What Musk Can Learn From an Early Doge of Venice

Why governance matters and other lessons from events in the city in the 13th century.

- Tim Harford

As a tourist, the only reasonable response to Venice's all-consuming beauty is to gasp in admiration after rounding every corner. As an economist, another response occurs: Once upon a time, this city must have been incredibly wealthy. From Bruges to Kyoto, being eclipsed after making it rich has long been a reliable way for cities to look beautiful a few centuries later. None, however, has achieved the feat quite as completely as Venice.

Venice was originally a community of fishermen, huddled together for protection on some muddy, flood-prone islands in the middle of a lagoon. Invisible, ever-shifting sandbanks in the shallows that defended the early Venetians against attackers were their only natural advantage. They lacked wood, minerals, metals, even arable land.

And yet Venice became a major military and economic power, with its churches and palazzi demonstrating its wealth, and the heaps of looted treasure in St Mark's Basilica bearing witness to its military dominance. How did it do it?

At a time when billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) is hogging the headlines for attempting to shred the US federal government, I wanted to learn from the doges of a different age. I draw five lessons, many of them still relevant today.

The first is that trade matters. Venetian wealth was built on trade, on merchants roaming to Egypt, the Levant and beyond Constantinople to the great river ports of the Black Sea, bringing the riches of the east into Europe.