Dwarkesh Patel

like having a council of the CEOs of all of the organizations that employees work for when your corporation also supplies your social safety net and you see your representation there.

It's also a world that's used to thinking in terms of hierarchy and very unused to thinking about real democracy and that really doesn't have any confidence in what we would recognize as democracy.

We talk about these republics and we're very excited by the fact that they give more power to the people than a monarchy does.

But they're still incredibly narrow oligarchic republics.

So one thing when we read Machiavelli, he talks a lot about the popolo, right, which we translate as the people.

And he talks about how important it is that the Popolo are respected and the Popolo have a voice and that the Popolo are armed and the government shows respect for the people by allowing the people to be armed.

And we read this and we're like, yeah, this feels really familiar.

This feels like documents of the founding of the U.S.

where we're respecting and arming and trusting the people.

Popolo meant the top 4% economically of the population, the members of the merchant guilds.

That's the Popolo.

He's talking about a narrow slice oligarchy being heard, a narrow slice oligarchy being respected.

We didn't realize that in the 19th century when we were excitedly translating the prints and reading it as quasi-democratic.

We now have read more documents of the period and realize how people use these words today.

And then there's a gradual takeover, right?

There's a gradual what we could call regulatory capture.

But an interesting detail about Florence, even as the Medici take over, is that the Medici know the people of Florence are very deeply invested in this republic and very deeply invested in its institutions.

And we have to, therefore, respect those institutions and proclaim respect for those institutions.

So we're going to sustain people in the named offices that there used to be.

And we're going to continue to let the guilds be important and have important offices.