A Stanford lecture on Hobbes left me with a paradox: wealth can keep growing, but there is only ever one first place — and that changes what success does to a team.
I have been attending political economy and business ethics lectures at Stanford lately. I don't always follow everything. Some of the vocabulary is new to me, and the discussion sometimes moves faster than I can track. But I enjoy the process: taking notes, looking things up when I get home, working my way back to understanding, and then writing it out in my own words.
For me, this is a form of mental training. When I ran a company, I focused on growth, efficiency, and competition. Now I find myself wanting to understand what sits underneath: human nature, institutions, and power — because they keep challenging what I thought I knew.
Why should a founder today still learn from Hobbes, writing 400 years ago?
A recent lecture discussed Leviathan by the 17th-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. I used to associate him mainly with state power and the social contract. This lecture showed me another side: Hobbes cared deeply about economic prosperity, too. Why do people need a state at all? Beyond avoiding war and violence, stable laws, property rights, and order are what give people the confidence to work, invest, create wealth, and pursue a better life.
But what stayed with me most were three questions that came up in the room.
1. Why doesn't more wealth necessarily mean less conflict?
We can produce more goods and create more wealth. But honor, status, and superiority are different. The pie can keep getting bigger; first place is still only one seat.
It made me think of startups. In the early days, everyone fights side by side just to survive. After the company succeeds, people can start competing over titles, resources, influence, and the CEO's recognition.
Material scarcity can be solved. Status scarcity doesn't disappear with it.
2. Why are the most successful people sometimes the most anxious?
Hobbes observed that those who crave honor most intensely are often people who no longer worry about making a living. I find that striking.
In Silicon Valley, I've met many accomplished founders. They already have real wealth, status, and freedom — yet they still care deeply about valuations, peer rankings, and how the world rates them. If someone always needs comparison to prove their worth, where exactly is the finish line of success?
Are we pursuing freedom, or endlessly building ourselves new cages?
3. If a leader is responsible for everyone but allows no one to question him, what kind of responsibility is that?
This was my favorite thread of the discussion. Hobbes argued that the sovereign should protect people's safety and welfare, yet he also defended highly concentrated authority. So here is the problem: without real accountability, how is that responsibility ever honored?
Companies are no different. A CEO can hold the final decision. But when he makes the wrong call, who dares to tell him? Many leaders believe they are open to feedback. Whether their teams actually dare to tell the truth is another matter.
The greater the power, the greater the need to hear voices that disagree.
From founder-CEO to executive coach, I keep coming back to inner growth.
Over 15 years of building companies, I learned the journey from survival to growth very well.
Now, coaching founders and executives in Silicon Valley, I see it more and more clearly: outer success does not automatically produce inner maturity.
We learn how to create wealth, but rarely how to face the desires wealth brings. We long for power, but rarely guard against being controlled by it. We focus on winning, but rarely stop to ask: why must I beat others to prove my worth?
This is why I love political economy. It lets me look at what happens inside companies every day from a longer view of history and society. And when I can't follow a lecture, that's fine, too. Admitting what I don't know, and staying willing to learn, is itself part of growing.
One last question for you:
When a person no longer has to fight to survive, what comes next — continuing to prove they are stronger than others, or starting to ask what they can create for others?
Perhaps real maturity is the day we no longer need to beat anyone to be sure of our own worth.