News Source: Ricardo Rossello Nevares Foundation
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Sept. 22, 2025 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Former Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Aaron Bare have released a joint essay, “The Perverse Mirror: Flipping Incentives Before Violence Becomes the Logic of the Game,” confronting the alarming rise of political violence in America and offering a hopeful path forward, the Ricardo Rossello Nevares Foundation announced today.
Photo caption: Former Governor Ricardo Rosselló.
The essay opens with recent tragedies, from the killing of Charlie Kirk on a Utah campus to the fatal shooting of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband. In each case, the response was not unity but division—tribal scorekeeping instead of shared mourning.
“Violence doesn’t stop the culture war—it fuels it,” said Rosselló. “Outrage has become currency. Every death is just another coin tossed into the partisan slot machine.”
THE ANATOMY OF PERVERSE INCENTIVES
Rosselló and Bare describe three layers of distortion that have rewired democracy to reward the wrong things:
- Biological Hardware: Our brains are wired to detect threats faster than reason, making negative emotions spread more rapidly than positive ones.
- Behavioral Software: Habits and metrics drift toward proxies—followers instead of influence, clicks instead of truth, fundraising instead of governing.
- Institutional Cloudware: Media profits from eyeballs, not accuracy; politics rewards fearmongering, not solutions; bureaucracy prizes activity, not impact.
These distortions, they argue, create what they call “the perverse mirror”—a system where even the moral constant killing is wrong arrives with conditions.
ROSSELLÓ’S LIVED EXPERIENCE
Rosselló recounts becoming the target of “Telegramgate” in 2019, when leaked chats—distorted and stripped of context—ignited digital mob trials, protests, and death threats against his family. Though later cleared of corruption, the outrage had already forced him into exile.
“I didn’t need a bullet to experience political violence,” Rosselló said. “I lived it through mobs, headlines, and algorithms that valued clicks over truth.”
Yet his story is also one of redemption. In 2021, Puerto Ricans wrote his name onto ballots in sufficient numbers to elect him as the island’s first “shadow congressman,” chosen to advocate for statehood in Washington, D.C.
Photo caption: Author Aaron Bare.
A FRAMEWORK FOR CHANGE
Bare, who studies exponential systems and incentive structures, underscores the urgency of redesigning rules:
“If resilience can rebuild a leader, then courage can rebuild a nation,” Bare said. “Distortion is not destiny—small flips can restore balance in our lives, institutions, and politics.”
The authors propose “rule-change sprints” to realign incentives, such as:
- Adding quality gates to replace volume-chasing.
- Implementing justice-integrity scores for fairness beyond convictions.
- Rewarding cross-tribe reach metrics to incentivize unity.
They also advocate building the “Radical Middle”—a rules-anchored common space where the quiet majority, roughly 80–85% of Americans, can unite to move forward instead of being drowned out by extremes.
A CALL TO ACTION
The essay closes with a challenge to citizens: resist the pull of outrage. Don’t take the mob’s invitation. Call a friend on the other team. Audit a metric. Take deep breaths.
“Most people, despite the noise, still want beautiful futures for their families,” Rosselló said. “The perverse stack tells us to win against. The virtuous stack tells us to build with. The first leaves ruin; the second builds civilizations.”
ABOUT RICARDO ROSSELLÓ
Ricardo Rosselló is the former Governor of Puerto Rico, scientist, entrepreneur and author of “The Reformers’ Dilemma.” He also served as Puerto Rico’s elected shadow congressman, advocating for statehood in Washington, D.C.
ABOUT AARON BARE
Aaron Bare is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of “Exponential Theory: The Power of Thinking Big,” a keynote speaker, futurist, and strategist advising global organizations on innovation, incentives, and the future of work.
ABOUT THE RICARDO ROSSELLO NEVARES FOUNDATION
The Rossello Foundation is a platform where leaders across sectors can unite to reject polarization, foster bipartisan collaboration, and develop innovative, long-term solutions to the most pressing and complex real-world challenges.
Learn more about the Ricardo Rossello Nevares Foundation at: https://ricardorossellofoundation.com/
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Photo Caption: Former Governor Ricardo Resselló.
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