The Luck of Getting Rich: Between Merit, Chance, and Illusion

The Myth of Those Who Made It

An entire industry thrives on telling people how to get rich. Its leading voices promise to reveal the secrets of success, explain how to develop a winning mindset, and turn their own biographies into manuals for everyday life. The message is seductive in its simplicity: if someone has managed to build an extraordinary fortune, then by studying their habits and replicating their decisions, we too might achieve comparable results. All it takes is thinking differently, stepping outside our comfort zone, learning to recognize opportunities, and persevering when others give up. In this narrative, failure is almost always portrayed as the result of the wrong mindset, while success becomes the natural reward for those who believe in their potential strongly enough.

The problem is not that this advice is necessarily useless, but that it turns a possibility into a promise and an individual story into a universal law. Some people have built extraordinary fortunes through intelligence, expertise, risk-taking, and perseverance, but it does not follow that anyone possessing those same qualities will achieve comparable results. The biographies of winners tell us what happened to those who reached the finish line, not what would have happened to everyone who followed a similar path. The thousands of entrepreneurs who worked hard without becoming billionaires, the investors who made irrecoverable mistakes, and the professionals who never encountered the right opportunity occupy far less space in success narratives precisely because they offer a less seductive model to sell.

Money Is Not a Measure of Intelligence

Of course, it would be equally naive to deny that some people possess above-average abilities when it comes to understanding economic mechanisms, evaluating investments, negotiating, organizing work, and recognizing opportunities that others may not even see. Commercial and financial intelligence can make an enormous difference because it helps people understand that income depends not only on hours worked, but also on ownership of productive assets, the ability to organize resources, and the opportunity to reinvest profits. Those who sell only their time face limitations that an entrepreneur capable of building an efficient organization may overcome, while those who own capital and know how to deploy it have access to tools unavailable to people who must spend nearly all their income just to get by.

However, accumulated wealth is not a pure measure of intelligence. Someone can be highly capable without becoming rich, just as someone else can inherit considerable wealth without demonstrating any particular entrepreneurial ability. Between these extremes lies a wide range of circumstances in which individual merit interacts with family background, education, personal connections, access to credit, and prevailing economic conditions. Someone with initial capital can afford to take risks, make mistakes, and try again with a degree of freedom unavailable to someone without financial reserves. Someone backed by a family capable of providing support can devote years to a project without immediately jeopardizing their economic survival. Two people with similar abilities may therefore find themselves playing very different games, even when both believe they are competing solely on the basis of talent.

The Variable No One Can Control

Then there is luck, a word that unsettles both those who want to attribute everything to merit and those who prefer to believe that every success is the product of hidden privileges. Luck does not necessarily appear as an unexpected windfall or an inheritance. It can mean meeting the right business partner, entering a market before competitors do, securing financing while credit is still available, or launching a product just as demand begins to take off. An entrepreneur may make intelligent decisions, work with discipline, and take calculated risks, yet the outcome will also depend on what competitors do, the state of the economy, technological developments, and countless events no one can fully predict.

Imagine two people with comparable entrepreneurial abilities, both working to build a viable business. One meets an investor willing to finance expansion, manages to strengthen their market position, and benefits from a growing industry. The other cannot secure the necessary resources, suffers a liquidity crisis, and is forced to scale back the business. Twenty years later, the first might possess a considerable fortune while the second has returned to working as an employee. The difference in their wealth would not prove that the first was twenty times more intelligent or hardworking than the second. It would simply show that their paths had produced very different outcomes. Luck does not necessarily replace competence; often, it is the combination of the two that determines who manages to turn a promising venture into an extraordinary success.

Autobiographies and Selective Memory

The autobiographies of successful entrepreneurs often tell stories of sacrifice, insight, difficult decisions, and obstacles overcome through determination. There is no reason to assume these experiences are fabricated, but a biography written after success inevitably reconstructs events with the outcome already known. A decision that involved considerable risk at the time may later appear to have been a far-sighted choice. A chance encounter may become an apparently inevitable turning point. A favorable circumstance may be remembered as an opportunity recognized through the author's exceptional instincts. Once we know the ending, it becomes easier to impose coherence on a sequence of events that, as they unfolded, could have led to very different outcomes.

This does not mean successful people deliberately lie when they tell their stories, or that they are incapable of acknowledging luck. It means that human beings tend to organize memory into narratives in which their own actions occupy center stage. The problem arises when a personal account becomes a universal theory and readers are led to believe that replicating the protagonist's decisions will also reproduce their destiny. The same self-help industry that celebrates individual autonomy ends up overlooking a fundamental point: knowing the decisions made by someone who won is not the same as knowing all the conditions that allowed them to win, much less proving that those same decisions would have produced similar results under different circumstances.

Fatalism as an Excuse

If self-help promises excessive control over individual destiny, fatalism represents the opposite mistake. According to this view, anyone who becomes rich must simply have been born into the right family, known the right people, or benefited from extraordinary circumstances. Those who fail to accumulate wealth, meanwhile, can do little more than accept their situation. Every difference in outcome is thus attributed to an initial stroke of luck or an unjust system, while personal initiative loses all significance. This outlook can be just as comforting as the promise of guaranteed success because it removes the need to distinguish between what depends on our decisions and what lies beyond our control.

Fatalism, however, is no more realistic than naive optimism. Starting conditions matter, but they do not necessarily determine every outcome. Connections can open doors, but they cannot guarantee that those who walk through them will build something lasting. Luck can favor someone, but it cannot always turn an opportunity into a sustainable business. Some people make poor use of considerable advantages, while others manage to build significant enterprises with limited resources. Denying the role of personal initiative means ignoring part of reality just as surely as denying the importance of external circumstances. Between the illusion that we can control everything and the belief that we can control nothing lies the less glamorous but more concrete space of decisions we can make without any guarantee of success.

Getting Rich Is Not the Same as Learning to Earn More

Another important distinction concerns the very meaning of wealth. Earning a good income, owning a home, building savings, and becoming a billionaire are not equivalent goals, nor do they necessarily require the same conditions. Improving one's financial situation may simply require developing marketable skills, controlling expenses, avoiding unsustainable debt, and investing prudently over the long term. Accumulating an extraordinary fortune, by contrast, often involves ownership of businesses capable of scaling dramatically, equity stakes in highly profitable enterprises, or assets that increase enormously in value. The distance between these outcomes is so great that presenting the path to a billion-dollar fortune as merely a more ambitious version of ordinary financial planning means confusing fundamentally different economic phenomena.

Furthermore, wealth does not necessarily translate into personal well-being. A fortune can provide independence, security, and freedom of choice, but it can also bring responsibilities, conflicts, and risks that not everyone wants to face. Someone who chooses a stable job, devotes time to family, and passes up certain entrepreneurial opportunities is not necessarily less capable than someone who invests everything in a business venture. They may simply place a higher value on security, personal freedom, or quality of life. Measuring every life by the wealth accumulated means adopting a particular set of values and turning it, without sufficient reason, into a universal standard of judgment.

The Only Lesson Worth Learning

Perhaps we should stop asking wealthy people to reveal the secret of their success and start examining more carefully the concrete conditions that made their journeys possible. How much capital did they have available? What skills did they develop? What risks did they take, and what could they afford to lose? Which opportunities did they recognize before others? How much did their decisions contribute, and how much depended on favorable circumstances that might have unfolded differently? These questions are less seductive than motivational formulas, but they allow us to understand reality without turning every wealthy person into a genius or every poor person into a victim of the system.

There is no formula that guarantees wealth, just as there is no law condemning everyone who starts at a disadvantage to remain there. We can improve our abilities, better understand economic mechanisms, learn to recognize opportunities, and create more favorable conditions for our future. What we cannot do is order the world to present us with the opportunities we need or determine in advance what our efforts will yield. Competence increases our ability to capitalize on an opportunity; luck helps determine which opportunities arise and what consequences they bring; starting conditions establish, at least in part, how much we can risk and how many times we can afford to start over.

