Violence is a Ponzi Scheme

I’m sick of violence.

Nearly two years after October 7th, in a world turned upside down in more ways than we can count, one thing remains crystal clear to me:

I’m tired of seeing people die. 

Israelis were murdered and taken hostage on that horrible day, Palestinians are dying from war, starvation, and disease, IDF soldiers are being killed in battle, Jews around the world are being killed due to antisemitic violence, and public figures are being assassinated for their political views. It’s disheartening that as I prepare for each Jewish holiday, I find myself wondering if there will be a fresh new hell that some Jewish community will be plunged into overnight.

But here’s where we come to our problem: 

While I imagine it’s easy to agree with the spirit of what I wrote, the easiest thing to do is say “yes” and immediately pivot to blame whoever is responsible for the violence and what “they” need to do to change, whoever “they” might be. This reflex is at the core of why so many of us have sunk into a tarpit of high conflict, more concerned about how we got here than how we all get out.

This is also one reason why nonviolence as an approach struggles to gain momentum. In our intellectual bubbles, it is politically convenient to say, “Yes, but we have no partner,” even if it doesn’t reflect reality. And it’s even easier to engage in name-calling by categorically linking millions of people to terms like “apartheid,” “genocide,” “fascists,” or “terrorists.” 

And while we argue, death increases.

If we want to escape this spiral, we need a new mental model—one that confronts fear without fueling it and attacks ideas rather than individuals. Perhaps, instead of attacking groups of people, we can focus on challenging the idea that violence is a solution to any problem from any end of the political spectrum.

Because violence is, at its core, a Ponzi scheme.

Violence as a Ponzi Scheme

Violence is expensive.

This is true both literally and metaphorically—the more violence, the more lives lost, and the higher the cost to rebuild. But beyond the tangible destruction, violence carries an opportunity cost. Every moment spent devising new ways to destroy lives is time stolen from building something better, requiring escalation of commitment to justify past losses.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) defines a Ponzi scheme as a “fraud that pays existing investors with funds collected from new investors.” While typically associated with money, the same tortured logic used in the financial sector applies to violence as a long-term strategy for resolving conflicts:

1. The Illusion of Quick Returns: Ponzi schemes promise guaranteed profits. Violence offers a similar false hope—that enough pain inflicted on the other side will force them to surrender.
2. The Need for New Investors: A Ponzi scheme requires an endless flow of new investors to sustain payouts. Likewise, cycles of violence persist only if new recruits replace those lost, ensuring future battles to justify past ones by convincing people that this time will be different.
3. The Delayed Collapse: Every Ponzi scheme eventually crumbles when fresh investments dry up. Each new generation caught in violence shoulders increasing risks until the system implodes.

Violence perpetuates itself through an ever-expanding cycle of destruction. Each new participant believes they are securing justice, security, or revenge, yet the system eventually collapses under its own weight, leaving nearly everyone worse off. And like those who started the Ponzi scheme, those who promoted violence as a strategy are guilty of the sunk cost fallacy, feeling that they must encourage more violence lest the previous acts of violence be deemed a failure.

“Violence” and “force” are not interchangeable. 

Force is the disciplined use of power to pursue strategic goals; violence happens when that discipline breaks down. In the aftermath of October 7th, Israel’s use of force was inevitable—and in many cases, necessary for national security. But breaking the cycle of violence requires resisting the illusion that violence is a viable strategy in perpetuity, while also acknowledging the human impulses that make it feel like the only option.

800 days after October 7th, who among Israelis, Palestinians, or Jews can look at their lives and feel like they are better off? Terrorists and countries that attack Israel fancifully assume that the State of Israel and Jews around the world will give up on our dream if they kill enough people; what in Israel’s history has given any of them the impression that this strategy is effective? It’s delusional. If anything, the unprecedented violence against Israelis on October 7th by Hamas directly led to the worst situation for Palestinians in decades.

