Freedom in Fetters#
Version 1: Punctuation and Grammar Corrections Only#
“I’m going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don’t know, I’m an adjunct professor at Indiana University - Robert H. McKinney School of Law, and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.
Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of The Art of the Deal, a book that was actually ghostwritten by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based on his observations. If you’ve read The Art of the Deal, or if you’ve followed Trump lately, you’ll know—even if you didn’t know the label—that he sees all dealmaking as what we call “distributive bargaining.”
Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie, and you’re fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump’s world, the bargaining was for a building, construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser—so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves, the more he wins.
Fig. 31 The Next Time Your Horse is Behaving Well, Sell it. The numbers in private equity don’t add up because its very much like a betting in a horse race. Too many entrants and exits for anyone to have a reliable dataset with which to estimate odds for any horse-jokey vs. the others for quinella, trifecta, superfecta#
The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining, the two sides don’t have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it not as a single pie to be divided by two hungry people but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked, at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.
The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can’t demand that they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation, and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren’t binary. China’s choices aren’t (a) buy soybeans from U.S. farmers or (b) don’t buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.
One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain—e.g., negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you’re going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount—you don’t have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won’t agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you’re going to have to find another cabinet maker.
There isn’t another Canada.
So when you approach international negotiation in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.
Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on U.S. goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the U.S. and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to U.S. farmers but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win—because he saw only steel and aluminum. He sees every negotiation as distributive. China saw it as integrative and incorporated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.
Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner, there must be a loser. And that’s just not how politics works—not over the long run.
For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff—Negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here’s another huge problem for us.
Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise; they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.
See also
From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn’t even bringing checkers to a chess match. He’s bringing a quarter that he insists on flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chessboard to decide whether it’s better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”
— David Honig
Version 2: Elegantly Condensed and Reframed in the Spirit of Veiled Resentment#
The Myopic Art of Losing Deals#
Donald Trump, heralded as the author of The Art of the Deal (though the actual pen belonged to Tony Schwartz), has spent his career locked in a single, crude framework of negotiation: distributive bargaining. In his world, every deal has a winner and a loser—an adversarial tug-of-war over a fixed pie. Pay less than the seller wants? You win. Extract a concession? You win bigger.
But the world of international diplomacy does not operate within the crude arithmetic of construction contracts. While Trump sees a fixed pie, international negotiations create new pies, expanding the landscape of possibility. This is integrative bargaining, where both sides—if they understand the game—can derive gains through complex, interwoven interests. Trump, however, does not see this. He cannot.
His instinct is to raise tariffs, expecting submission. He cannot comprehend that China has more than two options—that they can buy soybeans from Russia instead of the U.S., shifting the entire equilibrium while strengthening an adversary. He thought steel tariffs would be a clean win, but China played a bigger game, integrating Russia and other economic partners into a broader, strategic counterplay.
Distributive bargaining has another fatal flaw: it poisons relationships. When you undercut a cabinet maker in your casino deal, he simply refuses to work with you next time. In international relations, there is no next cabinet maker. There is no next Canada. Alienation has consequences that outlast the immediate transaction.
This failure to grasp the most basic tenets of negotiation extends to Trump’s political instincts. He sees every interaction as zero-sum—every victory must have a loser. Yet, in diplomacy and governance, enduring success emerges from balance, from relationships, from the careful calibration of interests over time. This is the first thing any negotiation student learns. It is also the first thing Trump ignores.
More damning than his ignorance is his arrogance. He dismisses the expertise of those who have studied the complexities of international bargaining their entire lives, assuming that the skills honed in the insular world of real estate—where bullying, bluster, and brinkmanship can work—somehow translate to the delicate machinery of global power.
His counterparts, however, do not reject expertise. They embrace it. They see the full board while Trump insists on flipping a coin, unaware that he was checkmated before he even sat down.
—David Honig
Show code cell source
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import networkx as nx
# Define the neural network fractal
def define_layers():
return {
'World': ['Cosmos-Entropy', 'Planet-Tempered', 'Life-Needs', 'Ecosystem-Costs', 'Generative-Means', 'Cartel-Ends', ], # Polytheism, Olympus, Kingdom
'Perception': ['Perception-Ledger'], # God, Judgement Day, Key
'Agency': ['Open-Nomiddleman', 'Closed-Trusted'], # Evil & Good
'Generative': ['Ratio-Weaponized', 'Competition-Tokenized', 'Odds-Monopolized'], # Dynamics, Compromises
'Physical': ['Volatile-Revolutionary', 'Unveiled-Resentment', 'Freedom-Dance in Chains', 'Exuberant-Jubilee', 'Stable-Conservative'] # Values
}
# Assign colors to nodes
def assign_colors():
color_map = {
'yellow': ['Perception-Ledger'],
'paleturquoise': ['Cartel-Ends', 'Closed-Trusted', 'Odds-Monopolized', 'Stable-Conservative'],
'lightgreen': ['Generative-Means', 'Competition-Tokenized', 'Exuberant-Jubilee', 'Freedom-Dance in Chains', 'Unveiled-Resentment'],
'lightsalmon': [
'Life-Needs', 'Ecosystem-Costs', 'Open-Nomiddleman', # Ecosystem = Red Queen = Prometheus = Sacrifice
'Ratio-Weaponized', 'Volatile-Revolutionary'
],
}
return {node: color for color, nodes in color_map.items() for node in nodes}
# Calculate positions for nodes
def calculate_positions(layer, x_offset):
y_positions = np.linspace(-len(layer) / 2, len(layer) / 2, len(layer))
return [(x_offset, y) for y in y_positions]
# Create and visualize the neural network graph
def visualize_nn():
layers = define_layers()
colors = assign_colors()
G = nx.DiGraph()
pos = {}
node_colors = []
# Add nodes and assign positions
for i, (layer_name, nodes) in enumerate(layers.items()):
positions = calculate_positions(nodes, x_offset=i * 2)
for node, position in zip(nodes, positions):
G.add_node(node, layer=layer_name)
pos[node] = position
node_colors.append(colors.get(node, 'lightgray')) # Default color fallback
# Add edges (automated for consecutive layers)
layer_names = list(layers.keys())
for i in range(len(layer_names) - 1):
source_layer, target_layer = layer_names[i], layer_names[i + 1]
for source in layers[source_layer]:
for target in layers[target_layer]:
G.add_edge(source, target)
# Draw the graph
plt.figure(figsize=(12, 8))
nx.draw(
G, pos, with_labels=True, node_color=node_colors, edge_color='gray',
node_size=3000, font_size=9, connectionstyle="arc3,rad=0.2"
)
plt.title("Inversion as Transformation", fontsize=15)
plt.show()
# Run the visualization
visualize_nn()
#
Fig. 32 From a Pianist View. Left hand voices the mode and defines harmony. Right hand voice leads freely extend and alter modal landscapes. In R&B that typically manifests as 9ths, 11ths, 13ths. Passing chords and leading notes are often chromatic in the genre. Music is evocative because it transmits information that traverses through a primeval pattern-recognizing architecture that demands a classification of what you confront as the sort for feeding & breeding or fight & flight. It’s thus a very high-risk, high-error business if successful. We may engage in pattern recognition in literature too: concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion was engaged in mental composition he reflected on the pleasures derived from literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life. Source: Ulysses#