Oct 14, 2026 · 30 min · 10 segments
Collapse is self-inflicted: Benjamin Franklin knew the pattern all through history. In 1773, he wrote a masterpiece of biting satire – 20 rules for how a great empire destroys itself from within by…
Michael BoldinHost
By the time seventeen seventy-three came around, Benjamin Franklin had spent years trying to reason with the British government.
But as he wrote to his sister in November of that year, Jane Mecom, he finally realized that being polite, well, polite to politicians, is really a waste of time.
He said, "I had used all the smooth words I could muster, and I grew tired of meekness when I saw it without effect.
Of late, therefore, I have been saucy." Two months earlier, on September eleventh, seventeen seventy-three, this is just months after the passage of the Tax on Tea, that sauciness took the form of an anonymous and brilliant essay published in a London paper.
It was originally titled Rules By Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One.
He took the worst abuses inflicted on the American colonies and repackaged them as helpful tips, basically for the British government to be able to take on and follow to convince the people in the colonies to absolutely hate that government, resulting in the empire being chopped down to size through secession.
He said, "I have held up a looking glass in which some ministers may see their ugly faces and the nation its injustice." And he opened the essay by framing it basically like a leaked government memo, one that had been hidden for a few years, and the government had been operating under these rules, and it finally was being published.
It was a direct shot at Lord Hillsborough, the former Secretary of State for the Colonies.
It was presented privately, he said, to a late minister when he entered upon his administration and now first published.
This was a man who didn't waste any time on trivial things, trivial politics, what Franklin called fiddling, because he was too busy doing the hard work of building and expanding the society.
And then he flipped the script right after with a little bit of self-deprecating humor.
He said, "An ancient sage valued himself upon this, that though he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great city of a little one.
The science that I, a modern simpleton, am about to communicate is the very reverse." And he framed it like, uh, kind of like a self-help guide.
So if you want a little bit more free time, more leisure time, well, this is how you should act.
He said, "I address myself to all ministers who have the management of extensive dominions, which from their very greatness are-- become troublesome to govern, because the multiplicity of their affairs leaves no time for fiddling." And that brings us to rule number one.
By the time seventeen seventy-three came around, Benjamin Franklin had spent years trying to reason with the British government.
But as he wrote to his sister in November of that year, Jane Mecom, he finally realized that being polite, well, polite to politicians, is really a waste of time.
He said, "I had used all the smooth words I could muster, and I grew tired of meekness when I saw it without effect.
Of late, therefore, I have been saucy." Two months earlier, on September eleventh, seventeen seventy-three, this is just months after the passage of the Tax on Tea, that sauciness took the form of an anonymous and brilliant essay published in a London paper.
It was originally titled Rules By Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One.
He took the worst abuses inflicted on the American colonies and repackaged them as helpful tips, basically for the British government to be able to take on and follow to convince the people in the colonies to absolutely hate that government, resulting in the empire being chopped down to size through secession.
He said, "I have held up a looking glass in which some ministers may see their ugly faces and the nation its injustice." And he opened the essay by framing it basically like a leaked government memo, one that had been hidden for a few years, and the government had been operating under these rules, and it finally was being published.
It was a direct shot at Lord Hillsborough, the former Secretary of State for the Colonies.
It was presented privately, he said, to a late minister when he entered upon his administration and now first published.
This was a man who didn't waste any time on trivial things, trivial politics, what Franklin called fiddling, because he was too busy doing the hard work of building and expanding the society.
And then he flipped the script right after with a little bit of self-deprecating humor.
He said, "An ancient sage valued himself upon this, that though he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great city of a little one.
The science that I, a modern simpleton, am about to communicate is the very reverse." And he framed it like, uh, kind of like a self-help guide.
So if you want a little bit more free time, more leisure time, well, this is how you should act.
He said, "I address myself to all ministers who have the management of extensive dominions, which from their very greatness are-- become troublesome to govern, because the multiplicity of their affairs leaves no time for fiddling." And that brings us to rule number one.
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