies probably won’t change much but they will likely move closer to the center on issues like immigration. I hope they at least stop killing animals otherwise the combination of a successful second President Trump term and their own failings might hand the Republicans another election.

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Honesty and integrity have been foundational values in culture, religion, and education long before the Enlightenment, shaping moral frameworks and ethical principles across civilizations.

The truth is essential because it grounds us in reality, enables authentic relationships, sound decisions, and let’s us agree on genuine progress. Without trust actions, beliefs and feelings become misguided, leading to consequences detached from reality.

Despite the importance of honesty and sharing accurate information, people are not always truthful. Some of this has to do with human biases, others because people are able to avoid information that contradicts their narrative. In any case, our society is no longer centered on a fact-based objective truth.

This article will discuss why most people don’t even realize when they are dishonest because of the failure to distinguish between the subjective & objective truth. This is further exacerbated because people don’t trust the media anymore and there is an absence of consequences for lying.

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The Subjective & Objective Truth

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." — John 8:32

Each person lives in their own reality, made up of millions of thoughts, feelings, sensations and memories. Our reality is shaped by our experiences, and, like snowflakes, each person's reality is unique, as no two human experiences are ever identical. This is why, depending on where we live and how we spend our time, our reality might look very different than others in very different circumstances.

As real as our experiences feel to us, they remain subjective since they are seen and interpreted through our own lens. Even when we are trying our best to be objective, we frequently interpret things imperfectly because of the many biases we face. Daniel Kahneman (RIP), popularized many of these biases including the concept of the experiencing and remembering selves. The way we remember an activity will differ from the way we interpret it as it happens. This is why our personal reality is at best an imperfect reality, and this is before you introduce other people.

Humans are social creatures, we live in communities and rely on one another for survival and progress. This co-dependence means that in addition to our personal reality, there is also a collective or universal reality, which depending on how you look at it, is the summation or average of all the personal realities. You might believe that you are a great dancer but if everybody else at the nightclub thinks you are awful, you would only be talented in your personal reality.

This is of course a subjective example, if you danced in front of enough people or had the opportunity to plead your case, perhaps you might convince some of them to see things your way. When it comes to subjective matters, like dancing talent, the way the “truth” is determined, is an average of collective person realities. Opinions could also change over time, therefore there is at best only a temporary truth. This is why famous painters continue to grow in popularity after their death and there is still some hope for the Australian Olympic Break Dancer.

On the other hand, some topics are not a matter of opinion. If it’s raining outside, your beliefs/personal experience won’t change that. These objective matters, are factual, measurable and should be the same regardless of which person observes them. This works great in theory, unfortunately this rarely happens, because our personal biases are powerful.

Why People Don’t Trust The Media

You might wonder why I spent 500 words explaining something so basic. I did this because people regularly mistake subjective matters as being objective. How often have you seen a Newspaper headline mention something along the lines of “TV Show Y named best ever!” or “Country Y named most dangerous!”. If you bother to read the article, you’ll usually see within the first few lines something like “Survey data from Consulting firm ABC indicated…”. There is nothing objective about that statement. If you are surveying respondents, you are simply taking a pulse of people’s subjective experiences, which could be based on, absolutely nothing1.

The article could be objective if they choose to cite actual verified crime data, but few readers or journalists do enough basic vetting to to asses the quality of such claims. If the message confirms what they already believe, they will generally support it, if it violates the story/narrative they built, they will ignore it or look for ways to discredit it (confirmation bias). This is why, even when there is an objective truth, it is difficult to build a consensus for everybody to acknowledge it.

So far, this should all be fairly uncontroversial but there was a noticeable blurring of the lines between the subjective and objective truths. In The Gray Lady Winked, author Ashley Rindsberg, posits that the New York Times (NYT) for decades has prioritized narratives aligning with specific agendas or political sympathies over strictly objective or fact-based reporting. This has not only misinformed their readers but also shaped world events. Rindsberg has gone as far to charge the NYT of trying to actively rewrite history in recent years based on the political ideologies of their journalists and editors. His book is a critique of the NYT but the same could be written for any other major news publication.

This is problematic and highly detrimental to society. Dating back to the 18th century, newspapers were considered the “Fourth Estate”. Referring to their role as a powerful force in society, to keep the other three traditional branches of power: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners, in line. The media is meant to play the critical role in reporting and revealing the truth. With this, those who try to distort the truth can face the consequences of public scrutiny and/or the penal system. The media has become far more tribal in recent years. Instead of trying to report the objective truth, they only seem interested in speaking truth to power when that power disagrees with them politically.

The mainstream news media no longer has a monopoly on the public’s attention or the truth. People can get their news from any source they want. Whether that’s Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, Joe Rogan or a stranger on TikTok. Even amongst these different sources, their competition isn’t just each other but also Netflix, Youtube, Instagram, or anything that competes for their viewers attention. Attention is their currency, since all of these mediums are advertiser or subscriber sponsored. The truth isn’t always interesting, so they need to sensationalize. People only want to consume content that reinforces their position, so journalists only feed them what they want. This unfortunately comes at the expense of the truth.

Joe Rogan or Call Her Daddy can survive whether or not their viewers think they are accurately reporting current events, since that is not the business they are in. They are entertainment shows, and are both excellent in their own way. The traditional mainstream media on the other hand, are trying to behave like an entertainment show under the guise of informing their viewers. CNN’s streaming platform, CNN+, launched in early 2022, lasted only one month. The platform, which had invested heavily in original content and high-profile hires like Chris Wallace and Kasie Hunt, struggled to attract viewership, with reports indicating fewer than 10,000 daily users. In 2024, traditional media isn’t doing a good job of telling the truth or attracting viewers. This is not a winning strategy. This is why President Trump and Vice President Harris are going on Joe Rogan and Call her Daddy; people want to be entertained and are less concerned with the truth.

The Absence of Consequences

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never. These allegations are false.” — Bill Clinton, 1998

Why don’t people care about the truth anymore? It’s because they can find somebody that will argue that the so-called objective truth is nothing but a bias filled, subjective truth masquerading as objective. There are countless content creators on every platform, offering the specific flavor of truth you are seeking. Whether that’s conspiracy theories, fear porn, or complete nonsense, if people are looking for it, somebody will provide it. Even worse, these voices can get amplified all over the internet, giving life to ideas that would never otherwise see the light of day.

This is an unfortunate consequence of giving everybody a voice; the internet has done this. Some believe the solution is to repeal Section 230, which protects Facebook and the other social media companies from liability related to user generated content. This might help eliminate some conspiracy theories and weird content from the web, but this would now force Facebook and the social media platforms to play an even more active role as the arbiters of the truth. While some people say they want this, but they have not considered the second order consequences.

In the 2012 election, Facebook was accused of suppressing content related to Republican nominee Mitt Romney. They were subsequently accused among many things, of overcorrecting for the 2016 election, some calling for them to have more oversight on the content shown on their platform. Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook was pressured by the FBI to suppress the Hunter Biden stolen laptop story prior to the 2020 election. After Elon Musk bought Twitter, he exposed what was called the Twitter files, which also exhibited the extent to which government officials were trying to pressure the social media platform to censor certain types of information. People might think repealing 230, will force the social media companies to take more editorial control, and it might but that will also come with the government’s ability to limit speech they don’t agree with.

