The Last President Paradox & The Intransigent Minority
I'm Benjamin Anderson, executive producer for the Vance Crowe Podcast. This is the first of an on-going series of articles that reveals the Easter egg ideas from the podcast. Here, I will explore the 'why' behind concepts mentioned on the podcast, otherwise you may only get the 'what'. I want these deeper dives and info riffs to help us build a tighter relationship between you the listener and us the podcast creators. Please feel free to send me a note, feedback and especially constructive criticism to ben@articulate.ventures.
On his recent podcast with Jeremy LaKosh, Vance mentions my Peter Theil Paradox perspective that “(Ben Anderson) believes that Trump will win the election and be the last president under our current system of democracy.” Since this Easter egg directly references a viewpoint I had, I thought it'd be a great candidate to start off this series.
Jeremy LaKosh is a savant historian and host of the Historical Context Podcast. I'm happy to have the opportunity to interact with Jeremy offline through our Articulate Ventures Network, he's a deep thinker who has a knack for exposing truth through primary sources. In the full interview, Vance references this prediction I made in July while discussing a concept pioneered by Nassim Taleb, “Fractal Localism.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr5il5jFuXY&feature=youtu.be
My prediction Trump will win is the less interesting perspective here and grows less definite with each passing hour. At the time of writing this, we're heading into the 2nd evening of counting ballots and results could swing either way. I still think that if he does and maybe even in either scenario, the winner will be the last under our current system because of the power of another buzz phrase Vance mentions with regularity on the podcast — The Intransigent Minority.
The Intransigent Minority in short are the subset of the population who are loud enough in their perspective, that they are able to cause waves of change that effect the majority. Take this as opposed to the other way around which is how we usually expect democracy to work. We've observed for some time now how a subset of the population can steer the national conversation.
A friend's dad and mentor once told me that 'Those who are the loudest, are often not the majority.' I believe that this same subset would seek to impose radical change in the wake of a Trump victory. Social media has created an outlet where the lay observer may look at the broader conversation and get a skewed view of the facts of a given scenario based on the echo chambers created by these platforms' algorithms in their feed.
The form that I foresee this radical change taking, is an overhaul of the system that instigated it. The least drastic scenario would be the abolition of the electoral college. There were calls to action to do this back in 2016 under similar circumstances albeit less disputable than they are now. The most drastic being a larger overhaul to how we elect and what it means to be a leader in the United States. Like many things I think, I hope I'm wrong. In either case though, I have a cautious optimism that in times of chaos, we are annealed into stronger structures. Hopefully this too is only another opportunity to weather chaos in exchange of a stronger structure.
To stay up to date on future write ups like this, follow me on medium or subscribe to the podcast:
Join the list
* indicates required
Email Address *
First Name
Executive Producer Perspectives
Get EPPs in your inbox