Perhaps maturity consists precisely in acknowledging this combination without seeking easy consolation. Someone who becomes rich has not necessarily cheated, but neither are they automatically superior to someone who has not. Those who have failed to achieve financial success need not attribute every setback to bad luck, but neither should they consider themselves solely responsible for circumstances they could not control. Life is not a competition in which everyone starts from the same line, possesses the same abilities, and faces identical obstacles. Merit exists, luck exists, and unequal starting conditions exist; the problem is that none of these realities, considered in isolation, can explain every outcome.

Money can teach us a great deal about economic mechanisms, human abilities, and the opportunities a society makes available to its members. It cannot, by itself, tell us everything we might want to know about the person who possesses it. Above all, it cannot turn an individual story into a promise that applies to everyone. We can learn from winners without believing their formulas, acknowledge luck without becoming fatalists, and take responsibility for our choices without deluding ourselves into thinking we are the absolute masters of our destiny. Perhaps this, more than any secret to getting rich, is the lesson truly worth carrying with us.

Locust Capitalism: Consume Everything, Then Move On

Today's Wealth, Tomorrow's Desert

We increasingly hear about a future in which artificial intelligence will make it possible to build million-dollar businesses with a single employee. The prospect is presented as an extraordinary triumph of efficiency: lower costs, fewer employees, higher productivity, and greater profits. Yet almost no one seems concerned with asking a basic question: what happens when an economic system becomes increasingly capable of producing wealth while becoming less capable of distributing the income people need to buy what it produces?

As a former economics student, I see a contradiction in this vision that deserves closer examination. Not because a business with a single employee is necessarily abnormal, or because automation should be resisted, but because the success of an individual company does not automatically translate into the sustainability of the economic system in which it operates. A business can become extraordinarily profitable by reducing its need for human labor. If this logic spreads without the development of alternative mechanisms for distributing income, the collective outcome could be very different from the sum of individual successes.

Industrial capitalism found one of its principal engines in mass consumption. The Ford Model T represented a transformation in which standardized production made automobiles accessible to a broader public. Henry Ford is also remembered for the wage increases he introduced in 1914, which helped make industrial employment more attractive, although it would be simplistic to interpret his strategy as merely an attempt to enable workers to buy the cars they manufactured. The underlying point remains: production, employment, and consumption could reinforce one another.

Artificial intelligence could weaken that connection. If machines allow goods and services to be produced with an ever-smaller workforce, those who own the technology may increase their returns without necessarily sharing the benefits with the rest of society. The question will not simply be how many jobs are eliminated or transformed, but also who owns the means of production and how the resulting wealth is distributed.

The Locust Economy

Perhaps, however, we are still reasoning as though capitalism must necessarily have an interest in ensuring the prosperity of consumers. What if a growing part of the economy could afford to disregard that concern, at least in the short term?

Consumers might continue to spend through accumulated wealth, investment income, and inheritances. But this possibility does not solve the problem. It shifts the issue to the distribution of ownership. A society in which a small minority owns the means of production while many depend on inherited wealth risks turning access to prosperity into a family privilege, diminishing the role of work as a source of economic independence and social mobility.

The mobility of capital already allows many investors to move their resources among companies, industries, and countries in search of better returns. Large corporations can relocate operations, reorganize supply chains, or abandon markets that are no longer profitable. Not all investors pursue short-term strategies, and not all businesses behave in the same way. The problem is structural: when the social and environmental costs of economic decisions are not adequately reflected in financial calculations, private gains can be achieved while substantial consequences are left to others.

This is the logic of locusts. A swarm arrives in a field, consumes what it finds, and moves on when the food runs out. It has no need to restore the soil because its survival depends on finding another place to exploit. Applied to the economy, this image describes a system in which capital can profit from a resource, a territory, or a community without assuming a proportionate responsibility for its future.

Loretta Napoleoni's Rogue Economics provides a useful point of reference for examining the contradictions of the global economy, its opaque corners, and the activities that flourish when oversight and the regulatory capacity of institutions prove inadequate. The locust metaphor extends this criticism to the risk that the pursuit of returns becomes a process of extraction, in which what matters is the value obtained today rather than what remains tomorrow.

Fossil Water and a Mortgaged Future

In some arid regions of the world, communities rely on fossil groundwater accumulated underground during geological periods that were far wetter than the present. These reserves can sustain agriculture, supply settlements, and encourage economic development. However, they often recharge so slowly that they are effectively nonrenewable on a human timescale. When extraction consistently exceeds replenishment, present prosperity is financed by consuming a resource that future generations will not have access to under the same conditions.

The metaphor applies equally well to the economy. Natural capital, professional skills, public trust, productive capacity, and household purchasing power can all be treated as reserves to be depleted. A company can improve its margins by cutting training. A region can lose expertise when production moves elsewhere. A community can see its tax base shrink just as its social needs increase.

Consumer demand, too, can be treated as a resource that cannot be taken for granted. If income becomes increasingly concentrated among those who own capital, the purchasing power of a substantial part of the population may weaken. The system can continue operating through the spending of the wealthy, investment income, credit, or public expenditure, but these mechanisms do not automatically guarantee widespread prosperity. Credit, for example, can temporarily support demand, but it cannot indefinitely replace inadequate income.

The danger is creating wealth that consumes the very conditions on which its existence depends. No one needs to deliberately decide to destroy those conditions. It is enough for each participant to pursue an immediate advantage without bearing an adequate share of the collective costs.

Degrowth and the Difficulty of Slowing Down Without Consequences

In response to these contradictions, the idea of happy degrowth proposes reducing waste, limiting unnecessary consumption, easing pressure on natural resources, and making more room for human relationships. It is a perspective worth discussing, particularly when economic success is measured almost exclusively through growth in gross domestic product. Yet there is a considerable gap between the ideal of a more restrained society and the practical possibility of achieving it without serious repercussions.

Modern economies are interconnected systems. Employment, pensions, public debt, mortgages, investment, and essential services depend on income flows and financial arrangements that do not automatically adjust when production declines. If demand falls, businesses may cut investment and jobs. If employment and incomes decline, tax revenues may contract precisely when the need for social protection increases. An unmanaged contraction can therefore trigger a recessionary spiral in which lower consumption generates further income losses.

This does not mean that every form of degrowth is impossible. Reducing waste, repairing rather than replacing, using fewer natural resources, and prioritizing socially useful activities are all goals compatible with an economy that continues to innovate. But an economic contraction does not become happy simply because someone advocates it. We must distinguish between selectively reducing harmful activities and a recession that destroys productive capacity, jobs, and economic security.

International competition presents another obstacle. A country that unilaterally slows investment and production while others continue accumulating capital, innovating, and capturing markets could lose expertise, employment, and strategic autonomy. A transition would therefore require agreements, industrial policies, appropriate tax systems, and a reorganization of income distribution. It would not be enough to encourage citizens to want less while the cost of essential goods and services continues to rise.

The deeper difficulty is that capitalism is not designed to stop simply because society has reached a level of prosperity deemed sufficient. Competition pushes businesses to improve productivity and returns. Investment requires the prospect of future gains. Governments must sustain public spending systems built around particular economic foundations. A society can decide to change these priorities, but it cannot ignore the mechanisms that hold the system together.

Happy degrowth, then, is not necessarily an impossible theory. It is a difficult transformation to achieve without simultaneously addressing ownership, welfare financing, debt, employment, and competition among economies. Otherwise, the risk is that voluntary restraint becomes a lifestyle choice for those who can afford it and enforced poverty for those who have no alternatives.

When Wealth Disappears, Conflict Remains

Imagine a region whose prosperity has been built around a major industrial plant, an extractive industry, or a sector capable of attracting investment and employment. Supporting businesses, shops, housing, services, and family expectations develop around that economic activity. Then capital moves elsewhere, production becomes automated, or the resource that sustained the local economy runs out.

The investor can record a loss, sell the investment, and look for opportunities elsewhere. The community cannot liquidate its existence so easily. Homes, debts, infrastructure, families, and workers with skills tied to a declining industry remain. So do local governments, which must continue providing services even as the tax base that finances them shrinks.

