Leadership & Warfare Flashcards
Politics of bailouts
Simply reviewing the history of economic bailouts that we began in the previous chapter makes clear that the very forgiveness without political change so eagerly embraced the third world financial crises. He’s rarely sought when the crisis arises in society that relies on a large coalition bailouts and coalition size.
The Politics of economic bailouts can be quite different in small and large coalition regimes bailouts come in many forms shifts in domestic taxing and spending loans, whether from banks at home or abroad debt forgiveness or foreign aid, and the bailout is accompanied by demands for economic reform, whether the money comes from the IMF, the German central bank or the taxpayers, a big difference between large and small coalition bailout recipients, is that the former almost always Institute reforms and the latter only infrequently do.
Just like debt forgiveness, a bailout in the face of economic stress for autocrats is a way to solve an impending political crisis when their economy becomes too feeble to provide sufficient money to buy political loyalty autocrats face being overthrown, either by arrival or revolution.
Strategic Confession
Frank (almost) gets caught in one of his schemes when the President’s Chief of Staff directly asks him if he helped her son get into Stanford in hopes that she would help him get appointed to a high level position. She clearly has figured it out and she puts him on the spot.
Most people would panic, but not Frank.
He knows how to leverage the moment to actually make himself seem even more trustworthy. He uses the opportunity to make astrategic confession. He confirms all of her suspicions. And because she feels like she finally has the whole story (which she really doesn’t), she feels comfortable enough to move forward with their plan.
Making concessions or sharing your flaws can actually be highly influential.
Influence is Communication with a Goal
As a viewer, we have no idea of what Frank is up to, nor the scope of his schemes. But, it is clear that from day one, Frank and Claire have their plan.
The Underwoods exhibit a critical persuasive principle:influence is communication with a goal.
In episode one, Claire hints to their massive plans when she says, “This is going to be a big year for us.”
That quote also highlights another influential principle that most people struggle with…
Define Victory before War
Failing to define victory in advance leaves, either individuals or organizations open to getting stuck into an endless course of action and being unable to even envision when or how it will end. One of the key reasons that cause people or companies to enter into a war without having a clear victory in mind is emotion, reaction or other similar factors. The only criteria for entering into a war should be based on cold rational logic.
There is no place to be hot headed, rash or otherwise provoked into action. any conflicts should be freely chosen and under the most rational, calm circumstances possible. This avoids entering into costly situations without a clear reason for doing so.
Keep Supporters off Balance
Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 13 1933. During his rise to power, he relied heavily on a paramilitary force known by the abbreviation sa or by description of their uniforms, the brown shirts. Hitler perceived theSSlater as a threat.
He builds up an alternative paramilitary a shoot or ss, and then I look became known as the night of the long knives. He ordered the assassination of at least 85 and possibly many hundreds of people. Between June 30 and July 2, 1930, 4000s more were imprisoned, despite Romel’s long term and essential backing: Roman had been with Hitler during his failed 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch Hitler showed no sentimentality.He replaced it with men like SS leader Heinrich Himmler, whom he deemed more loyal.
Mugabe did this frequently. Heneeded the assistance of zapu fighters to defeat white only rule. He needed the assistance of white farmers and administrators, and the international community to find the money to solidify his control over the state. Only when he was entrenched in power did good old Bob show his true colors.
Power and corruption
Leaders must reward their coalition of essential backers before they reward the people in general and even before they reward themselves.
We’ve seen how the coalition’s rewards can come in the form of public goods, especially when the group of essentials is large. However, as the essential coalition gets smaller.
The efficient thing for any ruler to do is to emphasize more and more the allocation of resources in the form of private benefits to their cronies why private goods to a few cost less in total than public goods for the many, even when the few get really lavish rewards. This is all the more true when the coalition. Not only is it small, but also was drawn from a very large pool of interchangeable selected members. Each clamoring to become a member of the winning coalition with its access to myriad private gains successful leaders must place the urge to do good deeds a distant third behind their own political survival and their degree of discretionary control of private goods, other benefits that most help rulers keep coalition loyalty. It is only the private gains that separate the essentials from the masses.
As we investigate these uses of revenue we will see that Lord Atkins adage power tends to corrupt absolute power corrupts absolutely holds generally true. However, it doesn’t quite capture the causality, the causal ties run both ways. Power leads to corruption and corruption leads to power.
