Bob Schwartz

The world’s richest man and the world’s most powerful man may both be crazy.

I asked Claude (possibly the world’s smartest AI) what could happen if they were both crazy.

It’s a good question to think through structurally, partly because history has real examples of unstable or erratic people holding enormous power. I’ll treat it as a hypothetical rather than a judgment about any particular person, since “crazy” covers a lot of ground and I wouldn’t diagnose real individuals from a distance.

What the most powerful person could do. The danger scales with how much they can act alone. A head of state with nuclear launch authority, command of the military, emergency powers, and control of foreign policy can do damage fast, and some of it can’t be undone. Erratic decisions about war, trade, alliances, or domestic crackdowns move quickly through a government. The worst historical cases, like late-reign Caligula, the “Mad King” George III during his illness, or leaders with untreated paranoia such as Stalin in his final years, show the range. It runs from paralysis and chaos to purges and mass death.

What the richest person could do. Wealth is slower and less direct, but it reaches many places. A very rich person can fund campaigns and movements, buy or shape media and communication platforms, control critical infrastructure (satellites, energy, AI, payments), and move markets with a single statement. An unstable billionaire could distort public information, destabilize companies that thousands of people depend on, or use their money to punish critics.

The combination is where it gets worse. If the two allied, money and state power could reinforce each other. Wealth could buy political protection and propaganda reach, and state power could hand out contracts, deregulation, and immunity. That loop can wear down the institutions that normally act as brakes. If they fell out, you could get a volatile feud with public infrastructure, markets, or government agencies caught in the middle.

What usually limits the damage. In most systems, neither person actually acts alone, so a lot depends on what surrounds them:

• Institutions. Courts, legislatures, a professional civil service, and military officers who refuse illegal orders all matter. The 25th Amendment in the US exists for an incapacitated president.
• Advisors and staff. They can slow-walk, push back, or resign publicly.
• Corporate governance. Boards, shareholders, and regulators can constrain a CEO, though founder control weakens this.
• Markets and public opinion. Capital flight, falling share prices, elections, and protest create pressure.
• Federalism and a free press. Power spread across states and independent reporting make it harder to dominate everything.

The honest answer is that the outcome depends less on the two individuals than on how strong those guardrails are. Strong institutions can absorb a lot of erratic behavior at the top. Weak or captured ones turn one or two unstable people into a systemic crisis.

If you’re thinking about specific people or events, I’m happy to look at the actual checks and balances involved in that situation.

–Claude Opus 5.5

Dad: BRAINS alone won’t preserve freedom, Billy! You can’t reason with a TYRANT!

Billy: Then I guess it’s up to us to HELP!

Historical context: This comic is dated December 1941. It was published right before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II. Americans were well aware of tyrants ruling in Germany, Italy and Japan, but many Americans were still reluctant to get involved.

Dad was right. Billy was right. Though could they imagine that tyrant at home?

The story of prisoner Crista Pike in Tennessee, left in a coma by a failed lethal injection, has raised the issue of capital punishment, again. The issue rises and falls, depending on high-profile events, such as reinstating firing squads in some states and in the military, and now Christa Pike.

About half of Americans support the death penalty, half oppose it. About 145 nations have abolished the death penalty. America has not.

Some religious people turn to the Bible for guidance: “The punishment must match the injury: a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a wound for a wound, a bruise for a bruise. (Exodus 21: 23-25). (Some interpreters find this a limit on punishment, so that it does not exceed the wrongdoing.) On the other hand, the Catholic Church declares the death penalty “inadmissible in all cases.”

Whenever I hear that issues with a moral component are “more complicated” than a simply drawn line (tell that to the Catholic Church and 145 nations), I suspect that people, not surprisingly, are challenged by working through difficult philosophical questions.

Here is the bright line. The death penalty is about mercy. In our lived lives we consider mercy to be conditional, situational and subject to degrees. But the wisest and most enlightened view, promoted by the religious traditions so many of us claim to follow, is that we are at our best, or on our way to being our best, when we put no conditions on mercy. Otherwise, what is our mercy at all?

As I look back at previous posts, I’m not sure how to describe my reaction to seeing how relevant some of them remain. Astonished? Surprised?

Seven years later, is the White House still a car crash we can’t take our eyes off of? What do you think?

There are many who say the occupant of the White House is incompetent, ignorant, corrupt and crazy, at the least. Yet when we try to stop thinking and talking about him, many of us utterly fail.

It is a cliché to say that people often can’t take their eyes off a car crash, particularly a gruesome one. Clichéd and true.

For better or worse, American civic life is centered on the White House. The situation there can be described as a horrible and chronic car crash. The fire department never arrives to put the fire out. The tow truck never arrives to haul the wreck. The ambulance never arrives to carry the sick and injured away.

We keep calling 911, but no one answers. So we just keep gawking.

Religious traditions tend to grow into specialness or spectacle. It is a combination of leaders wanting it that way, believing that it helps expand the following, and followers who want and appreciate it. If it is special then they too are special. Every tradition is susceptible to going and growing this way.

Religion at its heart is ordinary. Every tradition has had those who question and reject the extraordinary and the special. It is simple, they say, though years, decades, centuries of add-ons have embellished and sometimes hidden that. It’s like a spring of refreshing and clean water around which a huge and complex and even polluting bottling plant has been built.

If you are a leader or follower, consider the original simplicity of your tradition. You may find that the ordinary is at its heart. “We are special” or “We are spectacular” or “We are better and above others” is not what the originators knew and had in mind.

Believe in the ordinary. Believe in nothing special.