This is where economic decline can turn into social conflict. When opportunities disappear, people lose more than disposable income: they lose the ability to imagine a future. Young people leave in search of opportunities their hometowns can no longer provide. Businesses close, services deteriorate, and families compete more fiercely for jobs and public resources. The loss of population and expertise can deepen the crisis further.

Poverty does not automatically produce conflict, much less violence. Yet it can manifest itself through strikes, protests, political polarization, hostility toward institutions, and tensions over the allocation of resources. When economic losses combine with inequalities perceived as unjust, a lack of prospects, and institutions unable to respond, resentment can become fertile ground for more serious confrontations.

The paradox is that the economic system may consider an enterprise finished while the society that supported its development is only beginning to face the consequences. Capital moves; people remain. The return on an investment can be measured in numbers, while the cost of social disintegration is spread across thousands of lives and may become visible only years later.

There is no need to imagine a conspiracy of businesses deliberately plotting to impoverish entire regions. It is enough for each participant to pursue its own interests without being required to bear an adequate share of the collective costs. The outcome can become irrational for society even when each individual decision appears rational from the decision-maker's perspective.

Universal Basic Income Is Not Enough

At this point, universal basic income is often proposed as a solution to technological unemployment. If machines produce wealth in place of human beings, the argument goes, a portion of that wealth can be redistributed so that everyone can continue to live and consume. Such a policy could provide protection and support demand, but it would not automatically solve the underlying problem.

Where would the necessary funding come from? How would the gains from automation be distributed? Who would control the technological infrastructure and the capital generating the profits? And how much autonomy would people retain if their survival depended on financial transfers without any meaningful opportunity to participate in economic decisions?

Universal basic income could form part of a new social contract, but it should not become the price paid to make the permanent exclusion of millions of people from productive life acceptable. Work is not merely a source of income. It can provide skills, relationships, recognition, and opportunities to contribute to society. Losing a job does not necessarily mean losing all these things, but a society that fails to create alternatives risks depriving some of its members of both economic independence and a recognized social role.

The issue is not whether every existing job should be preserved, even when it is unnecessary or harmful, nor whether technological progress should be prevented from improving productivity. It is whether technological progress will translate into greater freedom for people or increasing dependence on those who own the machines.

Who Will Remain When the Locusts Have Left?

The problem with contemporary capitalism is not necessarily that it will exhaust every resource or that all businesses will behave like destructive swarms. It is that a system focused on maximizing returns can continue to work for those able to move their capital even as the regions from which that capital extracted wealth become less productive, less livable, and less capable of offering their residents a future.

Artificial intelligence could intensify this contradiction by allowing increasingly small organizations to control economically significant activities with very few employees. But the outcome will also depend on ownership rules, competition, taxation, labor policies, and the ability of institutions to distribute the benefits of automation. Technology creates possibilities; it does not, by itself, determine who will benefit.

The challenge, therefore, is not simply to choose between infinite growth and degrowth, automation and employment, or profits and redistribution. It is to build an economy in which the wealth produced is not systematically separated from responsibility toward the people and places that make its creation possible.

Locusts do not need to destroy the planet to prosper. They only need to keep finding another field to consume. But resources, communities, and opportunities to shift costs elsewhere are not infinite. When an impoverished region can no longer offer its residents a future, the problem does not disappear with the investors. It remains, becoming an economic, social, and political challenge.

Perhaps the decisive question is not whether capitalism will survive artificial intelligence. It is whether it can preserve the social conditions that make its own prosperity possible.

Because when there is nothing left to consume, who will still have an interest in rebuilding what has been destroyed?

The Black Ball: I'd Rather Be a Small Clock

I Won't Wait for Others to Reject Me

In Masonic tradition, there is a procedure that precedes initiation itself: the ballot. A candidate submits an application, and the members of the lodge are called upon to express their judgment through a secret vote. White and black balls become symbols of a collective decision: whether to admit or reject someone who has knocked at the door.

But I won't wait for someone else to drop the black ball into the urn. I'll drop it myself.

I have no need to await the judgment of a community I have no intention of joining, nor to entrust a group of people with the power to decide whether I am worthy of admission or possess the qualities required to become one of them.

My black ball is not a rejection imposed on me. It is a deliberate choice. I am not the one being turned away; I am the one refusing to enter.

And that distinction is fundamental.

I am not acting out of hostility toward Freemasonry, its rituals, its symbols, or its beliefs. I have no interest in determining whether its initiatory doctrines are true or whether its traditions preserve some particular form of knowledge. Everyone is free to embrace their own convictions and join whatever organizations they find meaningful.

My concern lies elsewhere: I belong to myself, and I feel no need for collective recognition to establish my own worth.

The Price of Belonging

I am not naive enough to believe that the world distributes opportunities solely on the basis of merit. There are environments where connections matter more than competence, where knowing the right people opens doors that remain closed to everyone else.

In certain settings, including some African countries, membership in influential networks can affect career advancement and access to positions of power. I do not intend to generalize these dynamics to entire countries or continents, but it would be equally naive to ignore the influence informal networks can have on professional and social life.

Could I gain more by joining such a network? Could I find protection, advantages, and opportunities that would otherwise remain beyond my reach? Possibly.

But I ask myself what I would actually be paying for what I receive.

I would rather have little that I have earned through my own efforts than much obtained through someone else's protection, especially if that protection might eventually come with strings attached. I do not consider accepting help dishonorable. No one builds a life entirely on their own. The problem begins when a favor becomes a permanent obligation, when gratitude is demanded in the form of obedience, and when keeping a position requires me to remain silent about what I believe or support something I do not agree with.

At that point, even success loses some of its value.

What good is a prestigious position if I cannot exercise it according to my conscience? How much does an achievement truly belong to me if my ability to keep it depends on the will of those who helped me attain it?

I refuse to pay for a privilege with my freedom of judgment.

The Cog and the Clock

This is where the image of the clock comes in.

I could join an organization, earn an important position within it, and even become indispensable to its operation. I could become the largest cog, the most valuable component, the one everyone considers essential.

But I would still be a cog.

Its importance depends on the mechanism in which it is placed. It can influence the movement of other components, but it does not necessarily determine the overall direction of the clock.

I, on the other hand, want to be a small clock.

I am not interested in becoming more powerful or prestigious than others. I want to build something with its own logic, its own rhythm, and its own direction. A mechanism that may be less impressive, but whose workings I can understand and for which I can take responsibility.

I do not need to dominate other clocks or prove that I am superior to those who choose to belong to an organization. I simply want to avoid becoming part of a system in which my function is determined by a will other than my own.

This does not mean rejecting cooperation. I can work with others, learn from them, form alliances, and take part in shared projects. But I want to do so on the basis of common goals, not an obligation to belong.

A small clock is not entirely self-sufficient. Rather, it is a project whose direction I can recognize as my own and for which I am willing to take responsibility.

I Do Not Confuse Freedom with Loneliness

I do not automatically consider someone who rejects every form of association superior to everyone else. There are communities that enrich their members without stifling their individuality, friendships that demand nothing in return, and organizations where discussion allows everyone to grow.

My position is not a rejection of all belonging. It is a rejection of the idea that, to get ahead, I must necessarily surrender part of my ability to make my own decisions.

Freedom does not mean living without ties. It means being able to choose which commitments to make, which responsibilities to accept, and when a collaboration is no longer compatible with one's principles.

I am willing to ask for help and acknowledge my mistakes. I can change my mind, accept criticism, and discover that someone else is right. I do not need to be infallible to be free.

What I refuse to accept is that the need for protection should become a permanent condition of my existence, or that the price of an opportunity should be the surrender of my conscience.

I know this choice may cost me important opportunities. I do not expect consistency to be rewarded every time, nor do I assume that those who choose a different path are necessarily less free. I simply accept that my own journey may be more difficult.

I Cast the Black Ball Myself

Let us return to the urn.

A candidate who submits an application agrees to be judged by a community. Admission depends on rules and procedures that the candidate does not entirely control. The candidate may be accepted or rejected for reasons that will not necessarily be disclosed.

