48 Examples of What the Greatest Leaders Did Not Do. Virtually every one of the 48 Laws is the exact opposite of what history has taught us about how all the most beloved and admired leaders earned the respect and adoration of their followers. This includes people like Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, Harriet Tubman, Princess Diana, Ronald Reagan, Sheikh Zayed, William Wallace, Marcus Aurelius, and others. Yes, many leaders throughout history have followed the principles of Machiavelli and the 48 Laws of Power, too, but they almost always died terrible deaths by the hands of the people they alienated and/or destroyed on their way to the top. And they never earned the love of their followers; they merely ruled by decree and held power only as long as they could fund their private guard corps to protect them. But as so many of those leaders brutally discovered, a guard that is only loyal to money is easily persuaded to abandon his post and defect to the other side.
“Will I be a ‘Master of People’ or a ‘Leader of People’”? As leaders, that is the choice we have and the question we must ask ourselves. Unlike Machiavelli’s world, in today’s world the people are empowered more than ever with real-time communications with which they can easily and instantly influence millions of other people by singing our praises or calling for our heads. As a result, I think the answer to that question above will determine whether we will succeed or fail in any truly significant endeavor because any significant endeavor requires the cooperation of a large and cosmopolitan community of intelligent and passionate people whose talents and energies will only be loaned to those leaders who inspire love and respect, not fear and loathing.
The 48 Laws Will Expedite Your Assassination. Assuming Machiavelli actually believed what he wrote in The Prince, (he didn’t—see below), even Machiavelli himself observed the risks and limitations of the ideas he wrote in The Prince when he said: “From the study of this history we may also learn how a good government is to be established; for while all the emperors who succeeded to the throne by birth, except Titus, were bad, all were good who succeeded by adoption; as in the case of the five from Nerva to Marcus. But so soon as the empire fell once more to the heirs by birth, its ruin recommenced. . . . Titus, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus had no need of praetorian cohorts, or of countless legions to guard them, but were defended by their own good lives, the good-will of their subjects, and the attachment of the senate.”
Machiavelli correctly observed that the emperors who inherited the thrown by birth almost always became dictators because they never learned how to earn the people’s love and respect. In contrast, the emperors who rose to power because of their merit and sincere love for the people achieved a much stronger bond with the people, virtually no impassioned enemies, and almost completely eliminated the possibility of their own assassination, all of which lead to a much more stable government and higher quality of life for the people.
The 48 Laws are Self-Contradicting, Unwieldy, and Create Exploitable Weaknesses. Many of the 48 Laws conflict with one another, which means, as a system of thought, they are very vulnerable to poor implementation and unintended consequences. More importantly, although the comprehensive nature of all these laws may seem to be a strength of Greene’s book, in reality, analyzing every situation—often in real-time—and attempting to correctly apply all these laws creates an enormous level of situational complexity well beyond the capacity of the human brain to effectively process and execute. It’s for this very reason that virtually all dictators die by the hands of their own people; or they die by their own hand to escape the wrath of their own people.
The principles of Systems Theory have shown us that complexity is the enemy of effectiveness in any system. Even a simple situation where there are only two variables in the environment would be an enormous computation for the human brain. For example, a simple situation with only two meaningful variables results in over 280 trillion possible combinations of the 48 Laws all interacting with one another. The brain can take some shortcuts, which reduces the time and accuracy of execution, but overall, any overly complex system will inevitably be too unwieldy and inherently prone to breaking down outside the controlled environment of a laboratory; and it will be too vulnerable to attack from much simpler and more agile systems. And in the context of a sociological system intended to inspire large numbers of people to devote themselves to a specific cause, the system of thought embodied in The 48 Laws of Power is extremely unreliable compared to much simpler and more edifying philosophies that aim to build people up to achieve mutual gain rather than to treat them as adversaries to out-maneuver and tear down.
The 48 Laws are a Recipe for Disaster in Business and Politics. The business world is filled with examples of people using the 48 Laws to the detriment of employees, shareholders and society. The management teams at Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson, Adelphia, and many other dysfunctional companies have been glaring examples of the counter-productive impact of the 48 Laws in the business world. And I’m sure we would not have to look for very long before we found examples of the 48 Laws in action at firms like Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns before they collapsed as well as companies today like AIG, Fannie, Freddie, and many others. And virtually the entire U.S. Congress and the Obama Administration illustrate the 48 Laws at their most impotent peak of dysfunction.
