No More Mr. Nice Guy

If the pattern of history holds up, people will go along with almost any public fraud as long as the system appears to be working. But then, when the system runs out of money, more muscle is needed.

Tavern Brawl, 17th century Baroque Style. Source: Getty Images

Monday, August 17th, 2026

Bill Bonner, from Poitou, France

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The weekend brought a little relief from last week’s End Times-ish heat.

But the scorching temperatures got us thinking.

Peter Turchin, a Russian entomologist, who left off tracking beetles to track empires, wrote a book called ‘End Times.’ He saw the demise of an empire as an inside job. Elites rule. Rich, ambitious people want to join them. When there is no longer room for them at the top, they throw a brick through the window.

Does that sound familiar? Maybe. But that is the job of historians, philosophers and madmen — to study and label humans as though we were bugs. Then, we can enjoy the illusion that we understand what is going on.

But we’re not really cockroaches.

And yet, there are patterns. There are precedents. There are things we can learn from the past so that the future seems like an encore, not a whole new show.

At the core of Turchin’s oeuvre is the idea that empires are self-limiting. They produce elites. And then, they over-produce elites. The society becomes top heavy — too many lawyers, too many hedge fund managers...too many knowledge workers! Then, with so many unproductive citizens, economic growth slows and the elites have nowhere to go. They make trouble. They become corrupt. Carlyn Beccia:

A city can carry a certain number of crooks just as a body can carry a certain number of parasites. It gets pale. It itches. It makes bad decisions. But it lives. Stable societies accumulate these parasitic coalitions — cartels, lobbies, insiders — the way ships accumulate barnacles, each one small, each one rational, until the hull can’t move.

Polybius, a Greek taken to Rome as a hostage, described the process, which he called ‘anacyclosis.’ Beccia:

Kingship rots into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, democracy into mob rule — and the wheel turns, predictably, forever.

Most people go through life believing that these things happen — at the top — without involving much input from hoi polloi at the bottom. But recall that 90% of government authority comes from fraud, not force. And fraud only works as long as the fraudee goes along with it.

Madoff’s victims, for example, must have suspected that he was up to something. Returns that regular...and that high...weren’t normal. But as long as the money kept coming their way, they were happy to be a part of it.

If the pattern of history holds up, people will go along with almost any public fraud as long as the system appears to be working. But then, when the system runs out of money, more muscle is needed to hold it together. So, if the US empire really is approaching its ‘End Times,’ we can expect even greater flimflam...and more blood. It will be ‘normalized,’ as they say today. Beccia again:

When ordinary living standards stagnate, and too many people fight over too few seats at the top, societies enter what [Turchin] calls an “age of discord.” His model, built on historical data, flagged the United States years in advance: discord arriving around 2020.

As we highlighted in our book, ‘Win-Win...or Lose,’ game theorists tell us that the winning formula is usually to cooperate...respecting the rules with other cooperators. Cooperative commerce produces real wealth. Win-win. But then, when you run into a non-cooperator, you should cut the SOB off immediately.

Following the rules only pays off when others follow them. When breaking the rules becomes ‘normalized,’ the rule follower is no longer a customer or a supplier; he’s a mark.

Yes, dear reader, it’s a wicked world. That is what brings on the End Times. People play nice with one another because playing nice pays off. Then, perhaps because there is no more room at the top...or perhaps because the burden of debt becomes overwhelming...or perhaps because playing nice for so long has produced a whole nation of fat, vulnerable targets...

Nobody really understands what makes the world go ‘round, but turn it does.

The nice players survive, for a time, by ‘clustering’ — living and working with each other. They form tribes whose members trust each other, unified by place, culture, race, ideology...or whatever.

But then as the rule breakers multiply and prosper it becomes less rewarding to play nice. Not that people become generally nasty or corrupt, but they come to accept it in others. That is the rot that really dooms a society...not the crime, but the shrug.

In this, as in so many other ways, the Trump Team is in the lead. His followers — some 30 million strong — have joined a tribal group with a strong sense of identity...and a strong leader at its head. Policy positions can change easily. What really matters is loyalty to the Big Man and a willingness to let him break the rules.

‘No more Mr. Nice Guy,’ says POTUS.

Regards,

Bill Bonner