I choose not to go that far.

I cast the black ball myself.

I do not need to know who might approve my application or who might oppose it. I have no desire to entrust a vote with the outcome of a decision I have already made within myself.

My black ball is not a condemnation of Freemasonry, nor does it represent any moral superiority over those who belong to it. It is simply a refusal to embrace an affiliation I do not consider necessary to my life.

The world will continue to reward connections, protection, and the ability to find a place within the machinery of power. I have no intention of pretending these advantages are irrelevant. But there is a difference between using relationships without surrendering one's autonomy and eventually identifying one's own worth with the place a network assigns.

I choose to build my own path, accepting the risk of making mistakes without a protective network behind me. I would rather answer for my own decisions than have to justify them to someone who believes that granting me a favor has earned them the right to influence my choices.

I do not consider every sacrifice a victory, nor do I regard every success achieved with the help of others as a defeat. I simply know that there is a point beyond which material gain may come at too high a price.

For me, that point is reached when I can no longer exercise control over my own will.

I do not want to become the most important cog in someone else's clock. I want to build a smaller mechanism, perhaps imperfect, but capable of moving in a direction I recognize as my own.

That is why, when I stand before the urn, I do not wait for someone else's verdict.

I cast the black ball myself. I'd rather be a small clock, responsible for its own movement, than a prestigious cog forced to turn according to someone else's will.

The Iron Law of Oligarchy: Robert Michels and the Eternal Tendency of Power to Concentrate

Why those who promise to liberate the people so often end up ruling in their name

Democracy and Its Paradox

There is a paradox that runs throughout human history: people fight to free themselves from the rule of a few, only to find themselves submitting to a new ruling minority once their freedom has supposedly been won. Flags, ideologies, and promises change, but the old hierarchies may simply be replaced by new ones, while the ideals that inspired the struggle survive only in the rhetoric of those who have seized power.

Why does this happen? The sociologist Robert Michels identified one of the most troubling answers in what he called the iron law of oligarchy: every complex organization tends to concentrate power in the hands of a small leadership group, even when it is founded on the declared goals of democracy and equality. His insight extends beyond the sociology of political parties, forcing us to examine the structures that encourage the concentration of power and the behaviors that allow it to endure.

When Organizations Produce Oligarchy

We are accustomed to explaining the corruption of power as a betrayal of ideals: a movement begins with good intentions, gains public support, and is eventually corrupted by the ambition of its leaders. Michels offers a more radical explanation: oligarchy can emerge from the very workings of an organization, without necessarily requiring a deliberate conspiracy or conscious deception.

A large community needs to coordinate its activities, distribute responsibilities, manage resources, and make decisions. Those who assume these duties gradually acquire experience, information, relationships, and specialized skills, while ordinary members may lack the time and resources needed to exercise equally effective oversight. An imbalance develops: leaders who were initially entrusted with carrying out the collective will acquire the ability to interpret and shape it. Representation risks becoming a position of domination, especially when effective mechanisms of accountability and leadership turnover are absent.

The Revolution of the Leaders

History offers numerous examples of movements that, after denouncing elite privilege, have ended up creating new hierarchies. Parties that promise participation can become closed bureaucracies, while organizations founded to fight entrenched elites can develop privileged inner circles of their own. Their slogans remain unchanged even as the interests they serve begin to shift.

The decisive transformation occurs when the organization's survival becomes more important than the reasons for which it was created. Criticism is perceived as a threat, dissent as disloyalty, and leadership turnover as a danger to established arrangements. A revolution can therefore be hollowed out from within by those who inherit and administer its legacy.

This does not mean that every movement is destined to degenerate. It means that declared intentions are not enough to guarantee an organization's democratic character. To understand how democratic it really is, we must examine how power is distributed, monitored, and transferred.

The Sovereign People and the Citizen as Spectator

Modern democracy places sovereignty in the hands of the people. But what does sovereignty mean when decisions are developed through complex institutions to which citizens do not have equal or direct access? Voting remains essential, but it does not exhaust democratic participation. Between elections, decisions take shape, priorities are established, candidates are selected, and the range of politically acceptable alternatives is defined.

Citizens may replace their representatives without being able to change the structures that favor the reproduction of elites. Electoral legitimacy, after all, is not the same as effective control over power. Representative government is necessary in complex societies, but representation must not become an unlimited authorization: elected officials receive a political mandate, not the right to place themselves beyond the scrutiny of those who elected them.

When participation is reduced to the periodic selection of those who govern, citizens risk becoming spectators, while established leadership groups retain disproportionate control over the decisions that affect everyone. Democracy may survive in its formal procedures even as its substance grows weaker.

Why Is Domination Accepted?

The concentration of power cannot be explained solely by the strategies of those who hold it. We must also consider the social and cultural conditions that allow it to endure. A hierarchical system can become entrenched when it is perceived as inevitable, when alternatives seem unrealistic, or when challenging authority carries significant personal costs. Belonging to a group offers protection and recognition, while dissent can jeopardize relationships and opportunities. Silence may therefore seem more convenient than criticism.

Conformity does not always arise from conviction. It can stem from fear, habit, or the desire to avoid conflict. Power becomes especially stable when a historically created condition comes to be perceived as natural and unavoidable.

This does not mean that all consent is manipulated. People may consciously support an organization and consider its authority legitimate. The problem arises when dissent is discouraged and the possibility of challenging decisions becomes merely theoretical. The philosophical question is when consent remains an expression of autonomy and when it becomes a passive endorsement of decisions made by others.

Merit as a Justification for Privilege

Oligarchies can also consolidate their power by presenting their position as the natural outcome of merit. Complex societies need specialized skills and differentiated responsibilities. The problem is not recognizing expertise, but determining what limits should govern its exercise. Someone who is particularly effective at organizing a political party does not thereby acquire an unlimited right to rule it, just as experience should not guarantee permanent tenure.

When the same inner circle controls candidate selection, performance evaluation, and access to opportunities, merit can become a circular justification: those at the top are considered the most capable precisely because they occupy those positions, while those excluded have fewer opportunities to demonstrate their abilities.

The hierarchy then determines not only who exercises power, but also the criteria by which that power is judged legitimate. Expertise subject to scrutiny can serve the public interest; superiority transformed into privilege protects those who already hold power.

Are Elites Inevitable?

It would be a mistake to conclude that the solution is to eliminate every leadership group. Societies need people capable of administering, coordinating, innovating, and accepting responsibility. The goal is not to prevent anyone from leading, but to stop leadership from becoming a permanent possession.

An elite can play a constructive role when it is competent, accountable, and open to renewal. It becomes oligarchic when it identifies its own interests with the public good, restricts access to positions of responsibility, and obstructs its own replacement.

That is why changing individuals is not enough. If the mechanisms of selection and oversight remain untouched, one minority may simply be replaced by another. Transparency, accountability, competition for leadership positions, and the freedom to dissent cannot eliminate every risk, but they can make the emergence of unchecked power more difficult.

A free society is not one in which nobody leads. It is one in which leaders must answer for their decisions and cannot indefinitely evade the possibility of being replaced.

The Critique of Power Begins with Us

Michels's theory takes on an even deeper meaning when we stop applying it only to our opponents. It is easy to recognize privilege on the other side and find excuses for it when it benefits our own group. We may condemn the arrogance of the powerful while tolerating it when those in power promise to advance goals we support. Loyalty to an ideal can thus become confused with loyalty to those who claim to represent it.

Our relationship with power also reflects how we judge others, our willingness to question shared assumptions, and our ability to accept criticism from within our own circles. Are we willing to recognize dissent as legitimate when it challenges our beliefs? Would we surrender an advantage in the name of a principle we consider just? Can we distinguish defending an ideal from defending the person who claims to embody it?

These questions do not erase the differences in responsibility between those who exercise power and those who live under it. They do, however, remind us that hierarchies can also be reinforced by indifference, opportunism, and reluctance to challenge our own group.