The solution is more complicated than that. People need to believe that the objective truth is important. The only way I see that happening is for there to be consequences for lying. This should come in the form of public scrutiny but even when the truth does come to light, with intense competition for the public’s attention, and their continually shrinking attention span, this alone is not a major deterrent. They might be angry the moment they learn about it, but quickly move on to another scandal. This creates the wrong incentives since what you stand to gain, is much greater than what you can lose. This is why the Instagram generation feels no shame staging photoshoots in fake private jet hangars.

It is unclear where these consequences will come from. Perhaps people will need to get burned by following the wrong politician or a TikToker that convinces them they can steal money from ATMs free of consequences. Right now at least, people are not interested in the objective truth and the media is not trying to give it to them. This is why at this current moment, we live in a Post-Truth society, and we will likely remain here for a while.

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The Latte Legislator by Ben Saltiel

“Two large donkey milk lattes and an Americano for Michelle!” The Barista called out.

While placing the cups at the edge of the counter, they took a quick glance at the clock. It was just after 9AM, only 30 more minutes until the morning rush was finished.

The usual crowd of regulars rolled like waves of the ocean, unrelenting.

“Hey Bari, we’re running low on lids. I am going to run downstairs to grab some more, just in case. Cover the register until I’m back?”

The Barista quickly slid through the narrow space between counters and started taking orders.

The duo of creepy old guys that came each morning were waiting. The one that never tipped, ordered a cortado with charcoal milk, the other an espresso allongé. Lucky for Barista both orders were on the same bill and paid by the old creep that did tip. He added the customary 35% on top of the $82.41 owed for the two beverages and smiled.

“Thank you gentlemen! It will be right up at the counter shortly! Help yourself to some water at the back in the meantime”

The Barista quickly placed two cups under the spouts of the espresso machine and tapped the necessary buttons. The machine started grinding and dripping the liquid into the cups. The Barista grabbed the carton of charcoal milk, added it to a frother, pressed the button to start it before turning to the next customer.

It was the friendly young woman that worked in marketing or whatever who said,  “Hey Bari, it’s busy this morning. What time did you get here? 6? I hope things calm down for you soon. Could I please get a large iced skinny vanilla latte with ivory cream? Thank you! Yours are always the best!!”

“Sure thing! The Barista said as they whirled the payment terminal screen towards her. “That will be $53.21.” The Barista returned to grab the cups from the machine, put them on the counter, and called out “charcoal cortado and Americano for Dale!”

The next forty-five minutes continued like this, The Barista barely noticed. They had entered a flow state, each movement and interaction was perfectly calculated, not one second was wasted and they skillfully kept the line moving, while pleasing the customers. It felt like hours and days could fly by without noticing when they were in this state. 

As the morning rush dissipated, the Barista’s mind began to wander. Six years working at the cafe, almost two entire degrees. With graduation coming up in a few months, it was finally time to decide the next move. Continue on to a PhD or enter the job lottery? They weren’t really passionate about anything they were studying, and the prospect of school for another 8 years didn’t really appeal to them. On the other hand, they’ve heard so many horror stories of friends getting stuck with awful jobs from the lottery. You can only enter the lottery twice and if you hate your career, there’s nothing you can do about it. This uncertainty made them nervous. Thinking about the future always made them uncomfortable but deadlines were inflexible and coming up.

As this silent debating continued in their head, the door opened and in entered a well-groomed middle aged man wearing a suit that was neither cheap nor expensive and a watch that was only borderline obnoxious. He approached the counter and asked:

“Would you happen to be The Barista?”

The Barista cautiously confirmed that they were.

"Great, my name’s Martin Anderson, but you can call me Marty. I’m with the Mayor’s office. I’ve been hearing great things about you lately. I wanted to run something by you, do you have a few minutes to talk?”

The Barista, not sure what to make of this, replied “The Mayor’s office? Well, happy to talk but my break isn't for another hour. Any chance we can speak then?”

Marty “Yes, yes of course, not a problem. I’ll come back around 11:30. But in the meantime, any chance I can get a peach espresso?”

After Marty had left, The Barista could not help but wonder what he wanted to talk about. The Barista was not politically engaged. Of course they voted, in some national elections, if they could find a friend willing to go to the polls with them. Besides signing a few online petitions people sent them, they never did anything that should have caught the attention of the mayor's office. What could they want with a twenty eight year-old with degrees in AI Ethics and Climate Resiliency Science that still lived at home with their parents?

The hour seemed to fly by, The Barista’s replacement came for their shift, and in walked Marty.

It was a nice day, they chose to sit outside on the cafe’s terrasse.

Once they sat down and Marty began with some small talk. “Excellent weather for this time of year. A very cool 95F (35C) for November is rare. It probably helps that they aren’t doing any construction in this part of the country .”

The Barista nodded along politely, still not sure why Marty wanted to meet.

He then suddenly looked intently at The Barista and said “As you know, the Mayor, who has been in office for the past four years announced that they weren’t going to seek reelection when their term ends in a few months. The Mayor wants to spend more time with their family and feels that they have accomplished all that they wanted while in office.”

Martin took a quick glance over his shoulder then leaned in and whispered “It also doesn’t help that their approval ratings have been in single digits for the past two years and none of the donors are willing to fund another campaign but primarily they are stepping down for family reasons.”

The Barista nodded along, still not understanding what this had to do with them.

“The rest of the team and I saw this coming. We are assigned to work in the Mayor’s office, regardless of who wins, but naturally we would rather have a mayor who we feel will best represent the city's interests.”

The Barista agreed that it made sense. A couple of regulars passed by and exchanged greetings with The Barista as they walked into the coffee shop.

Marty took another quick look around to make sure that nobody was listening in.

“Given the current state of the economy, crime and the city's own financial difficulties, we have had a hard time getting the more obvious choices to run for office. As a result we’ve been running some polling data, and we uncovered some startling findings.”

Marty paused and stared at The Barista, enticing a comment.

The Barista playing along asked “What did you find?”

Marty cleared his throat

“The populace's confidence in government and institutions has been on the decline for a while but as of this year, April 2041, only 10% of citizens have any confidence in the national government to help improve their life. It’s not much better for the State or regional governments. Ever since the feds nationalized most of the private sector 15 years ago to deal with rising unemployment and inflation, citizens don’t really see much of a distinction anymore. At this point, the only institutions that poll well are fast-food chains, craft breweries, massage parlors/beauty salons and… independent local cafes.”

With this Marty paused and looked up at The Barista.

The Barista replied “I think I saw something like that on Apple News. That’s a tough spot you must be in. Do you guys need us to endorse one of your preferred candidates once you find them? I can ask the owner, they don’t normally get too politically involved but maybe if you do like a campaign event here or something they would be open to it.”

Marty chuckled “No, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind. In addition to the polling, we did a few focus groups with likely voters and time and time again, when we asked them which person in the city did they have the most trust in. It was your name that came up.”

