I just finished rereading The Prince, by Niccolò Macchiavelli. I’d read it years ago, probably just out of college, but wanted to reread it, this time in Italian. I found a copy that had parallel texts- the original Italian from 1513, and a rewriting in modern Italian, so I read that one. While I did occasionally check the original text, I ended up reading the entire thing in the modern.  

The book is meant to be a straightforward, unvarnished look at human nature and what it takes to govern men. Macchiavelli doesn’t moralize over actions. He concerns himself with what works. This often means ‘appearances’; and he states in no uncertain terms that a leader will need to be seen as morally upright or religious, but not to let those things restrain what needs to be done.

The thing that maybe jumped out at me all the more this time was just how exhausting it would be to be the prince. Men want power for a variety of reasons. But whatever perks the job gets you- money, status, access, and… if the chance to actually exercise control over public events… it also comes with the immense responsibility of providing for those you rule over. It is your responsibility to take care of those under your care, and men aren’t easy to deal with. Sorting through the competing self-interests is part of what this book concerns itself with.

Those self-interests often lead to attempts at usurpation, which means the prince has to constantly be on guard against those that would supplant him. Keeping tabs on this, always watching over your shoulder, and the fear and mistrust that would lead to, are counter-factors to be considered when you feel like it must be nice to be at the top.

Then there are the threats from the outside. He writes at length about the politics of playing factions off each other and the kind of moral-gutter one needs to inhabit in order to just maintain safety.

When you consider that IF you, as the leader, decide you won’t inhabit that moral gutter and take the high road, then an outsider sees you as an easy target, ripe for the takeover, which means hardship for your people. Now, taking part in the moral gutter becomes a necessary part of the job.

This perhaps ties into something I was considering the other day.

I was driving and was thinking about a hypothetical incident where there would be a hit-and-run.  

There are several options:

1) The police would tell me to call them, report the incident, they would come out and note it. But nothing would be done. They aren’t going to go looking for the person that committed the crime.

2) If I were to tail the person, call them and tell them- I see the guy, he’s headed this-or-that direction, follow him! My guess is they’d tell me to back off and not tail the guy. I don’t think they’d send a car over to go arrest the guy.

3) I decide if the cops aren’t going to do anything, I handle it myself and try to follow the guy and ‘take care of business’ in whatever way. First, outside of trying to beat the guy up, I don’t have any legal authority to properly get justice, and second, the cops would probably take ME into custody for trying to get justice on my own terms.

Of course, I’m not a cop, so I don’t know what all the factors are. They’ve undoubtedly been down these scenarios a million times and have devised a set of responses that will keep the most people safe the majority of times.

But as much as I don’t like thinking this; this is not a system built for justice. It in fact perpetuates injustice. Starting from that point, one might be tempted to say- well then lets tear it down and rebuild one that IS just. But I’m not sure that’s possible. There are always trade-offs in life, and any time you try to compensate more heavily towards one side, in order to get away from x and get more y, then the balance is thrown off in another way.  

Let’s face it, if the ‘law’ didn’t concern itself with individual citizens getting vigilante justice by just not interfering, then we’d end up with a lot more injustice. The police also don’t have unlimited resources to send after every traffic incident that occurs in a big city. They have to pick and choose, and I’m assuming those decisions are usually going to end up based on ‘greatest need’ or some such.  

All this is to say that I can get my head around the arguments people make when they talk about ‘systems’ that are unjust. But I think there is probably a lot naivete about what can be done, and how easy it might be to construct something that is NOT unjust in some way. No one ever claims they want utopia, and they all act like they’re not demanding that. But I’m not sure that’s true. ANY system is going to have flaws, trade-offs will have to made, injustice IS going to happen. If you think any differently, please point me to some examples of where it doesn’t.

Here’s where the thinking of guys like Macchiavelli comes in. They don’t sweat the moralizing, they just grant that humans are such, and look at how to deal with them in the most effective manner. I don’t know if I can get behind that- I certainly don’t want to deal with it, but I think I can understand it.