Conclusion: Freedom Means More Than Voting

Robert Michels offers a troubling diagnosis: organizations created to express the collective will can develop structures that concentrate power in a minority and enable that minority to preserve its position. Recognizing this tendency does not mean accepting it as inevitable. It means identifying the mechanisms that can limit it.

Democracy cannot rely solely on the virtue of its leaders. It requires institutions that hold them accountable, rules that permit leadership turnover, and citizens capable of independent judgment. Freedom means more than choosing who governs. It requires that decisions remain open to challenge, hierarchies subject to scrutiny, and no group able to turn its mandate into a permanent entitlement to rule.

Perhaps this reveals one of the deepest contradictions of human nature: we desire autonomy, yet we also seek security and protection. Freedom entails responsibility and uncertainty, while submitting to an authority can offer the reassurance of not having to confront every decision ourselves.

The ultimate question is not whether elites will continue to exist, but whether we can prevent them from becoming entrenched ruling castes. It is not whether we will find leaders without ambitions, but whether we can build institutions that do not depend on their virtue.

A people may retain all the formal attributes of sovereignty while gradually losing the ability to influence the decisions that shape their lives. This happens when participation becomes a ritual and democratic oversight is treated as an obstacle rather than a safeguard.

Ultimately, the question is not simply who governs human beings.

It is how much freedom people are willing to surrender to avoid bearing the burden of exercising it.

Why Grassroots Movements Are Not Enough: From Lenin to Cateno De Luca, How Power Protects Itself

The Central Problem: Winning Support Is Not the Same as Winning Power

A political movement can win public support, expose the failures of established parties, and give a voice to citizens who feel abandoned by the political system. Yet none of these achievements guarantees that it will be able to translate popular support into institutional power.

This is one of the fundamental contradictions of modern democracy: the ability to challenge the political establishment depends not only on how many people support a movement, but also on whether the institutional system allows that support to become effective political representation.

Established political forces possess advantages that newcomers often lack: organizational infrastructure, financial resources, media visibility, experienced personnel, and access to existing networks of influence. Electoral rules can reinforce these advantages, even when they are formally applied to everyone.

But there is another dimension to this problem. When a country's political system becomes increasingly incapable of absorbing dissent, the resulting tensions may also create opportunities for foreign powers seeking to advance their own strategic interests.

These two dynamics must not be confused. Institutional barriers facing new political movements are not proof of foreign interference, and popular dissent is not evidence of a hidden geopolitical agenda. Nevertheless, both phenomena reveal an important truth: political power operates within a broader struggle involving institutions, domestic interests, and international competition.

The history of Lenin's return to Russia in 1917 illustrates the geopolitical dimension of this problem. The experience of Cateno De Luca in Italy offers a contemporary example of the difficulties involved in translating local political strength into broader institutional influence.

The connection is analytical, not personal: neither example should be taken to imply that De Luca has foreign sponsors or intends to destabilize Italy. The common question is how political systems respond when forces outside established power structures attempt to challenge the existing order.

Lenin and the German Strategy of Exploiting a Domestic Crisis

In April 1917, during World War I, Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia from exile by crossing Germany on a special train that became known as the sealed train. German authorities permitted his passage because they believed his return could intensify the political crisis in Russia, then an enemy in the ongoing war.

Berlin was not motivated by ideological sympathy for the Bolsheviks. Its calculations were strategic. If revolutionary agitation weakened Russia's government and reduced its capacity to continue fighting, Germany would benefit militarily.

The German authorities were therefore willing to facilitate the movement of a political figure whose objectives differed from their own because they believed his return could serve German interests.

This episode does not mean that Germany created the Russian Revolution. The collapse of the tsarist regime, the devastation of war, social inequalities, and the weakness of political institutions had deep domestic roots. Nor did German assistance guarantee the Bolsheviks' eventual victory.

The historical significance lies elsewhere: a foreign power can exploit an existing domestic crisis by helping a political force whose rise may weaken an adversary, even when the foreign power does not share that force's ultimate objectives.

The underlying discontent does not have to be manufactured. It already exists. External actors may instead seek to amplify it, accelerate developments, or turn internal instability to their advantage.

This is a recurring possibility in international politics. It is not, however, a universal explanation for revolutions, protests, or political movements. Claims of foreign interference in any specific contemporary case require independent evidence.

When Domestic Weakness Becomes a Geopolitical Opportunity

Every country contains social divisions, economic grievances, political conflicts, and groups that believe established institutions no longer represent them adequately. Such conditions can produce entirely legitimate movements for change.

Yet domestic crises also attract the attention of foreign governments and other external actors.

A state seeking to weaken a rival may benefit when that rival faces political paralysis, declining public confidence, or deep social divisions. Depending on the circumstances, it may attempt to influence public narratives, amplify existing disagreements, or exploit tensions that domestic institutions have failed to resolve.

The distinction between exploiting a crisis and creating one is essential. A foreign actor does not need to invent every grievance, control every protest, or finance every political organization to benefit from a country's internal difficulties.

At the same time, three different phenomena must remain analytically separate: genuine popular dissent, the domestic or foreign exploitation of that dissent, and documented foreign interference. The first is a normal feature of political life. The second is a possible political strategy. The third is a factual claim that requires evidence.

Treating every protest as a foreign operation is as misleading as assuming that every political movement operates entirely outside broader networks of influence.

The more useful question is whether a political system can address legitimate grievances before they deepen into a crisis that others may find advantageous to exploit.

Cateno De Luca and the Limits of Local Political Strength

The political experience of Cateno De Luca and his movement, Sud chiama Nord—literally, “The South Calls the North”—offers a useful contemporary case study of a different but related problem: the difficulty of turning a strong local political base into wider national or European influence.

De Luca's trajectory illustrates the importance of territorial organization, direct relationships with voters, recognizable political communication, and a sustained presence in local communities.

These resources can allow a movement to challenge established parties within a particular territory. But local success does not automatically translate into national competitiveness.

Expanding beyond a regional base requires an organization capable of addressing different electorates, competing in a wider media environment, sustaining a broader network of candidates and supporters, and meeting the practical requirements of electoral participation.

The challenge is not simply persuading more voters. It is building the organizational capacity to compete across an entirely different political landscape.

This is why the distinction between popular legitimacy and institutional access matters. A movement can have genuine support and still struggle to convert that support into representation on a larger scale.

De Luca's experience should not be interpreted as evidence of foreign sponsorship, hidden destabilizing intentions, or geopolitical manipulation. It is relevant here because it illustrates a general question facing political outsiders: how can a movement challenge established power when the resources and structures needed to compete nationally are distributed so unevenly?

Italy's Recently Approved Electoral Law: Who Gets to Compete?

The question of political access is not merely theoretical. It also concerns the rules governing elections.

In Italy, an electoral law approved recently has renewed debate over the requirements imposed on political groups that lack parliamentary representation. Among its provisions, the number of signatures required to present electoral lists rises from 1,500 to 6,000 per constituency for parties without representation in Parliament. The number of constituencies in which lists must be presented also increases, while specific exemptions remain available to certain political forces meeting established criteria.

The broader issue is whether rules designed to promote governability can also make it more difficult for new political movements to enter the electoral arena.

There are legitimate arguments for limiting excessive party fragmentation and ensuring that elections operate under clear, workable procedures. Stable governing majorities matter. So do transparency, administrative feasibility, and the integrity of the electoral process.

But the practical consequences of electoral requirements cannot be assessed solely by looking at whether the rules are formally the same for everyone.

Established parties generally have greater organizational capacity, broader territorial networks, and more public visibility. New movements must build these resources from scratch. A requirement that appears reasonable for an established political organization may impose a much heavier burden on a newcomer.

This does not establish that the Italian law was deliberately designed to exclude political outsiders. That conclusion would require evidence beyond the existence of stricter requirements. Nevertheless, the law raises a legitimate democratic question: when the rules governing political competition become more demanding, do they preserve a genuinely open contest, or do they risk reinforcing the advantages of those already in power?

Democracy does not guarantee every movement a parliamentary seat. It should, however, preserve a meaningful opportunity for new political forces to compete.