48 Ways to Create a Cold War Mentality Wherever You Go. When somebody tells you to employ a Machiavellian tactic in any environment, what is the first thought that comes to mind? Does it make you feel like you can trust that person? Does it make you respect that person? Does it make you want to help that person succeed? Does it make you wonder when that person is going to betray you? Does it create a strong foundation for an intimate business or personal partnership? Does it inspire you to devote your life and labor to that person? Does it help or hurt your chances of having a long-term, trust-filled, mutually beneficial relationship? The answers to all those questions should be self-evident.
The 48 Laws: Ancient Weapons that Crumble in the Modern World. Machiavelli wrote The Prince over 600 years ago. He did not have any way to understand how machine guns, airplanes, nuclear bombs and the Internet could impact the effectiveness of the ruthless principles he wrote. He did not understand how incredibly powerful sociological phenomena like network effects, tipping points, consumer lock-in, game theory, and mass propaganda absolutely undermine the effectiveness of his principles in the modern world.
In The 48 Laws of Power, which was written before the tech bubble burst in 2000, Robert Greene primarily synthesizes the principles written by Machiavelli, Sun-Tzu, and Carl von Clausewitz. And although the book is relatively modern, it still focuses on principles devised centuries ago; thus no attention is given to how modern technology and weaponry and sociological changes might impact the effectiveness of the 48 Laws. In short, they don’t work in the modern world, nor have they ever worked in any sustainable way throughout all of human history.
The 48 Laws Were Written by a Hollywood Screenwriter, Not a Serious Political Thinker. Prior to writing The 48 Laws of Power, Greene was a Hollywood screenwriter, not a credible historian or political science philosopher. Like all screenwriters, he has learned how to write pithy and provocative statements that excite the senses, but his work bears no resemblance to an authoritative work of literature or political science philosophy.
In his book, Greene cites examples of famous people—almost all of them well-known dictators and con artists—who used some of his 48 Laws as recently as the middle of the 20th Century. The selection of historical people he chose to illustrate the 48 Laws should trigger immediate alarm bells because most of them are not the kind of model leaders that anybody in our Blackhawk group would want to emulate.
Machiavelli’s Grand Joke on Dictators. Because the principles in The Prince—and by extension, The 48 Laws of Power—are literally the exact opposite of how the most respected and admired leaders in human history have behaved, many people believe that Machiavelli actually wrote The Prince as a satirical indictment on the tyrannical behavior that he saw all around him while he was an advisor to the ruling Medici Family in 15th Century Florence. The Medici Family was already very ruthless before Machiavelli joined their court, which means he was forced to hide his love for the people and his true beliefs while serving the Medicis. The only way he could strike back at the policies and behaviors that he believed were hurting his people was to write The Prince and hope the Medicis sabotaged themselves by following its counter-productive principles.
And indeed that’s exactly what happened. The family business was ruined, multiple assassination attempts were perpetrated by members of their own family, and we can clearly see the way the Florentine people perceived the Medici Family in the following quote from The Prince: “When Lorenzo [Medici] died in 1492 . . . within two years [his son] and his supporters were forced into exile with a republican government replacing him."
Machiavelli’s intention to write The Prince as a satire can be clearly observed by contrasting The Prince with all his other writings. In literally everything else he wrote, Machiavelli extols the virtues of Republicanism, proportional representation, eliminating barriers between people, and his love for the Florentine people. In fact, the famous French philosopher Rousseau, author of “The Social Contract,” made this point very clear when he said, “Machiavelli was a proper man and a good citizen . . . the contradiction between the teaching of the Prince and that of [Machiavelli’s] Discourses on Livy and the History of Florence shows that this profound political thinker has so far been studied only by superficial or corrupt readers.”
Rousseau’s statement confirms what many people learn when they read all of Machiavelli’s writings: The vast majority of people only study The Prince and assume Machiavelli was literally advocating the ruthless principles therein, but very few people ever actually study his whole body of literature to see what he truly believed. As a result, they never see the stark contrast between The Prince and his other works to understand that they are being tricked into adopting principles that will doom their political and business careers.
