This quote has been on my mind a lot the last few weeks.

Machiavelli

“I wish to demonstrate further the infelicity of these arms. The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to you intentions; but if the captain is not skilful, you are ruined in the usual way.”

• The Prince

Most of Macha’s advice is quite clear and bereft. This ends in the worst of ways because it assumes that the reader is aware of the “usual ways” which incompetent captains bring about ruin.

This has been the thorn in my head because if I could just trim down this paragraph to a single sentence or better yet a slogan. Then I could weaponize and viralize this knowledge in meme format.

But alas that is on the tip on tongue.

Here’s why that knowledge is more important now than ever before.

We live in an ecclesiastic principle that worships not on the tenants of the Papal church but on the Altar of fame and fortunes. Our rulers rule an apathic populace, that is neither concerned with the status or capabilities of those in charge.

But that is upstream of the problem from where the majority of us have affect.

If I were able to meme that paragraph then I would be able to point out to the viewer that

A) they are not competent; if they are loyal

B) their boss is not competent; if they are loyal

I’m certain their are exceptions but I haven’t seen any.

I’ve seen companies that will hire outside candidates to their management team, so as not to promote anyone from within. Because promoting internally creates a level of internal tension that results in tensions and cost the bottom line. But by hiring an unknown and folding them into an organization as long as they have the authority to be in the captain’s role, then their is little lost in the way of employees and man power capital.

I’ve seen maintenance men climb their way to warehouse manager because of their proficiency with reports and cost reduction, Skill valued highly by those making decisions from a desk 2,000 miles away. But as Macha states they bring ruin in the usual way. In this case they keep cutting cost to the point where if anything went wrong, it went WAY wrong. Ending up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, fortunately his skill with email and quarterly reports was enough to sell the escalating disasters as wins because rather than focus on this area that was currently on fire, these other measures have been put in place elsewhere which will have projected savings greater than the current damages. However, this were statistical lies but since the princes sat behind their thrones miles away and insulated from disaster by the profitability of the rest of their kingdom, so long as their throne wasn’t currently on fire and their was nothing but pleasant news coming from the out reaches. Well then, why be concerned.

I like to think that there is a range from

0 – 100

0 being 100% loyal and 0% competent

Most Captains

are about

40 to 49%

But that’s the danger

because the cracks in the system are small and spread slowly

If your able to keep a captain

whose over 50%

then he’ll seal those cracks slowly but they will be fixed

If the Captain is higher than 60%

he is likely costing more than he is apparently worth

Since Captain’s derive their loyalty from the expansion of their own greatness

Fortune for most

Awards for some

A competent Captain will be immediately expensive and his expense will increase as they gain more competence being exposed to the problems of the position. Meaning that for a time the cost of the Captain will become untenable but if that Captain has systematized his improvements then he can be rotated out for a Captain of loyalty and enough competence to slow the descent caused by their competence.

I truly wish we lived in a meritocracy

but that is not the case

Their are still areas of life that are such but they are being gated as soon as they are legitimized

Djing was such an area in 2013

Now it’s gate’s are locked behind the Live Nations talent arm

YouTube was free

Til about 2015

with restrictions growing greater every day

TikTok

was free until it took the name TikTok

Reddit

was never free

WordPress blogs

are free and void of non-endimec audiences

what I mean by this they are a great platform to interact with a very specific subset of people

not the general public.

There is no meritocratic forum to compete for the attention of the general public.

Which is why I’ve finally gotten around to reading the Prince.

I have a big problem. My target audience is men Ages 18-25, I need to reach these assholes, build brand with them so that I can sell them books, SO that I can use those funds to revolution the arts.

However I can not meritocracy compete for their eyes to read my fictionalized pages. Instead they populate YouTube heavily, and Twitch, so I must lay siege to those platforms raising captains of my own to stage battles and feats and draw attention.

Attention which is more valuable than Gold

Because Attention is the opportunity to convert

and I must convert bystanders to soldiers

If I’m to help in the war against men.

The war of apathy