If citizens can vote only among alternatives that have already passed through increasingly demanding institutional filters, formal political freedom may coexist with a narrowing of practical choice.

That is the structural concern. It is not proof of a conspiracy, but it is a question of democratic design that deserves scrutiny.

How Institutional Barriers Can Deepen Political Discontent

Political barriers rarely operate only through outright prohibitions. They may also emerge through organizational costs, demanding signature requirements, short deadlines, unequal access to public visibility, and procedural obstacles that smaller groups find especially difficult to overcome.

The result can be a political system in which participation is formally open but practically easier for established actors than for newcomers.

When citizens believe that institutional change is possible only for those who are already part of the system, confidence in representative democracy may decline. When political outsiders repeatedly struggle to gain access, frustration can extend beyond individual parties and begin to affect the legitimacy of the system itself.

This does not mean that restrictive rules automatically cause instability, or that every anti-establishment movement offers a credible alternative. It means that the capacity to absorb dissent is one of the foundations of a resilient democracy.

A system that allows dissatisfaction to be expressed, organized, and represented has a better chance of addressing problems through ordinary political processes. A system perceived as closed risks pushing discontent into less predictable channels.

Such vulnerability may also become strategically relevant to external actors. The point is not that every domestic conflict is engineered abroad, but that unresolved grievances can create opportunities for those seeking to weaken another country's cohesion or influence its decisions.

Institutional openness is therefore not merely a matter of fairness to political outsiders. It can also contribute to a country's political resilience.

The Paradox of Grassroots Movements

The paradox is that a movement may emerge to challenge a closed political system only to discover that becoming influential requires it to navigate the very structures it criticizes.

It may win local elections, mobilize supporters, and expose the shortcomings of established parties, yet struggle to turn those achievements into broader institutional power. Its problem may not be a lack of public support alone, but the difficulty of sustaining an organization capable of competing beyond its original base.

The answer is not to assume that every outsider is right or that every established institution is illegitimate. Political movements must still demonstrate competence, develop credible proposals, and build organizations capable of lasting beyond a single leader or electoral campaign.

At the same time, institutions must ensure that the pursuit of governability does not become an excuse for making political competition unnecessarily difficult.

The relationship between these two responsibilities is crucial. Outsiders must prove that they can govern; established institutions must demonstrate that meaningful alternatives can emerge.

Neither side can demand unconditional trust. Both must earn it.

The Real Lesson: Open Political Competition Is a Democratic Safeguard

The examples of Lenin and Cateno De Luca illuminate different aspects of a broader political problem.

Lenin's return to Russia demonstrates how a foreign power may seek to exploit an existing domestic crisis for strategic purposes. De Luca's experience illustrates the organizational and institutional difficulties that political outsiders can face when attempting to expand beyond their local base. Italy's recently approved electoral law raises a related question about the practical conditions under which new political forces can compete.

These are not equivalent situations, and there is no evidence here to suggest that they share a direct causal connection. Their relevance lies in the broader principle they help illuminate: political outcomes depend not only on popular support, but also on the institutions through which that support must pass and the wider interests that may seek to influence political developments.

A genuine grassroots movement can encounter structural barriers without being manipulated from abroad. A foreign power can exploit domestic weaknesses without having created them. An electoral reform can pursue legitimate objectives while still producing effects that deserve democratic scrutiny.

The essential task is to distinguish evidence from speculation while recognizing the relationship between institutional openness, political legitimacy, and national resilience.

A healthy democracy does not have to guarantee that outsiders will win. It must ensure that they have a meaningful opportunity to compete.

When political alternatives become inaccessible, the damage extends beyond the fortunes of individual movements. Citizens may begin to question whether elections can produce meaningful change at all. That loss of confidence weakens the political system and can create opportunities for forces seeking to exploit its divisions.

The strongest defense against external interference is therefore not indiscriminate suspicion of dissent. It is a political system capable of addressing grievances, allowing credible alternatives to emerge, and maintaining public confidence in the possibility of change through democratic institutions.

A democracy proves its strength not by preventing challenges to established power, but by remaining open enough to confront them without losing its legitimacy.

Homosexuality, the Common Good, and Individual Freedom: What Kind of Society Do We Want to Build?

If You Want to Challenge a Right, Don't Cite Religion

If we want to have a serious discussion about homosexuality and the recognition of the rights of gay people, let us begin with one premise: leave religion out of the argument.

Not because religion is irrelevant to the history of civilizations, the formation of individual conscience, or the moral beliefs of millions of people. But because we live in increasingly secular societies, where religious convictions can no longer serve as a universally accepted foundation for determining what should be permitted, prohibited, or recognized by law.

If someone believes homosexuality is a sin, they are free to hold that belief. If they consider it a vice or morally objectionable behavior, they can defend that position on ethical grounds. But when moral disapproval becomes a demand to deny other people their rights, the nature of the debate changes.

It is no longer enough to claim that something contradicts one's religion, upbringing, or personal sensibilities. One must explain why that conduct should be considered harmful to others, to the community, or to the social order.

Above all, one must demonstrate that any alleged harm justifies the specific restrictions being proposed.

If we want to debate the issue scientifically, we must accept what science can tell us and acknowledge the limits of its conclusions. If we want to debate it philosophically, we must present arguments that can be examined even by those who do not share our personal convictions.

Otherwise, we are not having a discussion. We are simply asking everyone else to accept our assumptions.

From Sexual Orientation to Moral Judgment

Part of society still regards homosexuality as a vice, a moral deviation, or a behavior incompatible with its preferred way of life. These beliefs may stem from religion, tradition, conservative views of the family, or particular interpretations of the relationship between sexuality, reproduction, and social organization.

We cannot pretend these positions do not exist. But we must distinguish their existence from their validity.

Contemporary medicine and mainstream psychological science do not classify homosexuality, in itself, as a mental disorder. Sexual orientation is also not synonymous with an isolated behavior: it concerns a dimension of a person's emotional and sexual attraction.

This does not mean science can resolve every moral question. Science can help us understand phenomena, assess the consequences of particular behaviors, and distinguish facts from prejudice. But science alone cannot determine which conception of the good should prevail in society.

Moving from description to prescription requires an additional argument.

Even if we accept that part of the population considers homosexuality morally wrong, we still need to establish why that judgment should translate into restrictions on other people's rights.

A majority can disapprove of a choice without necessarily having the right to prohibit it. A minority can demand freedom without requiring everyone to approve of the way its members live.

This is precisely where the political question begins.

Two Different Conceptions of Society

The recognition of individual rights is not merely a matter of tolerance. It is also the product of a particular understanding of the relationship between the individual and the community.

For the sake of argument, let us imagine two ideal models.

The first places fundamental value on individual autonomy. Society exists, in part, to allow people to shape their own lives, pursue their goals, and form freely chosen relationships, provided they respect the rights of others.

The second gives greater priority to the community. Individuals are not viewed as isolated subjects, detached from their surroundings, but as members of a broader whole characterized by mutual obligations, shared values, traditions, and collective goals.

No one truly lives outside a community. The language we speak, the education we receive, the institutions on which we depend, and even some of our desires take shape through our relationships with others.

Absolute individualism, therefore, offers a problematic account of human nature. But an equally problematic situation arises when the community claims the authority to determine every aspect of its members' lives.

Western philosophical tradition contains both of these tensions. Ancient Greek thought placed considerable emphasis on the city and the duties of citizenship, while other philosophical, political, and legal traditions gradually developed the importance of personal autonomy and individual rights. There is no simple equivalence between the West and individualism, just as not every communitarian culture denies personal freedom.

The distinction that matters here is different: when individual freedom conflicts with a collective objective, which interest should take precedence?

When the Common Good Becomes a Reason for Exclusion

Imagine a society that considers demographic continuity, the traditional family, the transmission of inherited values, and conformity to a shared way of life to be fundamental priorities.

In such a society, heterosexuality may be valued not merely as one form of human experience, but as the preferred model because of its association with reproduction and generational continuity.

