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EVIL ANGEL. Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art.
GOOD ANGEL. Sweet Faustus, leave that execrable art.
FAUSTUS. Contrition, prayer, repentance—what of these?
GOOD ANGEL. O, they are means to bring thee unto heaven!
EVIL ANGEL. Rather illusions, fruits of lunacy, That make men foolish that do use them most.
GOOD ANGEL. Sweet Faustus, think of heaven and heavenly things.
EVIL ANGEL. No, Faustus; think of honour and of wealth.
- The Tragical History of Dr Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
Are you a tech founder or investor who supports Trump or is still undecided at this late hour? Do you believe that though Trump is far from perfect, the policies he supports or will not impede are just too important not to vote for him? Do you see the calls to “vote for character” and find them unconvincing?
If you fit the above category, tarry here a moment and listen to one final appeal. For a moment, let us put the facts aside and grant that you're right:
Maybe you agree with Brian Armstrong or the Winklevii twins, or their prophets Balaji Srinivasan or Naval Ravikant, and you want to create the on-chain paradise of our dreams. All you want is a crypto wonderland that soars above the disarray of our worn democracies, a refactored society built on decentralized and trustless coordination, spreading the fruits of labor more equitably than any institutional innovation since capitalism itself. Provided that regulators don't interfere. For you, Donald Trump is an express on-ramp to the network state.
Or you concur with Marc Andreesen in viewing "little tech" as the linchpin of American prosperity. You are dismayed by what you perceive as unfair regulatory oversight of crypto and AI and the cycle of acquisition and consolidation that lets you return capital to your limited partners who can then give it back to you. A second American century is within our reach, provided that Lina Khan gets out the way. For you, Donald Trump is a champion of the freedom to build.
Or you're Elon Musk and you are a simple person: you want to build a city on Mars within your lifetime, a glorious ode to the light of consciousness. You will name this city Terminus, after Asimov's sanctuary of calm and rational thought, which is the same managing ethos you have brought to Twitter. You are genuinely confused why this is controversial. You are turning science fiction into reality! So when unions and the FAA distract from this cause, you look for the most efficient solution. For you, Donald Trump is a battering ram to the stars.
You are well aware of Donald Trump's failings as a leader and person. You would not invest in him out of your own fund or bring him on as an executive at your own companies, since he flagrantly violates your own hiring principles: he has far more than “a whiff of less than stellar ethics” in his past, never takes accountability, is allergic to facts and details, violates any form of “strict no assholes” policy, is very egotistical, and received negative references from 90% of his exec team last time in the hot seat. Moreover, you are aware he demands the same of others: everyone around him must live in the Donald Trump Cinematic Universe instead of reality.
But you know what? Life is full of exceptions. Reality distortion fields can be a feature! You didn't get to where you are today without being contrarian.
Most of all, you like that Trump promises to get you where you want to go. He says he will get things done for you. You watch his speeches and somewhere within the weave, interspersed between hosannas to Hannibal Lector and Kim Jong Un, you hear the bits you want to hear: "We've got you on crypto," he says. "Gensler? Won't see him around no more. Of course we'll look out for the smart immigrants, the nerds with four eyes, we like them, we'll keep them, just not too many, eh? You'll see Chinese EVs on the moon before you see them in New York! Lina Khan? You mean Lina Gone!"
"How about it?" he seems to ask. "You stick with me, endorse me, have your money people talk to my PAC, and I'll give you whatever you want. Deal?"
You feel a vague stirring in your memory from the single classics seminar you took in college before you dropped out to go all in on tech. Something about Faust. Should you vote for him? Is it worth it?
My sense is that there are two forms of support for Donald Trump. The strong form is a genuine belief that he is the better leader. In short, this is the MAGA position. I won't spend much time rebutting it because the business leaders I name-checked above have done it for me in their public statements defining what they look for in exceptional leaders, and because to be fair, I don't think most of these people would seriously make the claim that Trump is a virtuous or moral leader. If you are in doubt about this, you are not the target audience for this post, but I urge you look at primary sources to nullify any worries about media bias: the tweets, the interviews, the references from anyone who has known or worked with Trump over the past half century.
The weak form—and the more prevalent form among business leaders—is the utilitarian view: Trump is a bad human being, but he comes bundled with policies that are good. Individuals like Elon or Naval or JD Vance seem to see Trump as a useful means of realizing deeply held visions for what the world should be like; his character matters less than the platform he represents or can be convinced to champion.
But when we think about desired policies like deregulation, or merit-based immigration, or crypto-friendly regulatory vibes, or a thriving city on Mars, what is our true end goal?
