A Few Things Worth Considering

From one of the more underrated political philosophers and students of human nature of our time:

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class — whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

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Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.

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What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce ... Men must want to do things of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organisations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work, every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you overorganize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness — they cannot work and their civilization collapses.

— Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

All laws and regulations are only as good as the people who create, interpret, and implement them. Given the dominant strains of careerism, materialism, and narcissism among our current socioeconomic elites, this observation falls squarely on the side of those who counsel cynicism and despair.

In the long run, the biggest challenge we face is not writing new laws and regulations, but rather choosing better leaders. We might approach this project first by figuring out how to raise better humans.

Ah, if only it were that easy ...

© 2009 The Epicurean Dealmaker. All rights reserved.


[This post originally appeared at The Epicurean Dealmaker on December 14, 2009. It is reproduced here in its entirety.]

From the Editor

Dear Readers, Collaborators, and Commenters —

As the financial Panic of 2008 recedes in our collective rearview mirror, this author has become increasingly interested in and engaged with the debate surrounding the proper shape and content of financial reform. While I am no expert in the regulation of financial services—nor indeed in almost any of the cognate fields which inform, impinge upon, and affect financial regulation—I am a practitioner in one financial subsector which, for better or worse, has played a central role in the panic and its aftermath; namely, investment banking.

Having practiced M&A and corporate finance within investment banks for approximately two decades, I have an insider's perspective on certain aspects of financial regulation on which many, many people—ranging from exceedingly well-informed and erudite all the way to woefully and stubbornly ignorant—have begun to opine. I myself have many opinions, prejudices, and predilections for what I believe the new regulatory framework for the financial system should look like, and I have shared several of those thoughts on my own blog site on occasion.

The New Decembrist Manifesto

On December 14, 1825 (old style), according to Wikipedia, officers of the Imperial Russian Guard

led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I's assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession. Because these events occurred in December, the rebels were called the Decembrists (Dekabristy, Russian: Декабристы). This uprising took place in the Senate Square in Saint Petersburg.

The loyal soldiers who became known as the Decembrists held many divergent views, and they cannot be said to have pursued a unified program of change. However, they were united by two fundamental beliefs: they wished to increase social, legal, and economic justice; and they wished to change the existing Russian political system through reform, not revolution.

It is in this spirit that this site appropriates their name. Winston Churchill famously proclaimed:

Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

We would like to say the same about capitalism as a form of economic organization. We do not seek revolution, or the destruction of what we currently have. We seek only to fix it, to make it better than it was. How we should do that, however, is a proper subject for debate.

Please join the conversation.

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