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  • 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 stupidthese 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.

  • *somber music*

  • No matter how bright the rays of any sun king: No man rules alone.

  • A king can’t build roads alone, can’t enforce laws alone, can't defend the nation or himself, 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.

  • A king needs an army, and someone to run it.

  • Treasure and someone to collect it.

  • Law and someone to enforce it.

  • 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.

  • In a dictatorship, where might makes right, the number of keys to power is small, ...

  • ...perhaps only a dozen generals, bureaucrats, and regional leaders.

  • Sway them to your side and the power to rule is yours, but...

  • ...never forget: displease them and they will replace you.

  • Now all countries lie on a spectrum from those where the ruler needs few key supporters to those where the ruler needs many...

  • ...this foundation of power is why countries are different.

  • Yet 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,...

  • for *even if* you have gathered the most loyal, angelic supporters, they have the same problem as you, just one level down...

  • Being a key to power is a position of power.

  • They too must watch out for rivals from below or above: thus the treasure they get must also be spent to maintain their position.

  • The loyal and dim may stay by your side no matter what,...

  • ...but smart key supporters, will always watch the balance of power, ready to change allegiance if you look to be the loser in a shifting web of alliances.

  • In countries where the keys are few, the rewards are great...

  • ...and when violence rules, the most ruthless are attracted; and angels that build good works will lose to devils that don't.

  • So buy all the loyalty you can, because loyalty, in dictatorial organizations of all kinds, is everything.

  • For the ruler, anyway.

  • Thus, the dictatorship exposed:

  • A king who needs his court to raise the treasure to keep the court loyal and keep raising the treasure.

  • This is the self-sustaining core of power, all outside is secondary.

  • 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.

  • After a successful coup, the new dictator will purge some of those who helped him come to power,...

  • ... while working with the underlings of the previous dictator -- which from the outside seems a terrible idea.

  • 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.

  • And by definition, a dictator that pulls off a coup has promised greater treasure to those switching sides.

  • The size of the vault has not changed, so the treasure must be split among fewer.

  • A dictator that sways the right keys, takes control of the treasure, cuts unnecessary spending, kills unnecessary keys, will have a long and successful career.

  • Seeing the structure unveiled, you might be excited to get started and control a country to the benefit of you and your cronies,...

  • ...or you might be exhausted, wishing to do good but seeing the structural difficulties, now turn to democracy for salvation.

  • So let us discuss rulers as representatives.

  • You again might have grand dreams of the utopia you wish to build, but: no man rules alone.

  • And never more so than in democracy.

  • Presidents and Prime ministers must negotiate with their senates and parliaments and vice versa.

  • And they all have their own key supporters to manage.

  • 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 if not like you on election day, …

  • at least like you better than the alternative.

  • 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.

  • Democracies have wildly complicated tax codes, and laws, not as accident but as reward

  • for the blocks that get and keep the ruling representatives in power:

  • Farming subsidies, for example, have nothing to do with the food a nation needs, ...

  • ...but entirely with how key the vote of the farming bloc is.

  • Countries where farmersvotes don't swing elections, don’t have farming subsidies.

  • 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.

  • You can't eliminate those who don’t vote for you, but there is still much you can do.

  • Once in power, make it easier for your key blocks to vote and harder for others.

  • Establish voting systems that reduce the number of blocs you need to win the more rivals you get,…

  • very handy indeed.

  • Draw election borders to predetermine the results for you or your cronies, …

  • and have party pre-elections with Byzantine rules to determine who blocs even *can* vote for.

  • Mix and match the above for even better power perpetuation.

  • When approval ratings couldn't be lower, yet re-election rates couldn't be higher,…

  • you'll know you've succeeded.

  • Now, enough with thinking about the citizens.

  • Even in a democracy there still are very influential individual key supporters

  • ...you need on your side because their money or influence or favors keeps you in power.

  • While you can’t just promise to give them treasure directly, as a dictator would,…

  • you can create loopholes for their investments, pass laws that theyve written, …

  • or print get out of jail free cards for their actions.

  • Not a wheelbarrow of gold to the door, but contracts for their business.

  • You as ruler do have roads to build or computers to maintain or buildings to reconstruct.

  • No man rules alone, after all.

  • Or you could take the moral path, and ignore the big keys.

  • But you'll fight against those who didn't. Good luck with that.

  • Corruption is not some kind of petty crime, but rather a tool of power, …

  • in democracies and dictatorships, but more on that another time.

  • So, accept the favors, sway the key blocs and you will get into power, …

  • ruling with actions that look contradictory and stupid to those who don't understand the game

  • privately helping a powerful industry you publicly denounced, …

  • or passing laws that hurt a bloc that voted for you.

  • But your job isn’t to have a consistent understandable ruling policy, …

  • but to balance the interests of your keys to power, big and small.

  • That is how you stay in office.

  • Now with all this headache of being a representative, you may wonder,…

  • looking at rule three why couldn’t you skip all this bloc-building, favor trading nonsense

  • and just bribe the army to take power?

  • We must finally turn to: taxes and revolts.

  • You must understand rule two and how the treasure is raised and used to hold a country together.

  • If we graph the tax rate of countries vs the number of key supporters the ruler needs, …

  • there’s a clear relationship. More democracy, lower taxes.\\

  • If you're sitting comfortably in a cushy democracy you may scoff at this, …

  • but your fellow citizens who don’t earn enough don’t pay income taxes and get rebates, …

  • bringing the *average* tax rate down. In dictatorships, this doesn’t happen.