But Palestinians are human beings, human beings who deserve food, water, shelter, and the ability to live lives without fear, as well. And sometimes, it feels like the Jewish people internalized a narrative that if we show Palestinians and the world that we will never go away, Palestinians and those who support them will give up on advocating for better treatment. What evidence do we have that this strategy works? As Alia Malek argues, “You cannot kill sympathy out of people.”

And when we look more closely, we see two groups of people who deserve to live without fear of death and destruction, who are forced to see violence as the only option for ensuring that they have a future at all. And frankly, who you want to blame for this state of affairs is immaterial if we can develop a counter-narrative about a future that is better for all of us.

Power as Potency

In Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm distinguishes between two types of power: one rooted in domination and the other in mastery. Power as domination is “the possession of power over somebody”—the ability to force another into submission. Fromm sees the lust for this kind of power as “a desperate attempt to gain secondary strength when genuine strength is lacking.”

But Fromm also identifies a second kind of power: “the possession of power to do something, to be able, to be potent.” This form of power grants people agency over their past, present, and future—the ability to advocate for themselves, to be heard, and to be cared for and cared about.

If we want to expose the Ponzi scheme of violence that inflicts suffering on millions who do not deserve it, we must first shift our perspective to understand what people seek. We must call out those who pervert these desires by expanding the permission structures to engage in violence.

Criticism of Israel veers into antisemitism when it is framed around the false narrative that the Jewish desire for a state is primarily rooted in bloodlust and colonial domination. In reality, most Jews and Jewish institutions seek power not as a means of oppression but as a means of survival—to stand up for themselves in a world where lacking power has repeatedly meant catastrophe. I want to feel powerful as a Jew, not because I crave domination but because I understand that powerlessness can have life-or-death consequences. Who are you to deny me the right to feel safe and secure to practice my Judaism?

A similar distortion also applies to Palestinians. A needs assessment by War Child UK in December 2024 found that 96% of children in Gaza “feel that death is imminent,” while 49% “wish to die because of the war.” Reasonable people may debate how to adjudicate responsibility for that suffering, but those who protest Palestinian misery are doing so, first and foremost, because they believe that no one should be forced to live in hell, not because they hate Jews and want to see our destruction. And when Palestinians in Gaza cry out to be saved, they are not primarily doing so to give voice to a neo-Marxist interpretation of the Global South better suited for an academic seminar, but because they want to live. Who is anyone to deny them that right?

Ironically—or perhaps fittingly—Fromm had a complicated relationship with Zionism, much like Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, and Hannah Arendt. As explored in The Frankfurt School by Jack Jacobs, Fromm’s concerns about Israel stemmed from a broader anxiety about power, whether Zionism would embody mastery or domination. He worried that, after 2,000 years of Jewish history shaped by moral and pacifist ideals, Israel’s increasing reliance on “faith in [military] force” might feel reassuring in the short term but prove disastrous in the long run.

Stop Feeding the Beast

Like many of you, as I heard the news about the horrible antisemitic violence in Sydney, Australia, I also became aware of the story of Ahmed al-Ahmed, a fruit stand operator who ran bravely into danger and kept an even greater number of people from being killed. As we sit in mourning, we need to use his bravery as a reminder that most people, no matter their religion, race, ethnicity, or politics, do not want to live in an endlessly violent world. People want non-violence; the challenge is to develop the collective will to pursue it.

It’s become far too easy to dismiss the arguments for non-violence by claiming that those who want to see killing stop are willing to accept death via unilateral disarmament. This is why expressions like “Hamas=Gaza” or “Globalize the Intifada” are so powerful at the extremes; each provides a permission structure to dismiss the humanity of millions of people and make it sound like violence is the only option. But what’s more naive: Believing that people don’t want to live in a world of destruction or that a world of destruction is our only option?

Currently, far too many of us feel at odds with fellow human beings simply because they hold a different belief than we do. Perhaps the first step out of the tar pit is to state clearly that, regardless of who is responsible or what endgame you desire, it will not come from violence. And if we can at least agree on this, we can plant a small seed that stops us from descending into a dead end and redirects us to something better.

Millions have been devastated by the Ponzi scheme of violence.

—It’s time to shut it down.