Machiavelli Bad

Throughout history there have been many different types of leaders. Some are considered bad while others are considered good. All of these assumptions are based on how the people under and around the ruler perceives him. If they feel that he has unwanted qualities and has bad judgement then he is considered bad whilst if he is humble and always putting the people first then he is perceived as good. Machiavelli is a man whom went through many hardships in his life. While going through harsh trials he realised that it does not matter whether a leader is good or bad because it is all just opinions of the people. Machiavelli learned the traits of what makes a leader strong and on the other hand what makes him weak. Using the knowledge of what he …show more content…
What Machiavelli means by these words are that although at the beginning of the taxes it may seem as though the leader is stingy and the people will not like how he is ruling but in the long term everything will even itself out. The benefits of being stingy will eventually help the leader pay for whatever he would like without further burdening the people and the leader will be able to build up an army when needed quickly because he has the money to pay the soldiers. Overall the benefits of setting a higher tax at the beginning will make the leader seem stingy at the beginning but will eventually make people perceive him not as so because he has all that he needs when the time comes. In the book The Crisis of Liberal Democracy: A Straussian Perspective by Kenneth Deutsch he says, “On ground of security for the prince’s reign; prudent self-restraint with no respect to robbing one’s own citizens is simply sound assurance” (Deutsch 143). The author of this book is showing the other side of the story that Machiavelli did not mention. Deutsch argues against …show more content…
This type of government would not work in our present day government because as Persson says Machiavelli’s purpose was not to promote morality but for political success. The government today is for the people not the person in power. The idea of a leader over time has been changed so the ideal leader must also have been changed. One example of a change is how there is a limit to how long a person can be in power. Machiavelli’s ideas were based on how a leader could be in power for a long period of time so that they could use time to their advantage but today the longest a president can be in office is 8 years. Although Machiavelli’s ideas may work here and there in today's government it would not work on a large