The Barista turned slightly red “Oh that’s very nice. How kind of them. I still don’t follow though.”

Marty looking at The Barista “Nowadays people have more confidence in their local barista than anyone else. This is why we need you to run for Mayor. ”

“I’m sorry, run for what?” The Barista asked

Marty was not laughing this time. “Bari, we want you to seriously consider running for Mayor. In every simulation we ran, you won by double digit points. Not only do we know that you can win, we think your candidacy can help re-invigorate people’s interest in local politics. Only 15% of people voted in the last election. Our models think if you ran, this could jump to at least 30-40%.”

The Barista shook their head. “Okay, very funny. Is this some kind of joke? Did Greg put you up to this? I know he would get me back for that thing I pulled at his birthday.”

After it was clear that Marty was serious The Barista, still in disbelief said “Look, I don’t know what questions you asked and what weird numbers you put in Excel but I can’t run for Mayor. The Mayor is like the most important community organizer and I can’t even organize a game night. The last time I tried hosting everybody bailed at the last second, except for Bridgette but she’s low key obsessed with me.”

Martin was gentle but unrelenting. “Look, I know this is coming out of left field but we’ve put a lot of work into this.” He took a thick booklet out of his bag and set it on the table in front of them. The cover said Candidate Profile: The Barista September 2041. Opening the first few pages, he pointed to a series of impressive charts and graphs. Martin continued “You can see, we put a lot of thought into this. We even hired McKinsey. This booklet and supporting documents come from them. It’s not as crazy as you think. Increasingly the electorate doesn’t want to vote for established politicians. Few can keep consecutive terms and more and more you are seeing less conventional candidates starting to catch a vein. Do you know who Kelli Johnson is?”

The Barista, still startled, thought for a second. “Is that the girl that used to dance for Ariana Grande? She got pretty big on Instagram at some point. Whatever happened to her?”

Martin nodded. “Yes, her. Well she won the Illinois Senate seat last year. I don’t think she could even name the 3 branches of government before she won. It didn’t matter. It’s not different in other countries either. Norway has just gone with Olympic skiers for their last two Prime Ministers. More and more we are seeing voters don’t want politicians, just people that they like or have confidence in.”

The Barista “Yeah, well I still can’t be Mayor. Isn’t that a pretty important job? Can’t I really mess up the city if I don’t know what I’m doing?”

Marty patiently explained “The fact is, the role of Mayor is largely ceremonial now. Ever since they passed the “Get Back Your City” executive order a couple years back, the feds are pretty much in charge of most things. In any case your first term’s budget is already committed. You would only need to worry about that if you would make it to a second term.”

Martin standing up. “Look I know this is a lot to take in all at once. You don’t need to decide now, the registration deadline is in another couple of weeks. Just promise me you’ll think about it. I’ll come back and check up on you later in the week. Keep the booklet, go over it. My contact info is in there if you want to speak sooner.”

They shook hands and Martin left, leaving The Barista stunned, alone with the Booklet. Mind racing, trying to digest everything they just heard. Mayor. As the lunch rush began, they started seeing many of the regulars who happily greeted them as they walked by into the cafe to order. They picked up the booklet, began flipping through the pages, carefully reading the polling data.

As Marty had said, the numbers made a compelling case for the Barista to win; becoming mayor was a real possibility. They continued to read about the election process, the restrictions and requirements of the role and the administrative agenda for the next four years. The Barista imagined themselves as mayor, sitting in the big office and attending important functions. Having a full team of people that work with the sole focus of making life better for all the local citizens. 

Looking up from the booklet, the Barista looked through the window and observed the customers of the cafe. There they were sitting with their friends, children, dogs, or even alone. They seemed happy, comfortable, and at ease. The Barista sat silently for a moment, then rose, picked up the booklet and dropped it in the trash as they walked back inside the cafe. As soon as they entered through the door frame, the mood of all the customers immediately brightened, making each of their days just a little bit better.

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A thank you to Tom White at White Noise for serving as editor and sounding board for this piece.

(^ Not the Barista)

I would assume competent world leaders regularly ask themselves how can they improve or at least maintain living standards for their citizens?

Yet few countries are growing above the rate of inflation, and many see a greater percentage of their populations enter retirement age each day. With an increasing number of people exiting the labor force while still receiving government benefits/services, those remaining in the workforce need to make up the difference.

Unless countries decide to repeal child labor laws or eliminate retirement ages, they really only have two solutions:

1. Make their workforce more productive

2. Find more workers

Advancements with AI might make the average worker more productive but even under optimistic scenarios, this will likely prove to be insufficient.

We need to find more workers and fast. Birth dates have plummeted over the past 70 years and are unlikely to bounce back soon. Leaving only one solution. Immigration.

This will have major societal implications, which I believe will make the system that exists today seem unrecognizable a few decades from now. In today’s post, I will attempt to speculate on what immigration will look like by 2040.

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If this week’s article does not interest you, please check out some other recent ones:

A 1952 Satire Book Predicted ChatGPT

Why I’m Quitting Coffee

Stoicism Explained by Star Wars

Sorry Jocko, Discipline is Overrated

Disclaimer: Please be careful to discern from what I am saying should happen versus what I think will happen. Much of what I mention in this article already takes place in various forms. Given how sensitive the topic of immigration is, I completely respect if you chose to not read this week’s article.

Demographics

It is no secret that birth rates in the developed word have steadily fallen off since the Baby Boomer generation. A relatively newer development, is that this trend is catching up with less developed nations too.

To maintain existing population numbers, there needs to be two children born per every woman. On a global basis we are at 2.30; this is why the human population continues to grow each year. However, virtually every developed country has less than 2 births per women. Countries like the United States, Sweden, France and UK are slightly below (1.60-1.80), this difference is addressed by current immigration levels. Others like South Korea and Singapore are at around 1.0, which would imply that without immigration, their population will halve. This is why South Korea has been contemplating a 4 day work week.

Regardless of where a particular country falls within the spectrum, the trend has been for birth rates to fall, which will exasperate the problem even worse. Even if births don’t decline, women are having children later, which further contributes to aged populations in developed countries.

Having an aged population becomes problematic because as more people enter retirement, they exit the workforce and instead of being net contributors to taxes and pensions, they become net recipients. Between social security & similar programs along with increased health care needs for seniors, governments need to spend more. Where are they going to find the money, Lebowski?

Declining GDP Growth & Debt

“Growth solves all problems.”

As long as value gets created, there are opportunities for workers, investors and governments. The most popular way to measure the value generated by a country is Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Most readers probably had to suffer through a basic economics course but to ensure we are on the same page, GDP is comprised of:

1. Government Spending (Programs, employees & anything they subsidize)

2. Household Consumption (Anything you spend money on besides taxes)

3. Investment (No not stocks & bonds— boring stuff like machinery & buildings)

4. Net Exports (Value of goods/services sold outside the country - what is imported)

GDP works well enough as a high level measure of spending within a country, economists will sometimes also look at GDP per capita to adjust for population sizes when comparing different countries. A common heuristic is that GDP per capita is a proxy for living standards within a country.

