# Leaders or Managers - Who Runs America - Synthesis B By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2025-09-25 On the surface, electing individuals to govern seems like a reasonable way to ensure the people select leaders rather than self-serving managers of the status quo. However, this system is fundamentally flawed. While it likely works in small groups where you can see the whites of people's eyes, it does not scale beyond perhaps 250 people. Managing relatively close relationships beyond this number becomes nearly impossible, so we abstract away the essence of people and trust that systems working locally will scale universally. This reasonable heuristic opens us up to any number of Black Swan events that disprove our hypothesis with catastrophic effects. Little wonder that revolutions lurk around every corner of recorded history. In reality, when we elect individuals, we are rarely, if ever, electing true leaders. Instead, we select individuals who emerged from a multitude of randomness and mixed motivations that often result in maintaining the status quo because it provides the best benefit-to-effort ratio within existing institutional systems. If you know any managers, you know the good ones are experts at manipulating their way through institutional frameworks. Contrast this with the behavior of authentic leaders who put themselves courageously forward because they believe in something beyond themselves. This is why people choose to follow them, and why existing institutions reject them because they aren't necessarily working for or against the institution. They're working for something else entirely, which feels even more unpredictable and dangerous. If you doubt this, consider the stories we tell our children. Do we tell tales of status quo technocrats who rose to power over 35 years, or do we tell stories of tragic heroes and martyrs? These narratives reflect our natural sentiments at the local and tribal level. It's who we are as people, but it all falls apart once it scales up. What got us here won't get us there. There's little doubt that leaders are out there, but they aren't in charge, and there aren't many within the system. The path forward is fraught with challenges, but perhaps what we need is a new kind of leader to emerge from the fray—one who lives within the paradox of being both inside the system and outside of it. #### Related Items [[Leadership]] [[Management]] [[Tribes]] [[Politics]] [[Paradox]] [[Revolution]] [[Systems Thinking]]