a leader is someone who simplifies the world for you, gamifies it, makes it legible, meaningful. here's a task, here's the reward. here's the why, here's the how.

some people generate enough leadership to lead themselves; most don't.

some generate enough surplus to lead others

currently leadership is rare. anyone who generates surplus leadership will end up being overpowered.

at the same time, there is no way to bring about change that doesn't involve leading other people. no warm cozy slot waiting for you.

leadership is necessary & sufficient

(well, not quite---you also have to lead in the right direction. beware the unilateralist's curse.)

a leader need not necessarily provide object-level skills.

the role of the leader is twofold:

1. to envision how the coordinated effort of a group of people could lead to the desired payoff

...

2. to actually coordinate effort: to be the kind of person who people would believe in, and would believe that everyone else would believe in, etc ad infinitum.

the project only works if everyone pulls at the same time; everyone needs to believe that everyone else *will* pull.

there are many systems in the world. some are lead by live leaders; some set up a long time ago and abandoned, walking corpses under noone's control in particular. some of the corpses are targets ready for a plink of mercy; some of them defend themselves mercilessly

live leaders can be downright selfish and evil, or create convoluted self-serving systems of ethics (many such cases), or lead in the wrong direction. there are many ways for a system to be counterproductive with respect to the values of sentient beings.

each one of these systems provides guidance/meaning/legibility to its pawns/hosts. you will NOT be able to destroy them without first providing alternative systems. people WILL be guided and coordinated, either by a bad system or a better one.

even if everyone was self-leading, this is not a desired outcome. we need coordination at scale in order to solve our problems and fullfil our destiny in the cosmos.

we need people to be able to be lead in order to achieve anything at all.

so:

generate surplus leadership, lead people away from the inhumane systems they currently devote their manpower to.

next questions:

1) how?
2) what about money? an organization provides not just meaning, but a salary.

-> some other day, some other thread