There are a few problems associating GDP with living standards that I won’t discuss but one key area I want to highlight is government spending. All things held equal, if a country’s government spending climbs, GDP will have increased but it might not be to the benefit of its constituents.

If you recall the first season of Game of Thrones, King Robert wanted the crown to spend a lot of gold to throw a tournament. The members of the Small Council tried to rationalize the expense by saying it would please the smallfolk and make a lot of money for the local businesses. The problem was, they did not have Gold on hand so they needed to borrow it from the Iron Bank.

Needless to say, the amount of incremental tax revenue generated from the tournament did not come close to covering the gold they borrowed. In the short term, King Robert increased the GDP of Westeros; government spending and consumption rose, and people were happy since jousts are fun. However, unless these households and local businesses took this extra money and invested it in something productive, after the effect of this short term stimulus ran out, the Crown would just be deeper in debt. (Check out 5 Business Lessons I learnt from Game of Thrones)

This borrow and spend mechanism is what modern governments do today; they issue bonds to pay for their spending, which they hope will encourage consumption, investment and exports. The problem is, if unsuccessful, their spending gradually makes up a larger percentage of GDP, forcing them to borrow and tax more.

In 2024, few developed nations outgrowing their inflation rates yet most have government spending approaching or exceeding 50% of GDP with debt levels above 100% of annual GDP. Many economists and business leaders have expressed concerns over this growing debt burden for years yet few countries are doing much to address the problem.

Immigration to the rescue

Despite attempts to convince the public inflation isn’t real, its largest advocates have been very quite about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), since Covid era stimulus combined with historically low interest rates resulted in rampant inflation. Central banks had to respond by cranking up interest rates which only recently got inflation back to the 2-3% target.

Since infinite money printing has been proven to be an unsustainable strategy, countries will likely have to go back to fundamentals; How can they increase the number of workers and how can they make these workers more productive?

I don’t think governments will successfully convince women to have more children or to do it earlier, unless they can convince Taylor Swift to start having kids. Assuming they can’t rely on Swifties to fix the demographic time bomb, they might hope that AI will unleash incredible productivity gains. This probably won’t fix the issue either, because even if AI did deliver the productivity gains people are hoping for, the value would not accrue equally across the labor force.

Some workers might lose their job to automation. Others might keep their job and suddenly be able to do the work of 3 or 4 workers but do you think employers will adjust their salaries accordingly? Even if productivity does increase, governments won’t be able to raise taxes enough on its workforce to pay for the retirees without meaningfully hurting consumption or investment. This is why they will need to turn to immigration.

Immigration is a sensitive topic for many reasons that I won’t get into but I will attempt to make a statement that should not be controversial. Ready? Ok, here it goes.

“Countries should accept as many skilled immigrants that their infrastructure can support”. Ben Saltiel, right now

Before you unsubscribe or try to own me in the comments, please re-read the sentence; this is not a call for open borders. Every country has shortages for different types of skill sets, by allowing these gaps to persist they are only making themselves less competitive. If companies can’t find enough skilled workers within their own country, they look elsewhere or limit their growth.

Education is great but for some fields you need to wait a decade to see if these investments were worthwhile. When a country has doctor shortages, opening more spots in medical school doesn’t fix the problem for years. If investing in education is the NFL draft, then immigration is free agency. Just as free agents are a great way to quickly fill holes on a sports clubs, countries have this same tool at their disposal1. Unlike with birth citizens, countries can exercise discretion over which immigrants they grant visas or residency to, increasing the likelihood they will add to the productivity of the nation.

Despite these developed countries having aged populations and skill shortages, applying for immigration is very complex, selective and bureaucratic, even for highly credentialed applicants. 70% of US green card applicants need to wait at least 5 years and it’s not much faster for preference immigrants either. Even with the addition of technology, immigration wait times are increasing, not declining.

Several developed countries tried to meaningfully increase immigration during the past decade to varying success; some of these governments have been replaced by opposition parties that came to power with anti-immigration rhetoric. As a result, I expect the next time governments attempt to increase immigration levels, they will do so differently.

I expect the decision criteria will closely resemble the point systems used in Canada and Australia but instead of waiting 5-10 years, applicants with high skill matches with a particular countries needs will likely get immediate approval, along with potential tax advantages. It would look like some combination of Portugal’s Golden Visa and the 30% Ruling in the Netherlands. This will happen because competition for certain types of immigrants will become so fierce, it’s not inconceivable to think that they will get similar treatment to pro athletes in free agency or companies looking for new corporate headquarters.

Not everybody will like these changes. Applicants from the previous process might find it unfair they had to wait so long while the new applicants did not. Existing citizens won’t like seeing new arrivals benefit from immediate tax breaks while using social programs. In most countries there are always contingents against immigration. Even people that are in favor of immigration don’t unanimously agree that employability should be the main criteria. While it’s a valid perspective, the immigration officers that granted citizenship to Elon Musk, Andy Grove, Satya Nadella, Lisa Su and countless others probably feel validated by their decision. In any case, countries will need to increase immigration massively to offset the declining birth rates and high debt levels, so they won’t only be admitting high skill match immigrants. There will be plenty of opportunities for all kinds types of immigrants, however only a select few will likely get the special treatment referenced above.

In any case, governments just like a general manager worried for their job, will start to compete to recruit immigrants they feel will add to the countries productivity and hopefully, can avoid population collapse.

I hope you enjoyed today’s article. Please Subscribe, I am only a few away from 300 Subscribers! If you did not enjoy today’s article, please feel free to let me know in the comments below or by replying to this email. I appreciate any and all feedback.

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They called Kissinger a War Criminal and an a$$hole. I was surprised by this. I’ve seen people read biographies of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and other murderous figures in public without inciting such a reaction. Just wanting to learn more about Kissinger, angered this person deeply. Naturally, this gave me additional motivation to plow through the proceeding 750 page Walter Isaacson biography. 

Besides being the first foreign born and Jewish Secretary of State, he stands out from the others who served in that role because of the uncommonly large public profile and attention he commanded. When he was not flying around the world meeting with political leaders, he was being photographed with Hollywood starlets, fashion designers and other prominent celebrities. Kissinger received a disproportionate amount of credit, positive and negative, for foreign policy decisions compared to President Nixon, whom he served under. 

When Nixon and Kissinger assumed office in 1969, the United States was involved in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, a military conflict with the Vietnam War and indirect hostilities with China. Kissinger took the leading role navigating these conflicts and others while wielding unprecedented leeway for a National Security Advisor. The way he handled these situations has divided contemporaries and historians alike. His proponents will say he handled many of these situations well and was among the most effective Secretary of States of the 20th century. His critics will contend Kissinger was responsible for Millions of unnecessary deaths and made lasting damage to America’s diplomatic relations, still haunting them today.

There are countless academic papers and articles that will argue either side of that spectrum, I am not interested in contributing another. What follows is a summary of my thoughts on the book and my attempt to answer why I believe Kissinger draws such a visceral reaction. Said differently, is Kissinger in fact a War Criminal and/or an A$$hole or was he a very effective Secretary of State?

