From the transcript :
Do you want to rule ? Do you see the problems in your country and know how to fix them ? If only you had the power to do so. Well, you've come to the right place. But before we begin this lesson in political power, ask yourself why don't rulers see as clearly as you, instead acting in such selfish, self-destructive, short-sighted ways ? Are they stupid… these most powerful people in the world ? Or is it something else ?
The throne looks omnipotent from afar, but it is not as it seems. Take the throne to act, and the throne acts upon you. Accept that or turn back now before we discuss the Rules for Rulers.
No man rules alone. The power of a king is not to act, but to get others to act on his behalf, using the treasure in his vaults. The individuals needed to make the necessary things happen are the king's keys to power. All the changes you wish to make are but thoughts in your head if the keys will not follow your commands.
Many keys or few, the rules are the same :
First, get the key supporters on your side. With them, you have the power to act; you have everything. Without them, you have nothing. Now in order to keep those keys to power, you must, second :
Control the treasure. You must make sure your treasure is raised and distributed to you - for all your hard work - and to the keys needed to keep your position. This is your true work as a ruler: figuring out how best to raise and distribute resources, so as not to topple the house of cards upon which your throne sits.
Now you, aspiring benevolent dictator, may want to help your citizens, but your control of the treasure is what attracts rivals, so you must keep those keys loyal. But there is only so much treasure in your vaults, so much wealth your kingdom produces. So beware : every bit of treasure spent on citizens is treasure not spent on loyalty. Thus, doing the right thing, spending the wealth of the nation on the citizens of the nation, hands a tool of power acquisition to your rivals. Treasure poured into roads, and universities, and hospitals, is treasure a rival can promise to key supporters if only they switch sides. Benevolent dictators can spend their take on the citizens, but the keys must get their rewards...
Well, no, because economics doesn't work like that. There isn't a pot containing a fixed, discrete number of golden coins. Rather, if you spend money wisely on projects that will generate wealth, e.g. (to take a very simple example) if you open a goldmine, your pot of money increases. You have spent money yet now have more to spend on your supporters. Granted, though, you cannot simply throw money around however you like - it is possible to wreck the economy through overspending on useless frivolities. So this point is an oversimplification, but the next one is more serious.
...for even if you have gathered the most loyal, angelic supporters, they have the same problem as you, just one level down...They too must watch out for rivals from below or above : thus the treasure they get must also be spent to maintain their position.
No. This assumes that all social relationships are hierarchical whereas in fact many are networks. This is true whether we're talking about leaders having to distribute material wealth or other rewards (e.g. positions of power); not every social transaction is based on such a linearly aggressive reward system. Not everyone continually aspires to the top of the tree : if they did, there would be chaos. More fundamentally, relationships do not merely flow vertically but also sideways. Niall Ferguson makes the nice analogy of hierarchies as towers with networks as market squares. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and both are important in society.
Now a king with many key supporters has real problems : not just their expense, but also their competing needs and rivalries are difficult to balance, the more complicated the social and financial web between them all, the more able a rival is to sway a critical mass. The more key supporters a ruler has on average, the shorter their reign. Which brings us to the third rule for rulers:
Minimize Key Supporters. If a key in your court becomes unnecessary, his skills no longer required, you must kick him out.
Why abandon your fellow revolutionaries? Are the old dictator's supporters not a danger? But the keys necessary to gain power are not the same as those needed to keep it. Having someone on the payroll who was vital in the past, but useless now is the same as spending money on the citizens: treasure wasted on the irrelevant.
This makes sense in a hierarchical despotism. The more that power flows directly from the ruler, the more secure their position. However in a democracy :
In a well-designed democracy, power is fractured among many, and is taken not with force but with words, meaning you must get thousands or millions of citizens to like you [enough] on election day. With so many voters and such fractured power it's impossible to, as a dictator would, follow these rules and buy loyalty. Or is it?