So far, there is not necessarily a conflict with individual freedom. A community can support families, encourage childbirth, and recognize the social value of parenthood without denying dignity and rights to those who live differently.

The problem begins when promoting one model becomes a demand that everyone conform to it.

If conformity becomes a requirement for being regarded as a fully legitimate member of the community, those who depart from the accepted model risk being perceived as outsiders, anomalies, or even threats.

This is where the common good can be invoked to justify exclusion.

But we must ask a fundamental question: are we genuinely protecting a collective good, or are we simply equating the common good with the majority's moral preferences?

A society can legitimately care about its own continuity. It does not follow, however, that every individual must reproduce, that every family must have the same structure, or that every relationship must be evaluated according to its reproductive capacity.

If we argue that recognizing a particular freedom harms the community, we must identify the harm, establish that it is real, and explain why it cannot be addressed through less restrictive means.

Mere departure from the majority's preferred model does not, by itself, establish the existence of collective harm.

The Problem of Conformity

The question becomes even more interesting when we consider how a society defines harmony.

A cultivated field can be organized to achieve a specific yield. In that context, uniformity among crops may serve a practical purpose.

Human society, however, is not a farm. It has no single measurable outcome to which every other consideration must be subordinated.

It must reconcile security, cooperation, solidarity, cultural continuity, freedom, creativity, and individual dignity. These goods can conflict, and no solution will necessarily maximize all of them at once.

Conformity can make behavior more predictable and facilitate coordination. But it can also produce groupthink, conceal dissent, and encourage people to pretend to support values they do not genuinely hold.

A society in which no one openly expresses disagreement is not necessarily a society without conflict. It may simply be a society in which dissent comes at too high a price.

On the other hand, a pluralistic society is not automatically harmonious. Differences can generate genuine tensions and require institutions capable of managing them.

The question, therefore, is not whether we should choose order or disorder in the abstract. It is what kind of order we want and what price we are willing to pay for it.

The Cost of Freedom and the Cost of Exclusion

A society that prioritizes individual freedom must accept a difficult consequence: some people will lead lives that the majority disapproves of.

This applies to sexual orientation, but also to many other moral, cultural, and personal differences. Recognizing a right does not mean everyone must approve of its exercise. It means that disapproval alone is insufficient grounds for taking that right away.

A liberal society therefore accepts a certain distance between citizens' personal values and the rules governing their coexistence. It does not demand that everyone share the same conception of the good life. Instead, it seeks to ensure that people can live alongside one another without allowing some citizens' moral preferences to become automatic obligations for everyone else.

A society that gives absolute priority to the collective interest may reach different conclusions. If it considers a uniform model of family, behavior, or social belonging indispensable, it may judge certain differences incompatible with its objectives.

At that point, however, it must confront a consequence that cannot be erased by invoking the common good: some people risk being excluded, stigmatized, or deprived of freedoms because they do not conform to the chosen model.

This is not necessarily an accident unrelated to the system. It can become a consequence of the criteria the system uses to determine who deserves full recognition.

That does not mean every communitarian conception of society must produce discrimination. A community can place great value on mutual obligations and solidarity while protecting minorities. The problem arises when belonging becomes conditional on conformity and difference is treated as harmful without evidence that it actually causes harm.

The Question We Cannot Avoid

We have now returned to our starting point, but with a clearer understanding of the issue.

The debate over homosexuality is not merely about how we judge a particular form of attraction or relationship. It is also about how we understand the relationship between the individual and society.

If we choose a society in which individual rights place limits on majority power, we must recognize that even unpopular minorities can possess fundamental freedoms. We cannot systematically make those rights dependent on the moral approval of the more numerous group.

If, instead, we choose a model in which the collective interest takes precedence, even when it conflicts with personal autonomy, we must acknowledge that certain freedoms may be sacrificed in the name of a shared project. We must also explain who defines that project, how its objectives are established, and what safeguards prevent the common good from becoming a convenient justification for any form of exclusion.

It is not enough to claim that society needs shared values. We must determine which values everyone is required to follow and which can remain matters of personal conviction.

Ultimately, the issue is not whether everyone must approve of homosexuality. Nor is it whether a community should abandon its commitment to family, reproduction, or inherited traditions.

The issue is whether the majority's moral disapproval should translate into the power to restrict a minority's freedom.

A society may want its members to share certain values. But it must also decide whether conformity to those values is a condition for enjoying fundamental rights.

This is a political, philosophical, and moral choice. We cannot resolve it simply by appealing to nature, tradition, or the common good.

The final question is this: Do we want a society in which people have rights because they conform to a shared model, or one in which they can fully belong to the community even when they do not embody that model?

The difference between these two conceptions does not become apparent when everyone agrees. It becomes apparent when a minority asks to be recognized and the majority believes it should not be.

That is when we discover the value we truly place on individual freedom and the limits we are willing to impose in the name of the common good.

Power Changes Its Skin: How Systems Survive the Fall of Their Masters

The Fall of the Powerful Does Not Mean the End of Power

Every age has its men of destiny. Leaders who believe they are indispensable, executives convinced they are untouchable, and elites persuaded that the order from which they benefit will last forever. Then, suddenly, the balance of power shifts. A government falls, a regime enters a crisis, a revolution overturns institutions, or a ruling class is swept away by scandal or loses the support of those who guaranteed its survival only yesterday.

These are the moments when one of power's most remarkable characteristics becomes apparent: its ability to survive the downfall of those who represent it.

Faces change, slogans are rewritten, responsibility is assigned to predecessors, and the beginning of a new era is proclaimed. Yet behind the scenes, many of the people, relationships, and interests that sustained the old order often manage to survive by adapting to the new circumstances.

To understand this continuity, we must stop identifying power exclusively with those who occupy the highest positions. A leader is merely the most visible point in a much broader network of administrative institutions, economic interests, intermediaries, officials, political alliances, and centers of influence. When the leadership collapses, the network does not necessarily disappear with it.

In fact, the network sometimes survives precisely because the leadership is replaced.

Consent: Even a Sovereign Must Answer to Someone

The idea of absolute power has always held a powerful attraction for the human imagination. The sovereign gives orders, and subjects obey. The dictator makes decisions, and the machinery of government carries them out. It is a simple picture, but an incomplete one.

In reality, even authoritarian power depends on conditions that a ruler cannot entirely control. Officials must implement orders, military leaders must remain willing to defend the regime, allies must provide resources, and influential groups must continue to believe that supporting the incumbent is preferable to replacing him.

The history of imperial Russia offers a revealing example. The tsar formally wielded autocratic authority, yet his continued rule also depended on the loyalty of the elites and institutions around him. Dynastic crises, court conspiracies, and ultimately the Revolution of 1917 demonstrated how vulnerable a sovereign could become when crucial sources of support disappeared.

The fate of Paul I, assassinated in 1801 by conspirators drawn from aristocratic and military circles, illustrates this limitation particularly well. His formal authority did not prevent him from becoming the victim of a conspiracy originating within the very circles on which his rule depended.

The point is not that every ruler is merely a prisoner of his advisers. It is that effective power never perfectly coincides with the authority a ruler claims to possess.

Even a dictator must answer to someone, although not necessarily to those who bear the consequences of his decisions.

In democracies, consent is expressed through elections, political parties, public opinion, and institutional checks. In authoritarian regimes, it may depend more heavily on the loyalty of security forces, alliances among ruling groups, and the ability to prevent dissent from becoming an organized threat. The mechanisms differ, but the underlying requirement remains: a ruler must preserve enough support to govern.

Power, therefore, is not simply the ability to command. It is the ability to maintain the conditions that make continued command possible.

When a Regime Falls, Who Remains?

Imagine the fall of a government or the collapse of a political regime.

Ministers are replaced. Senior officials must answer accusations, some people lose their positions, and others are called to account for their actions. Symbols of the old order are removed, while the new leadership promises a clean break with the past.

But who runs the offices the following morning? Who knows the files, the procedures, the contracts, the relationships with businesses, and the mechanisms through which decisions are actually made? Who possesses the information needed to keep institutions functioning?