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Pre-White House Years (1923-1969)

Before notoriety, Henry Alfred Kissinger was a German Jewish Refugee who fled Nazi Germany for New York in 1938. He would find himself back in Germany a few years later, as a member of the US Military. His ability to speak German proved to be very useful and he drew the attention of his first mentor, Fritz Kraemer. Isaacson highlights this relationship as one of the many he was able to form, which contributed to his meteoric rise. There were few German speakers in the US army so he quickly found himself assigned to Counter-Intelligence.

In Counter-Intelligence, he was tasked with restoring order in captured German towns, ferreting out Nazis and Gestapo members. This was a job that Kissinger excelled at but he did not savor the revenge. Despite what the Nazis had done to his family, he was not vindictive and rapidly lost his desire to personally pick off people one by one. Using other methods, he remained effective, likely capturing more Gestapo than the rest of the Army combined. Kissinger received significant praise for not abusing his new found power and authority. He worked well with the local German population, using diplomatic efforts to Denazify these towns. This demonstrated his early abilities and instincts that would help him later in life. 

(Private Henry Kissinger was assigned to Company G 335th Infantry Regiment of the 84th Infantry Division at Camp Claiborne, La. (Robertson Collection)

(so far does not seem like a war criminal or a$$hole)

Upon his return to the US after WWII, Kissinger would enroll at Harvard. Studying history and political science, he distinguished himself amongst his peers for his intense work ethic, intellect and erratic temperament, all qualities that he would be known for his entire life. He paid particular attention to Bismark, Castlereagh and Metternich; which would later serve as the basis for his view of international relations known as Realpolitik. 

If you subscribe to realpolitik, you believe that states are motivated primarily by their own interests and seek to maximize their power. This can lead to rapidly shifting allegiances and even working with states with conflicting ideologies. Kissinger’s particular brand of realpolitik, focused on maintaining power to preserve stability and deterring aggression. Isaacson and others, will link Kissinger’s embrace of power and stability to his experience growing up in Nazi Germany as a persecuted religious minority1. 

Harvard also helped Kissinger network with powerful people. He took on the responsibility of organizing the Harvard Summer Seminar and was soon convincing notable international figures to come and lecture at Harvard. This demonstrated his early abilities to broker relationships. He joined Harvard’s faculty in 1954, teaching International Relations and Government. During his time at Harvard, he gained the reputation as an expert on foreign affairs, his writings on Nuclear Weapons and its role in foreign policy was widely read, including by President Eisenhower, who’s policies he criticized. This helped further establish his credibility and eventually connected him with next mentor and patron in Nelson Rockefeller. Kissinger would develop a close relationship and work for Rockefeller as a consultant in his Presidential runs throughout the sixties.

(Kissinger & Rockefeller in 1975)

It was following Rockefeller’s final unsuccessful bid in 1968, where Kissinger would start working with Richard Nixon. In true realpolitik fashion, Kissinger’s desire to join Nixon’s campaign came shortly after calling Nixon the most dangerous of all men running for President and solemnly swearing not to work for a campaign other than Rockefeller’s. This abrupt pivot contributed to his reputation of being somebody willing to abandon prior loyalties or sacrifice his morals in exchange for power. This move to the Nixon campaign, would land him in the White House as a National Security Advisor in 1969. 

No evidence or charges of being a war criminal or asshole yet. Definitely an opportunist but his 30 year rise from refugee to the White House is nothing short of remarkable.

Nixon White House Years (1969-1974):

Kissinger would be linked with Nixon for the rest of his life. Prior to joining the White House, Kissinger was not a household name. Despite his best seller, and association with Rockefeller, he was still largely an academic, not known to the average person. Only 30 years removed from fleeing Nazi Germany, Kissinger suddenly assumed one of the most important roles within the administration, as Nixon’s go-to person for anything related to foreign policy. Richard “Tricky Dicky” (not an official nickname) Nixon had an erratic personality, which played into Kissinger’s worst instincts. Kissinger had a strong desire for power and a crippling desire to be liked by all. This helped fuel his rapid ascension but also meant he would quickly sell himself out to achieve this status. This is why he would tolerate all kinds of abuse from the President. Nixon would regularly make anti-semetic remarks, to his face. Similarly, to curry favor, he would regularly entertain some of Nixon’s crazier notions, that he knew to be dangerous or irresponsible. 

This posterior polishing ultimately did benefit Kissinger as Nixon would allow him unprecedented control and authority as a National Security Advisor, at times carrying out orders without the consultation of the State Department or key members of the Pentagon. This secretive diplomacy had its benefits and drawbacks. It enhanced Kissinger’s image, feeding his considerable ego while giving him more authority and ability to move faster. On the other hand, cutting out other departments and holding secret talks, meant he was sometimes operating on incomplete information, he could be easily accused of saying or doing things he did not. Furthermore, when things went awry, the blame would largely fall on him.   

This approach made him many enemies inside and outside the White House, making his job more difficult than it needed to be. Nixon was largely suspicious and jealous of Kissinger, fearing that Kissinger’s status was surpassing the President’s. His concerns were not completely unfounded, as Kissinger paid considerable attention to his public image. Throughout his time in office, he would regularly ensure that he would get photographed out in public with the hot starlet of the day. This would contribute to the certain mystic he was crafting; people would understandably be curious how a short, overweight and not particularly handsome man as himself could maintain such a dating streak. To which he would respond:

(Kissinger and actress Marlo Thomas attend a USC party in Hollywood, in honor of deceased lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, circa 1970)

Dating Hollywood starlets can only keep somebody relevant for so long, otherwise Isaacson would have started a biography on Pete Davison by now. While this was certainly an added bonus, the main reason Kissinger got the attention he did, was because of his performance as a Diplomatic2. He was involved in many international affairs but for the purpose of this post, I am only going to focus on his role related to the USSR, China, the Vietnam War & Cambodia & the Yom Kippur War.

Dating Hollywood starlets is not a war crime. One could accuse him of using these women, which would have him dip into asshole territory. His ability to amass such a dating history despite his physical limitations does bode well for his reputation as a diplomat.   

USSR

Prior to the start of the Nixon administration in 1969, U.S.-Soviet relations were characterized by a mixture of confrontation and competition, framed by the broader context of the Cold War. There was a fierce space race, a perilous nuclear arms race, escalating tensions with a number of proxy wars and the potential for direct conflict. Despite these challenges, there were emerging indications of interest from both sides in exploring measures to stabilize their relationship and reduce the risk of nuclear war, setting the stage for détente.

