Why lying matters
What would George Orwell think of the President's speech last night?
“We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us. We pretend to believe the news, and they pretend to tell the truth.” - Old Soviet joke
The Trump administration is going to cut waste, lower taxes, remove taxes on tips and overtime, expand spending on defense and the border, and balance the budget all without touching Social Security or Medicare. The fact that this goal is mathematically impossible need not disturb you. You’re not some woke traitor, are you?
The most revealing and unnerving aspect of Donald Trump’s address less night wasn’t anything he said (much of it was more than good). It was the absolutely thunderous applause from Republican lawmakers to incoherent and implausible Trump talking points like those in the preceding paragraph.
Partisan politics is one thing. Democrats are going to boo, Republicans are going to clap… whatever. But I can’t be the first to notice that our leaders’ latest tendency to drown out dissent with rapturous gestures of unanimity is straight out of the Kim family playbook. I can certainly understand cheering for a political program you agree with (“let’s cut waste!”). But why are they giving standing ovations for lies that they know are lies? Don’t they realize this makes them look like… well, communists?
As an American I am compelled to say just how disturbing it is to see our politics veer into 1984-style personality cults. When Orwell writes about this, it is referred to as “state-controlled reality.” As Americans who won the Cold War by pursuing the exact opposite strategy as the totalitarian Soviets, we are supposed to be highly allergic to this stuff. We know that it leads to death, despair, and decay. Surely members of the “Party of Reagan” must wince at these craven demands for obedience, no?
Here’s why lying matters: It makes our nation brittle. The great innovation of free markets and the free press is that truth can more effectively be incorporated into decision-making. When fealty to the Party or the Leader supersedes base reality, we accrue a debt that must one day be repaid in the form of errors, inefficiency, and loss of trust. Eventually the debt grows so large that the entire system collapses.
How can we expect government to make smart policy tradeoffs and worthwhile investments when it has internalized the norm of “exaggerate your impact by up to 1000x because the boss likes to see yuuuuuge numbers”? How can we attract the best and most virtuous people into government if you are required to lie on the President’s behalf as a prerequisite to working in the administration?
Lying in leadership
Let me now briefly comment as a VC investor who has had the pleasure of meeting with literally thousands of management teams of startup companies. Speaking very generally, there are 3 tiers of leaders out there running organizations:
Great leaders empower their people to do the best work of their careers by motivating them, cheering them on, and holding them accountable to outcomes that matter for the company. Their organizations thrive.
Mediocre leaders fail to inspire; they are confused and unfocused; and they prioritize poorly or not at all. Their organizations steadily slow down until they stop growing.
Terrible leaders refuse to deal with the world of truth — they demand that their teams hide bad news, exaggerate business results, and keep their mouths shut when they observe danger ahead. These companies explode spectacularly and sometimes end with people in prison.
Measures of competence like charisma, intelligence, and work ethic (the difference between “great” and “mediocre” leaders) are less important than honesty and truthfulness (the difference between terrible leaders and everyone else). Incompetence may be associated with waste and inefficiency, but lying leads to catastrophe because it advances the organization towards fake goals and suffocates discussion of real risks.
We should really, really care when our elected officials demand acquiescence to obvious falsehoods. We should care about this a heck of a lot more than their policy positions around tariffs and tax cuts and diversity mandates. We should care more about this than pretty much anything else.
It is our obligation to punish elected officials who behave this way by voting them out of office. When the Democrats acted similarly in 2024 by propagating the big lie that Biden was cognitively fit to govern, the electorate rightfully threw them out of two branches of government. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, to the extent that the Republicans conduct themselves similarly they must be similarly opposed. The message from voters must be unambiguous: If you lie to us, we will destroy you.