Quico Toro on Charlatans

You can't get any purchase in someone who doesn't believe in anything. So I think that the thing that makes charlatans so interesting is that they're exploiting these vulnerabilities that are the things that make us really human, right? And they're the things that make human beings the interesting, fascinating, endlessly creative creatures that that we are is that, you know, we want to see change and we want to make a better world and we have ideas about the what the way the world should be. And then there's just this parasitic elements of society that CSI says, you know what?

I can work with that. I can exploit that. And now the good fight with Yasha Monk. Why do some people seem to have an incredible knack for taking advantage of others, for selling them snake oil, for promising them that they're gonna get rich any moment now, for being elected prime minister or president by making absurd promises about how they and they alone can transform the country for

the better. What is the nature of a charlatan and why are charlatans seemingly more successful than ever? Well, two old friends of Persuasion have written a book about this topic Moises Naem, the former editor of Foreign Policy and Finance Minister of Venezuela, and Kiko Torro. He is the director of climate repair at the Anthropocene Institute, the author of the Substack 1% Brighter, and of course a contributing editor at Persuasion.

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