Kissinger was one of the main forces behind Détente, believing that deescalating with the Soviets would lead to increased global stability, which would be largely beneficial for the US. Not everybody was in favor of this. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Pentagon preferred a more Hawkish line instead of Kissinger’s diplomatic dealings. Kissinger believed the best way to manage the relationship with the Soviets was to associate the many issues together instead of segregating each individually. What he called Linkage. For him, he believed that he could use Nuclear disarmament talks to pressure the Soviets into helping the US negotiate a preferential conclusion to the War in Vietnam. Despite his insistence, Linkage did not appear to work. Nonetheless, Kissinger would still manage to achieve major breakthroughs with the USSR on Disarmament, with the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I accords signed in 1972. This represented one of the most monumental achievements of the Nixon administration. The SALT I accords among other things limited the number of anti-ballistic complexes and put limits on the number of missiles and military arsenal. This was the first major de-escalation agreement between the US and USSR since the Cold War began. 

Despite the accomplishment, Kissinger would get criticized for his role in the talks and some missing elements within the agreement. Kissinger, as he often would, insisted on conducting many of the talks in secret while keeping more qualified negotiators out of the process. This eroded support for the agreement amongst those who would have otherwise would have been vocal advocates and further stoked those already against Kissinger and Détente. The main missing element which was a big missed opportunity was the omission of banning Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) (see footnote3). Overall despite this error when it comes to Kissinger’s performance as it relates to the Soviet Union, his efforts are credited with a significant, if temporary, improvement in reducing the acute tensions of the Cold War through diplomatic engagements and treaties. His tenure marked a shift towards more engagement and less direct confrontation, although many of the underlying rivalries and conflicts remained unresolved.

Not a war criminal yet, maybe some unfortunate similarities to Dr. Strangelove. Despite some hiccups with the way he conducted negotiations, he did de-escalate tensions with the USSR.

Watergate

The Nixon administration is likely best known for the infamous Watergate scandal. Watergate was one of the most consequential scandals of the 20th century, which led to Nixon’s resignation. Even before the events that led to Watergate, the Nixon administration was filled with secrecy and paranoia. This is important to remember, because this is the context in which Kissinger and his colleagues would operate from 1969-1974, when most of Kissinger’s diplomatic dealings would occur. 

This is not a Watergate article so all you need to know is that Kissinger emerged from the Watergate scandal unscathed, because: 

1. There was no evidence that he was involved or had knowledge of the Watergate scandal

2. The press wanted to protect him as he was seen as one of the bright spots within the administration

3. He was overseas, nowhere near Washington, conducting international dealings for most of the 2 year period of investigations and hearings (footnote part of this might have been by design)

As it relates to the Watergate scandal, what he can be accused of was helping foster the climate of distrust and wiretapping. Kissinger had ordered wiretaps on some of his own staff members during the early years of the administration. Largely to prove that they were not leaking information to the press. Ironically, he was doing more leaking than any of his staff and these wires ended up being used against him by political enemies looking to discredit him to the President or to predict his next moves.  

Not related to any accusations of him being a War Criminal. Wiretapping aides can be considered consistent with how an asshole would behave. Escaping the scandal with his reputation largely in-tact is a good signal for a diplomat. 

China

One of the achievements Kissinger is most credited for is opening US-Chinese relations. He paved the way for Nixon to go in 1972 representing the first trip by an active President to China. Relations between the two countries were characterized by hostility and isolation since the Chinese Communist Party's rise to power in 1949. Kissinger and Nixon’s visits culminated in the two countries agreeing to normalize relations, reducing their risk of confrontation. An added bonus was that this made the Soviets more willing to negotiate with the US. Prior to the Nixon administration, the dynamic was the two communist empires against the US. When Nixon & Kissinger were in power, the dynamic shifted to the two communist powers trying to both cozy up with the US. Nobody would have expected this in 1969. 

Kissinger had the vision and belief that there was an opportunity to work with China. He was surprised to learn that the relationship between the Soviets and Chinese was not as cooperative as experts had expected, and smartly took advantage of the situation. China also did apply pressure on North Vietnam to agree to a cease fire that would permit the survival of the South Vietnamese Thieu led government. As per Isaacson’s biography, those close to the situation believed that despite promising elements in place, had it not been for Kissinger, the normalization of relations between the US and China would not have come nearly as quickly as it did. 

Despite his accomplishments with China, his actions did not escape criticism. In typical Kissinger fashion, his secret dealings led to unnecessary confusion. Consistent with realpolitik, it also meant turning a blind eye to certain domestic repressions and human rights violations going on in China4. The way in which Kissinger handled the warming of relations between the US and China, did result in Taiwan losing its UN seat and Kissinger’s diplomatic vagueness, gave the Chinese the impression that the US would not oppose their view that Taiwan was part of China (this is still a problem today). Even after leaving office, Kissinger would continue to draw additional criticism as it relates to China. People believed he was too sympathetic to China, and ignored many Human Rights abuses including Tianammen square. Some speculate this had to do with business interests others because simply Kissinger is an a$$hole. 

Not a War Criminal, potentially an Asshole if you believe that the US has a moral obligation to try to ensure human rights abuses are not perpetuated. Opening up China was a momentous accomplishment for a Secretary of State.

Cambodia

Cambodia is the main reason why Kissinger’s critics consider him a war criminal. 

This will be tough to cover quickly without derailing the entire article or glossing over important details. Here is an attempt at a very simplified summary of the factors around when the US decided to conduct a ground invasion of Cambodia in 1970. 

• Cambodia, led by Prince Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was playing a very delicate balancing act of neutrality with the US & South Vietnamese, the North Vietnam, Chinese and others in the area.

• The North Vietnamese had set up bases inside Cambodia, from which to launch attacks on the South Vietnamese. Cambodia quietly allowed this.

• By 1969, American domestic support for the Vietnam war was eroded and Nixon’s administration was committed to withdrawing US soldiers. 

  • Kissinger, fearful of what an American defeat and Communist victory would mean in other parts of the world, was committed to keeping the South Vietnamese government in power. He was trying to negotiate a ceasefire that would allow for this. 

  • The North Vietnamese would not accept this and saw no reason to concede on this point, since they were winning militarily and knew they could simply wait for the US to withdraw their troops. Kissinger was trying to negotiate from a point of weakness. 

  • Kissinger was hoping that something would help the US efforts in Vietnam, to force the North Vietnamese to come to the bargaining table with meaningful concessions. 

• US Military personnel in Vietnam believed that attacking the North Vietnamese bases and secret headquarters inside Cambodia, would be of strategic importance. The US intelligence in Cambodia was not very good (they did not have a station chief for an extended stretch). On the insistence of the Military, who were very Hawkish, Nixon and Kissinger approved secret bombing operations inside Cambodia. 

  • They were secret, because congress and many other relevant parties were not informed. 

  • Similar to how the Cambodian government was okay with the North Vietnamese setting up headquarters and bases, they did not push back too hard against the bombings. 

  • These secret bombings went on for about a year, and did not really achieve the military or Kissinger’s objectives. On the other hand, it did not meaningfully destabilize Cambodia. 

  • About a year after the secret bombings had started, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, left the country and a coup ensued with his Prime Minister, Lol Nol assuming control (basically the whole government remained, they just swapped out the head). 

  • Lol Nol, was very outspoken in his support for the US. Nixon liked this.

  • The muted American response to the coup was perceived by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Lol Nol, Cambodia and the North Vietnamese that they were supportive of the coup. (footnote: Kissinger disputed this, Prince Norodom Sihanouk did not believe him).  

(Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1972)

• Nixon was a drunk. Even when he was not inebriated, he was erratic. He saw a few too many screenings of the film Patton, reacted negatively to a few people calling him weak in Vietnam and decided he needed to show that he meant business (actually).

  • The military wanted to step up their efforts in Cambodia to go after a Secret North Vietnamese Communist hideout. Nixon wanted to show that he supported Col Nol. 

  • Nixon & The Military wanted to use US troops with air support. Kissinger did not want to use US troops. The State department wanted to do nothing footnote( at least for the time being as they accurately pointed out that this Secret North Vietnamese Communist hideout, is 1) a Secret and 2) Not in a fixed location, so how can they even know if the mission is successful.)

  • Nixon wanted to go ahead without even telling the Pentagon or State Department, let alone Congress. Kissinger at least convinced him to consult with the State and the Pentagon. Nonetheless, the secretive manner in which Nixon and Kissinger went about this operation, left many people in the dark and exacerbated matters when details would later be revealed. 

• The presumptive US support for Col Nol along with the ground invasion and bombing, led the North Vietnamese to embrace a small but violent communist group Khmer Rouge, then numbering only about 5,000. Within a few years, they numbered 70,000 and went on a genocidal massacre, killing up to 3 million Cambodians. 

• While the ground invasion and increased bombing of Cambodia was not Kissinger’s idea or even preference, he should have tried harder to convince Nixon against it, as he had successfully done in many other instances. Eventually he supported and later defended these actions, despite the lackluster military & diplomatic benefits. 

•  The charges of Kissinger being a war criminal are mostly centered around 

  1. Bombing Cambodia without officially declaring war or getting congressional approval

  2. Creating the situation that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge leading to the millions that died at their hands. 

• The term War Criminal gets thrown a lot, normally people reserve it for the President not Secretary of State. Noam Chomsky makes a case for every president since Eisenhower up until Obama being guilty of war crimes. Link to video. 

  • Many of the critiques I read calling Kissinger a war criminal, generally take the Chomsky line.  

• Isaacson and Jeremy Suri (another biographer) do not believe he is a war criminal. Some of his adamant critics, Greg Grandin, accept Kissinger’s defense that in modern context, his actions in Cambodia would not be illegal today, and not that different from military actions by the Obama administration in Pakistan or Bush II during the War on Terror etc. His concerns were about the secrecy and illegality at the time

His actions in Cambodia make him a war criminal. When actually reflecting on what the charge of war criminal means, it might not be as damning as originally expected. Nonetheless, his treatment of Cambodia as a sideshow to Vietnam is a$$hole behavior. Not great diplomacy involved as it pertains to Cambodia.

Vietnam

When Kissinger and Nixon took office, the US involvement in Vietnam had been ongoing for over a decade, spanning three previous administrations. They knew that there was no more domestic support to fighting the war and that they needed to end it as soon as possible. The best way to accomplish this differed depending on if somebody was Dovish or Hawkish on Vietnam. The Dovish perspective was to withdraw as quickly as possible and in the best case, sign some peace agreement. The Hawkish perspective was to win the war outright. 

 The Doves in favor of withdrawal, generally held this position because they believed: 

1. The war was not winnable

2. Even if it was, it was no longer worth the many dead American soldiers and astronomical financial cost

3. US involvement in Vietnam was unjust, detrimental to American values and was hurting its international reputation. 

 The Hawks wanting to win the war believed: 

4. The war was winnable, if only they stuck with it, perhaps doubled down

5. A defeat in Vietnam would result in communist contagion across South East Asia (domino theory)

6. If the American’s abandoned South Vietnam, what credibility would they have with their allies in other conflicts?

Nixon had committed to withdraw troops but his administration was not ready to abandon the country. Kissinger had a pragmatic view on Vietnam. He agreed with the Doves in that the US direct military involvement would have to end, that they should train the South Vietnamese to be able to take on the North without American troops (Vietnamization). He also wanted a diplomatic resolution, resulting in a peace agreement that would keep the South Vietnamese government in power. 

Where he differed with the Doves, was that with his realpolitik worldview, a defeat in Vietnam would make America appear weak, which would hurt them in many other conflicts. His goal was to achieve a “Peace with Honor” meaning that the U.S. would exit the war in a way that preserved its credibility and avoided the appearance of a humiliating defeat. This involved negotiating a peace settlement that allowed for U.S. withdrawal while maintaining some stability in South Vietnam. To do so, the US still needed to appear strong in the eyes of the North Vietnamese, otherwise they would have no incentive to make concessions in negotiations. 

This pragmatic perspective made him appear Hawkish to Doves and Dovish to Hawks. 

Nixon and Kissinger, under pressure from Dovish members of their administration and Democrats in Congress, began withdrawing large amounts of troops. This hampered military options in the region, making it more difficult to negotiate a desirable settlement with the North Vietnamese. Nixon and Kissinger preferring to operate in secret, had Kissinger hold private negotiations with a North Vietnamese intermediary, Le Duc Tho. Kissinger was firm on needing the South Vietnamese government to remain in control, the North Vietnamese would not accept this. Negotiations between the two men would continue on and off for three years, until they finally reached a tentative agreement. Small problem was, with the negotiations being secret, many people, including South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, did not agree with the deal Kissinger negotiated without his consultation. 

President Van Thieu strongly opposed the agreement, particularly provisions that allowed North Vietnamese troops to remain in the South and the lack of clear guarantees for South Vietnam's political future. Thieu's objections led to a delay in finalizing the agreement. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho engaged in further negotiations to address the concerns raised by the South Vietnamese government. Despite intense diplomatic efforts, the talks reached a stalemate. In typical Nixon fashion, he decided that the solution was to ramp up Military efforts on the North Vietnamese, hoping that the North Vietnamese would give in to the South Vietnamese demands. The US would go on a large bombing spree in late December, known as the Christmas Bombing, which Kissinger and other officials largely knew, was unlikely to garner the concessions that the South Vietnamese wanted. 

The North Vietnamese would come back to the negotiating table, but the final agreement did not look all that different from the previous one. Some semantic differences allowed both sides to see in the agreement what they had wanted. The end result was that a ceasefire was called, the US withdrew their troops, the South Vietnamese government could stay in place and all prisoners of war were released.  Kissinger and Le Duc Tho would win the Nobel Peace Prize, with much protest from many, including Le Duc Tho, Nobel Peace Prize committee officials. Their issue, rightfully so, was that they were winning an award for Peace that was not yet achieved. Kissinger accepted the reward but was ambivalent since he knew that the peace they achieved was only temporary.

(Kissinger receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973)

They were all right to be ambivalent, since the peace did not last long after the US troops withdrew. Within a year both sides were ramping up for continued military efforts, which came almost 2 years after the withdrawal of the US troops, when the North Vietnamese launched a large-scale attack that led to the fall of the South Vietnamese government and the end of the Vietnam War. Many would blame Nixon, and Kissinger for the fall of Saigon. Kissinger wanted South Vietnam to survive but maintained that the lack of US domestic support for the war meant that giving the South Vietnamese a fighting chance, was the best they could have hoped for. 