  • Dictatorships often forgo tax paperwork in favor of just taking wealth directly.

  • It’s common for the dictator to force farmers to sell their produce to him for little, …

  • then turn around and sell it on the open market,

  • pocketing the difference at an unthinkably high equivalent tax rate.

  • So taxes in democracies are low in comparison to dictatorships.

  • But why do representatives lower their take?

  • Well, cutting taxes is a crowd pleaser.

  • 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.

  • Democracies are better places to live than dictatorships,…

  • not because representatives are better people,…

  • but because their needs *happen* to be aligned with a large portion of the population.

  • The things that make citizens more productive also make their lives better.

  • Representatives want everyone productive, so everyone gets highways.

  • The worst dictators are those whose incentives are aligned with the fewest citizens, …

  • those who have the fewest keys to power.

  • This explains why the worst dictatorships have something in common.

  • Gold or oil or diamonds or similar.

  • If the wealth of a nation is mostly dug out of the ground: it’s a terrible place to live

  • because a gold mine can run with dying slaves, and still produce great treasure.

  • Oil is harder, but luckily foreign companies can extract and refine it without any citizen involvement.

  • With citizens outside this cycle, they can be ignored while the ruler is rewarded and the keys to power kept loyal.

  • Thus we live in a world where the best, smartest democracies are stable, …

  • the worst, richest dictatorships are stable, and in between is a valley of revolution.

  • The resource-rich dictators build roads only from their ports to their resources and from their palace to the airport, …

  • and the people stay quiet not because this is fine or even because theyre scared, …

  • but because the cold truth is: starving, disconnected, illiterates don't make good revolutionaries.

  • Now a middling dictator without resources must, as mentioned before, take a large amount of wealth directly from his poor farmers and factory workers.

  • Thus two roads won't do, and so he must maintain some minimums of life for the citizens.

  • But keeping the work-force somewhat connected and somewhat educated and somewhat healthy

  • makes them more able to revolt.

  • Now understand: the romantic image of the people storming the gates and overthrowing their dictator is mostly a fantasy.

  • If you run a middling dictatorship, the people only storm the palace when the army *lets them* to remove you, …

  • because you lost control over your keys and are being replaced.

  • This is why after 'popular revoltsin middling dictatorships, the new ruler is often the same as the old, if not worse.

  • The people didn't replace the king, the court replaced the king, using the peoples' protest they let happen to do it.

  • The very things a benevolent dictator wants to build to cross this valley

  • take treasure away from the keys to power and make the citizens more able to revolt, …

  • often ending in a stronger ruler less likely to build bridges and more loyal to his keys.

  • On the other side, the best democracies are stable not just because the large number of keys

  • and their competing desires makes dictatorial revolt near-impossible to organize, …

  • but also because the revolt would destroy the very wealth it intended to capture.

  • The high productivity of the citizens.

  • Plus: those helping the would-be dictator in a democracy know he plans to cull key supporters once in power.

  • That’s what’s a coup is.

  • So potential key supporters must weigh the probability of surviving the cull and getting the rewards, …

  • versus the risk of being on the outside of a dictatorship they helped create.

  • In a stable democracy, that’s a terrible gamble:

  • maybe you'll be incredibly wealthy, …

  • but probably you'll be dead and have made the lives of everyone you know worse. The math says no.

  • Being on the right side of a coup in a dictatorship means having the resources to get you and your family what the peasants lack.

  • Health care, education, quality of lifethis is what make the competition for power so fierce.

  • But in a democracy most already have these things, so why risk it?

  • 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.

  • The less, the less.

  • 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.

  • When democracies fall, these are usually the reasons.

  • *somber music*

  • These rules for rulers explain not only why some men are monsters and others are merciful, …

  • but everything about politics: from war to foreign aid, to political dynasties, to corruption.

  • All of which, we can talk about at another time.

  • But for now, you aspiring ruler, may be disgusted by the world of politics, …

  • and have decided to avoid it entirely, but you cannot, for rulers come in many forms.

  • 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.

  • You may not like these rules, but surely, better you on the throne than someone else.

  • And who knows, maybe youll be different.

  • *somber piano music, slowly fading*

  • This video and its follow-ups are based largely on The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alistair Smith, …

  • which is simply the best book on politics written.

  • There is far more detail and far more examples in it than I could ever hope to cover any series of videos.

  • Every citizen should read this book, and...

  • ... if you want to support the channel, you can get a copy of it at Audible.com/Grey which is how I first came across the book years ago.

  • If you sign up at Audible with that URL, you can get a free thirty-day trial, and give the book a listen.

  • So if you want to understand human politics, if you want to understand the rules for rulers as applied to everything, …

  • go to audible.com/grey and download a copy of The Dictator’s Handbook.

  • You will not regret it.

  • Start your free thirty-day trial membership, listen to this book, listen to one of the 180,000 other audiobooks...

  • ... and spoken audio products that Audible has.

  • They're a fantastic service. They're how I get and listen to all of my audiobooks and you should too.

  • Audible.com/grey Thanks to them for supporting this channel.

Do you want to rule? Do you see the problems in your country and know how to fix them?

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B1 中級 美國腔

3條統治者的規則 (3 Rules for Rulers)

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    g2 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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