Of course not. Don't think of citizens as individuals with their individual desires, but instead as divided into blocs: the elderly, or homeowners, or business owners, or the poor. Blocs you can reward as a group. If a bloc doesn’t vote, such as younger citizens, then no need to divert rewards their way. Even if large in number, they are irrelevant to gaining power. Which is good news for you: one less block to sway and the treasure you give to your key blocks has to come from somewhere. If you want long years in office, rule three is your friend in a democracy just as much as a dictatorship.
Except that people, even as blocs, don't always vote in their own interests. Trump gives essentially nothing back to anyone at all, yet even now his support among Republicans remains bafflingly high. Support for Brexit, an act of economic self-harm, is waning, but it's still a close call. You don't (only) keep people happy through anything as simple as material rewards - the efficient market hypothesis isn't great, and you can't just go around effectively bribing whole swathes of the populace. Yes, it's important to maintain a stable economy where the majority prosper, but there's far more to winning people over than that.
Dictators have no need to please the crowds and thus can take a large percentage from their poor citizens to pay key supporters. But representatives in a democracy can take a smaller percentage from each to pay their key supporters, because their educated, freer citizens are more productive than peasants. For rulers in a democracy, the more productivity the better. Which is why they build universities and hospitals and roads and grant freedoms, not just out of the goodness of their hearts but because it increases citizen productiveness, which increases treasure for the ruler and their key supporters, even when a lower percentage is taken.
So the more the wealth of a nation comes from the productive citizens of the nation, the more the power gets spread out and the more the ruler must maintain the quality of life for those citizens. Now if a stable democracy becomes very poor, or if a resource that dwarfs the productivity of the citizens is found, the odds of this gamble change, and make it more possible for a small group to seize power. Because if the current quality of life is terrible or the wealth not dependent on the citizens, coups are worth the risk.
Yes, Kings, Presidents and Prime Ministers but also Deans, Dons, Mayors, Chairs, Chiefs. These rules apply to all and explain their actions: from the CEO of the largest global corporate conglomerate who must keep his board happy, to the chair of the smallest home owner’s association, managing votes and spending membership fees. You cannot escape structures of power. You can only turn a blind eye to understanding them, and if you ever want the change you dream about, there is a zeroth rule you cannot ignore.
Without power you can affect nothing.
There's certainly something to be said for the nightmarish complexity of the need to balance competing interests to keep everyone happy (see Yes Minister for detailed examples). Yet the implication that all power is purely hierarchical is far too simple : not everyone is perpetually assailed by rivals. Information and wealth also flows sideways : if everyone around you is content, I'd bet heavily that you're more likely to be content as well (after all, who wants to be surrounded by a bunch of miserable gits ?). It also doesn't flow linearly from level to level a la the feudal system, but can jump different levels and come from different sources. Someone may, for instance, hate their boss but tolerate them because they like other aspects of their working environment; thus their boss has no need to keep them happy. And not all groups are in direct competition for one another : what's good for the wealth of some can be good for the wealth of others, either directly or through spillover from one group to the others.
The video is nice, and very provocative. I think it has some good points about democracies being better to live in not because the system creates better people but because rules have to deal with people by different mechanisms. Understanding the nature of the system is certainly crucial : getting politicians to behave sensibly is difficult more because of the system that puts and keeps them there than because of their own inscrutable natures. Yet it feels over-simplified and leaves the impression that politics is inherently crappy and always results in poor judgement. This is certainly not entirely wrong, yet neither it is entirely right. What's needed is, perhaps, to examine the opposite (admittedly rare) case of when politicians remain popular for extended periods. I can't avoid the feeling that there is some deep flaw to this that I can't quite put my finger on.
The Rules for Rulers
Che Greyvara T-Shirt: http://cgpgrey.com/chegrey Grey discusses this video on Cortex: https://youtu.be/ILvD7zVN2jo Adapted from 'The Dictators Handbook', go read it: http://amzn.to/2fgBWps Special Thanks: Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith & Mark Govea, Thomas J Miller Jr MD, dedla , Robert Kunz, John Buchan, Ripta Pasay, Saki Comandao, Andres Villacres, Christian
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