Kissinger was largely criticized for Vietnam for a few main items. 

1. Conducting secret negotiations with Le Duc Tho and not including more people in the process. His behind-the-scenes diplomacy was seen as bypassing democratic processes and reducing accountability. This could have avoided the issues with Van Thieu and even the Christmas Bombing

2. Concessions made during the negotiations, such as allowing North Vietnamese troops to remain in the South, weakened the position of South Vietnam and undermined its long-term viability

3. The Paris Peace Accords, for which Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize, were criticized for not achieving a lasting peace. The agreement did not prevent the eventual collapse of South Vietnam and the reunification of the country under communist control. Critics saw it just as a way for the US to extricate itself away from Vietnam. 

4. By prolonging the war, Nixon and Kissinger created a high number of civilian casualties

Nixon & Kissinger could have attempted different negotiation tactics but the fact remained, they were trying to accomplish several conflicting goals simultaneously, therefore they were destined to fail. If they had immediately pulled out like the Doves wanted, the South Vietnamese definitely would have still fallen. It would have saved the lives of some American troops and reduced the number of civilian casualties they were responsible for but they would still be criticized by Hawks and the South Vietnamese for not giving them a fighting chance. Without the US flexing some military muscle, The North Vietnamese had no reason to make concessions. The North Vietnamese barely made any concessions after all the bombing, and fighting from the American’s, therefore it is unlikely that the Doves could have expected a better settlement without the use of force.  

The South Vietnamese definitely considered Kissinger a war criminal and an asshole. Hawks found him to be too weak, Doves too murderous. Kissinger, despite South Vietnam falling, did believe the agreement he negotiated gave at least temporary peace with honor. While aspects of the way that Kissinger and Nixon handled Vietnam could have been better, it is unclear if the end result would have changed. 

Yom Kippur War

After China, Kissinger gets the most praise for his handling of the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent diplomatic efforts that culminated in the Sinai Disengagement Agreements and paved the way for the Camp David Accords. In November of 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel, the ensuing 14 day conflict would later be known as the Yom Kippur war. Nixon was distracted by Watergate, therefore Kissinger was left largely to his own devices to handle the conflict. Kissinger found himself in a delicate situation: 

• Israel requested supplies from Israel. 

• Some within the administration thought Israel should have been able to beat back them back without the help of the US. Therefore they did not want to provide the aid as it would have upset the Arab States and it would have hurt their credibility in the region.

• The USSR was backing Egypt and Kissinger did not want the conflict to turn into a setback for his Détente efforts. 

• The UN was pushing for an immediate ceasefire. 

  • If passed Egypt and Syria would have captured new land from the offensive. Kissinger knew Israel would not accept this and it would have invited future aggression 

•  A few days after the conflict started, there were concerns that if the US did not supply Israel, their survival was at risk

• Suddenly those that were previously reluctant were willing to supply Israel but there was disagreement about what should they supply, and if they should try to be stealth about it

This is when Kissinger decided to go for the Lone Ranger role. Analyzing the situation, he knew that Israel needed the supply, but if they moved too quickly and too aggressively, it would anger the other countries in the region. This would force the USSR to respond in kind. He then resorted to delay tactics to ensure the cease fire happened after Israel reclaimed their lost lands, but soon enough that they wouldn’t embarrass their adversaries. That the supplies would arrive, in time to ensure that Israel would not be at risk of losing, but that they couldn’t expand overly aggressively. 

(Kissinger and Anwar Sadat in 1974)

Miraculously, threading very tight needles everything worked out as he had hoped. The USSR did a minimal resupply of ammunition but did not escalate things. The US resupplied Israel in time, which did anger the Arab nations but a ceasefire was reached after Israel reacquired the lands taken by the Egyptian-Syrian offensive.  Kissinger successfully negotiated disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt (January 1974) and between Israel and Syria (May 1974), leading to the withdrawal of forces and the establishment of buffer zones monitored by international peacekeepers.

Kissinger's efforts helped lay the groundwork for future peace negotiations and contributed to a period of relative stability in the region. His diplomacy improved U.S. relations with key Arab states, particularly Egypt, and paved the way for the later Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978. He accomplished this by flying between Egypt, Syria and Israel in what was coined “Shuttle Diplomacy”. Meeting with the respective heads of states, appealing to them directly pushing for a short term resolution as well as something longer lasting. There was certainly some duplicity and posterior polishing involved, but his handling of the situation has been largely praised. He also received criticism, for some by being too pro-Israeli, others for not being more helpful to Israel. Kissinger was adamant that in any situation, his role was to represent what was in the best interest of the United States, in this case it he was successful. 

Post-Office Years, Kissinger & Associates & Conclusion

Nixon resigned because of Watergate, his Vice President Gerald Ford assumed office. Ford’s personality differed greatly from Nixon, and the dynamic between him and Kissinger was much healthier. Kissinger continued to build on many of his previous initiatives, including Détente, China & Middle East Policy. Kissinger still faced significant opposition from various groups, including Democrats, Republicans, Activists, Academics and more. An area that even his critics would praise him for was his intellectual comfort in hearing differing perspectives. Even if Kissinger’s actions drew  such ire, his charm and desire to make friends with everyone, even his most ardent critics, did largely prove to be successful. This is not to say some of his actions such as Cambodia and others did not lose him friends, because it definitely did. His ability to maintain friendships with many groups would serve him later in life. Either way, when President Ford surprisingly lost the 1976 Presidential election to Jimmy Carter, this would spell the end to Kissinger’s time in public office.

Kissinger’s performance was largely well regarded, but despite his interest in serving further, he would never get the chance. He did not get along with Rumsfeld or Bush Sr. Raegan, not a fan of Détente, had always thought Kissinger was too soft on the USSR. Kissinger attempted to take more Hawkish positions in the press to appease this group but they still never gave him the chance (although many of his deputies from his time would instead). Kissinger instead found great success and enrichment through his international relations consulting firm Kissinger & Associates. Unlike many former officials, he chose to not use his influence or connections to lobby congress or the Senate. Instead offering his vast international network to open up doors for private sector companies looking to expand internationally. The consequences of this was that he amassed a sizable fortune but his independence would get called into question. He did not remain completely out of politics, as world leaders from many parties would regularly seek his counsel and he would opine in the media. 

Up until his death in November 2023, his legacy remained polarizing. Despite the premise of this article, it is not up to me to decide if he was a war criminal, asshole or a very effective secretary of state. Your perspective on Kissinger is a Rorschach test for your own world view. If you believe that moral considerations should be an important driver of international decision making, you will not like Kissinger. If you are a pragmatist that believes that maintaining power and stability can at times lead you to compromise on your morals, you might look at Kissinger’s performance more favorably.  Walter Isaacson did a great job summarizing Kissinger’s life, time in office and all the tactical & moral consequences surrounding Kissinger’s many diplomatic forays. I really enjoyed reading this and learnt a lot, if anything about this interests you, I would recommend checking it out as well. 

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