Let's use Martian colonization as an example. Say Trump wins and gives Elon regulatory and financial carte blanche to accelerate our colonization of Mars. That's wonderful, but what is a city on Mars for? It's not just a bunch of sweet buildings and rovers or habitat domes, or some abstract container for human consciousness. Terminus will have to be a home for people. What will make living in Terminus great for the first Martian pioneers? Will accountability and humility be valuable in a frontier society with limited room for error? What about compassion in a barren landscape so far from home?
How about the network state? What will it be like for participants if everything goes according to plan? Presumably the decreasing marginal cost of coordination will increase productivity, reduce rents and deadweight loss, and create a wealthier and more equal society. And what will that mean for citizens of the network state? Given freedom from economic serfdom, what kind of society will they finally have time and headspace to cultivate?
If you follow the turtles all the way down, it becomes clear that the policies forwarded by industrialists who support Trump are not ends in themselves, but mere means to improve our shared society, what the political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau calls the “general will” or what a consequentialist might define as the net present value of utility.
Every society will define well-being differently. But it bears asking: are there fundamental attributes that are common to most or all societies? What are the lowest common denominators of a good society?
Well, we call that set of pro-social norms character: fundamental values like truth, accountability, humility, respect and compassion. Character is the distillation of millennia of human wisdom on the personal and societal traits that make a life satisfying, which is why the world's enduring ideologies tend to converge on the same values: don't lie, don't cheat, take responsibility, respect people, be kind.
Character has the distinction of being both a means and an end within a society. As a means, it is the foundation of the social contract and a prerequisite for the division of labor, which relies on respecting everyone because we all play an essential role (recall Steve Job’s poem of gratitude). The political philosopher John Locke, whose ideas strongly influenced the Founding Fathers, emphasizes that for the social contract to function, individuals and rulers must act with trustworthiness and integrity, with traits like “justice as respect for the rights of others, civility, liberality, humanity, self-denial, industry, thrift, courage, truthfulness, and a willingness to question prejudice, authority and the biases of one’s own self-interest.”
As a societal end, I’d ask you to think about the professional or personal groups you find the deepest satisfaction in being part of. Are they defined by constituents who never take responsibility, blame hardships on anyone except themselves, and exhibit blatant egoism and ignorance? Or do you find more joy in belonging to communities which exhibit the good character traits above?
Character is hard. It requires giving up tangible short-term desires for long-term reward: a whispered promise of goodness, an abstraction that pales in comparison to the prospect of achieving concrete and dearly held objectives here and now. It’s easy to make one compromise, then another. Clay Christiansen called this the trap of marginal thinking—an attitude might be especially likely to prevail if you are an investor who has made a decades-long career of evaluating risk and convexity and other correlates of expected value with sufficient dexterity to become very rich.
In business, vast fortunes can and have been created through superior analysis on the margins. But the problem with character is that once you are evaluating the benefits and costs on the margins, you’ve already lost. It is not an accident that in the many tellings of his tale across the centuries, Faust is very smart.
No candidate or party is perfect. But one party has lied far less, about less important things, and critically, has not imposed fabulism as a loyalty test on the world around them. If you are a successful investor or business leader and claim that magnitude and prevalence don’t matter, you must be very lucky indeed in your work.
I take an odd comfort in realizing that wealth and technical brilliance offer no preferential insight into this truth. Elon and Naval and Marc Andreessen are visionaries in their domains, but they don’t seem to have privileged access to the most important trait of all: the wisdom to recognize character as both the essential catalyst and ultimate telos of their life’s work. A Mars colony could never thrive without the deepest commitment to truth and accountability. The innovation these leaders cherish depends on the very values that Trump corrodes.
Voting in this election transcends political ideology or policy preferences. It's about recognizing that character—truth, accountability, humility, respect, and compassion—is the substrate upon which all our progress is built and simultaneously the goal of all that progress. Supporting Trump for his promised policy gains is like burning down your house to remodel the kitchen.
This essay assumes the point that Trump’s policies would be better than Kamala’s policies on issues of concern, which I sincerely doubt; for one, respect for the rule of law is fundamental to all commerce. But that discussion is outside the scope of this essay. My point is that even if you grant that Trump’s policies are better, it is still not worth sacrificing character to vote for him.
If you still aren’t convinced, ask yourself: Can your ideal society exist without truth? Without accountability? Without humility or being good to each other?
If your response is yes, and these values aren’t essential to the society you want to live in—then what are your fundamental values? What won’t you compromise on?
If your answer is no, then you know what you have to do. There is still time. No president or candidate has ever had perfect character, but in this election it is more than evident that one cares about it, and will move us closer toward it, and the other will move us farther away and apart from one another. Vote for the candidate who treats character as an end and policy as a means, not the other way around.
