Dwarkesh Patel

in which his family has worked for the Medici family for generations.

He grows up expecting to work for the Medici family.

But the problem with heredity is that sometimes you get a weak link.

And in the moment that Machiavelli is in his early 20s coming of age about to work in government for the first time, a government in which he himself is not in fact even fully enfranchised.

That's one of the fascinating things about the degree of his patriotism.

You weren't allowed to serve in government office fully, the elected lottery offices, if your family was deep in debt.

And his grandfather had a lot of unpaid tax debt.

So he worked his whole life for a government of which he was not even quite a full citizen.

which is, again, deep love of your country, but also shows even people who could not be in office deeply loved and cared about this republic and that important liberty that they felt they had being ruled by the 5% instead of being ruled by one dictator.

And to us, that isn't a very big difference, right?

They're still both not democracy.

We would say they're both not liberty in the sense that we want liberty.

But it's an inch more liberty than monarchy.

And even that small amount of liberty, people loved it.

People were willing to fight for it.

People were willing to go to the streets and wave their banners and say, libertas, for the republic.

And because they were invested in it, Machiavelli observes, they sustained it.

But eventually, one particular Medici—I'm not saying names because they all have the same names over and over, and it's really confusing, so it's easier without names—

One particular Medici comes to power quite young and weak.

He's basically 20 when he's suddenly in charge of a very particular and precarious republic.