Public administrations cannot simply be emptied without jeopardizing the continuity of essential services. Accumulated expertise cannot automatically be transferred to a new ruling class. Even those who come to power determined to change everything often have to rely on people who understand how the previous system worked.

This is where continuity takes root.

An official may keep a position because expertise is indispensable. An executive may find a new role because of professional experience. A business intermediary may present himself to the new leadership as a necessary partner. A defeated politician may return through a different set of alliances. Someone who understands the procedures and relationships within an institution may retain influence even after losing an official title.

Not everyone succeeds, of course. Individual responsibility, purges, new laws, and shifting balances of power can end careers and dismantle established networks. But the ability to reposition oneself is a recurring feature of political and organizational transitions.

The reason is straightforward: power is not made up of titles alone. It also consists of what a person knows, whom that person knows, which resources that person controls, and what that person can offer those who govern.

Someone who loses a position may lose power. Someone who remains useful may find another position.

Metamorphosis: Changing Sides Without Leaving the Game

The recycling of elites does not necessarily require a conspiracy or a secret agreement. It can emerge from very ordinary incentives.

People who have built careers inside an institution understand its rules and know how to adapt to new decision-makers. Those who have accumulated relationships tend to preserve them even when the names of their contacts change. Those with financial resources can support new initiatives, build different alliances, and wait for the next opportunity.

This metamorphosis can take several forms.

An executive who once defended a particular political agenda may reappear as a nonpartisan expert serving the public interest. An intermediary who worked with a defeated leadership may find new partners among its successors. A business group that invested in the old government may redefine its relationships without abandoning its underlying interests. An official who has survived several political cycles may become a link between administrations with very different public identities.

These behaviors are not necessarily unlawful. Administrative continuity is often essential, and professional experience is not a liability. The problem arises when expertise becomes a cover for preserving privilege, when personal relationships take precedence over established rules, or when political change leaves untouched the conditions that allow a small number of people to exercise disproportionate influence.

This is the difference between preserving expertise and preserving entrenched privilege.

The former may be essential to the functioning of institutions. The latter can prevent leadership turnover from producing meaningful change.

That is why the fall of a ruling group should not automatically be mistaken for the disappearance of its interests. We must examine which resources have been redistributed, which relationships remain active, and which mechanisms continue to operate.

People change positions but retain the ability to influence decisions. Organizations change their names but keep the same contacts. The language changes while the incentives driving behavior remain intact.

The system transforms without necessarily coming to an end.

The Unstable Balance: Governing Means Choosing Whom to Disappoint

Those who govern do not operate in a vacuum. They face pressure from groups pursuing different interests: businesses, workers, public institutions, political organizations, professional associations, regional constituencies, and ordinary citizens.

These interests are not always compatible. Resources are limited, expectations grow, and every decision creates winners and losers.

A government may favor one economic sector and provoke opposition from others. It may cut spending and anger those who benefited from it. It may pursue administrative reform and encounter resistance from institutions whose established practices are threatened. It may try to maintain a broad political coalition only to discover that every ally demands a higher price for continued support.

Power thus becomes an unstable balance in which leaders must constantly distribute benefits, contain opposition, and rebuild alliances.

Those who try not to disappoint anyone risk disappointing everyone. They promise each group something they cannot simultaneously deliver, encourage incompatible expectations, and eventually appear unreliable to all of them.

But making a clear choice also carries a cost. Favoring one constituency often means limiting the influence of another. Breaking an alliance may make a governing program more coherent, but it can also deprive its authors of the support needed to implement it.

Stability, therefore, does not necessarily arise from unanimous consent. It can emerge from a compromise among actors who do not entirely trust one another but still consider it advantageous to remain within the same system.

When that calculation changes, the balance can collapse.

The System Reinvents Itself to Avoid Dying

No system of power remains unchanged forever. Institutions become worn down, promises lose credibility, networks of loyalty grow rigid, and elites can turn into closed circles more interested in protecting their positions than addressing society's problems.

Eventually, renewal becomes necessary.

Sometimes it comes through revolution or institutional crisis. At other times, it takes the form of new leaders, new alliances, new language, and new promises. Organizations may change their strategies before their decline becomes irreversible. Ruling groups may sacrifice certain figures to protect the larger structure.

Renewal can therefore be genuine or primarily adaptive.

In the first case, the rules, balance of power, and mechanisms for distributing resources and responsibilities also change. In the second, the system absorbs some of the public's discontent, replaces its most discredited figures, and presents a renewed image while preserving a substantial portion of its existing structures.

The difference cannot be measured by the appearance of new faces alone. It must be measured by the practical consequences of the transition.

Have the criteria for selecting leaders changed? Have procurement and decision-making become more transparent? Have conflicts of interest diminished? Is it easier for people outside established networks to gain access to opportunities? Are there effective checks on those who exercise power?

If the answer to these questions is no, the replacement of familiar figures may not be enough to alter the distribution of influence.

Power can renew its personnel precisely to preserve the way it operates.

Equality Under the Law, Inequality of Influence

Modern societies recognize, at least in principle, the equality of individuals before the law. But legal equality does not mean that everyone has the same means to make their case heard.

Money buys expertise, professional advice, visibility, and time. Personal connections can open doors to influential people. Public recognition attracts media attention. Access to strategic information can make someone especially valuable to decision-makers.

Those who possess these resources can compete for influence with tools unavailable to many others.

Someone without money, connections, or organizational support may be right and still go unheard. A person may expose an injustice without being able to turn it into a public issue. Someone may suffer the consequences of a decision without having the means to challenge it effectively.

Of course, money cannot buy everything, and democratic societies provide avenues for participation, protection, and collective action. Associations, labor unions, the press, the judiciary, and civic organizations can help counterbalance otherwise unequal relationships.

But not everyone has the same ability to use these tools.

The observation that those with more money make more noise than those without it should not be understood as an absolute law. It is a pointed description of a concrete inequality: financial resources and social connections often increase a person's ability to make interests visible and influence collective decisions.

The problem is not merely who formally holds power. It is also who possesses the means to get close to those who hold it.

True Renewal Is Measured by What Survives

Every new ruling class wants to present itself as the opposite of its predecessor. Those watching from the outside are often tempted to believe that replacing the people in charge will solve the problems they left behind.

Reality is more complicated.

A change can be significant without being total. It can transform institutions while leaving some economic networks intact. It can end old careers while preserving opaque procedures. It can introduce new rules while simultaneously creating new intermediaries eager to exploit them.

To understand a transition, we must look not only at who leaves the stage but also at who remains, who returns, who changes alliances, and who acquires new positions. We must distinguish the continuity necessary for society to function from the continuity that protects entrenched privileges.

Replacing leaders is a visible event. Transforming the mechanisms that distribute power is a deeper and more difficult process.

That is where the difference between a simple change of personnel and structural change becomes clear.

Conclusion: Power Changes Its Skin

Power does not belong exclusively to those at the top. It also belongs, to varying degrees, to those who possess the resources, information, expertise, and relationships needed to influence decisions.

That is why power can survive its own representatives. When an existing balance breaks down, some people are swept away, others retreat, and still others adapt to the new circumstances. Organizations transform, interests seek new alliances, and the system attempts to preserve whatever it considers essential to its survival.

This is not an exceptionless rule. Revolutions can genuinely dismantle old institutions, purges can end entire careers, and reforms can profoundly change the relationship between institutions and society. But no transformation can be judged solely by the names of the new leaders.

The decisive question is what has changed in the mechanisms through which influence is acquired, exercised, and preserved.

Power does not always need to defend the old guard. Sometimes it only needs to find new people capable of maintaining old arrangements. At other times, it must surrender privileges, redistribute resources, and change the rules to continue existing in a different form.

This is its capacity for metamorphosis: not necessarily remaining the same, but preserving continuity through change.

Governments fall. Elites regroup. Institutions adapt. Real change begins when it is not only the people in charge who change, but also the rules of the game, the distribution of resources, and the ability of those previously excluded to participate in a meaningful way.