Gerrymandering
When an incumbent is at risk of electoral defeat. He can always mitigate that risk by redrawing the boundaries of the constituency to exclude opposition voters. That is to say that district can be gerrymandered. Although this opportunity, only comes once in a while, so may come too late to save and unpopular incumbent. The practice of gerrymandering has made it such that the odds of being voted out of the US congressional seat are not that different from the odds of defeat faced by members of the Supreme Soviet under the Soviet Union’s one party communist regime.
And well gerrymandering virtually ensures re election. It also makes the voters in a congressional district happy after all the gerrymander means that they get the candidate favored by a majority in the district. If gerrymandering isn’t an option, then other rule changes can be instituted, such as prohibiting rallies in the name of course of public safety.
“It’s so refreshing to work with someone who’ll throw a saddle on a gift horse rather than look it in the mouth.”
Choose to only work with people who are willing to work with you. There’s no point in forcing a partnership.
Leave those who resist your offers for collaboration behind and turn your focus to pursuing those who will readily join your ranks.
Block voting
Block voting block voting is a feature common in many fledgling democracies. It was also the norm under party machines and large US cities. For instance, under the influence of Tammany Hall whole neighborhoods in New York City were turned up to vote democratic. Many of India’s electoral districts have followed a pattern, similar to the old Tammany Hall.
That is a small group of local notables or village patrons can deliver their communities vote and extract great rewards for themselves in return. During bueno de Mesquita his time doing fieldwork in India in 1969 1970. He observed firsthand how the quest for power coupled with the influence of power blocks undermined any notion of the pursuit of political principles, other than the principles. When and get paid off, senior people in villages and towns and indeed, up and down the levels of governance in India states would pledge to a particular party the support of those they led in return they would receive benefits and privileges by large all the clients of these patrons, follow their patrons lead and voted for the designated party.
Block voting takes seemingly democratic institutions and makes them appear like publicly traded companies. Everyone voted or share as a nominal right to vote, but effectively all the power lies with a few key actors who can control the votes of large numbers of shares or deliver many votes from their village block voting makes nominally democratic systems with large Coalition’s function as if they are autocratic by making the number of influentials that is people whose choices actually matter much smaller than the nominal selected of the rest of the voters. Since this is such an important aspect of winning elections, we are obliged to explore how politicians do it. The traditional approach has been to treat emerging democracies as patronage systems in which politicians deliver small bribes to individual voters.
The Weinberger doctrine
The Weinberger doctrine, like it’s more recent replacement the power doctrine exerts influence over American Security Policy precisely because it recommends the most appropriate actions for leaders who are beholden to a large coalition. We have seen that larger coalition systems are extremely selective in their decisions about waging war and smaller coalition systems are not democracies only fight when negotiation proves unfruitful, and the democrats military advantage is overwhelming, or win without fighting the democrats chances of political survival are slim to none.
Furthermore, when war becomes necessary large coalition regimes, make an extra effort to win if the fight proves difficult. Small coalition leaders do not. If doing so uses up so much treasure. That would be better spent on private rewards that keep their cronies loyal. And finally, when a war is over, larger coalition leaders make more effort to enforce the peace and the policy gains. They sought through occupation, or the imposition of a puppet regime. Small coalition leaders, mostly take the valuable private goods for which they fought and go home, or take over the territory they conquered so as to enjoy the economic fruits of their victory for a long time.
Clausewitz had war right word seems truly is just domestic politics as usual. For all the philosophical talk of a just war, and all the strategizing about balances of power and national interests. In the end, War, like all politics is about staying in power, and controlling as many resources as possible. It is precisely this predictability and normality of war.
Occupy the Moral High Ground: The Righteous Strategy
- In a political world, the cause you are fighting for must seem more just than the enemy’s. Think of this as moral terrain that you and the other side are fighting over; by questioning your enemies’ motives and making them appear evil, you can narrow their base of support and room to maneuver. Aim at the soft spots in their public image, exposing any hypocrisies on their part. Never assume that the justice of your cause is self-evident; publicize and promote it. When you yourself come under moral attack from a clever enemy, do not whine or get angry; fight fire with fire. If possible, position yourself as the underdog, the victim, the martyr. Learn to inflict guilt as a moral weapon.
- Understand: you cannot win wars without public and political support, but people will balk at joining your side or cause unless it seems righteous and just.
- You quote your enemies’ own words back at them to make your attacks seem fair, almost disinterested. You create a moral taint that sticks to them like glue. Baiting them into a heavy-handed counterattack will win you even more public support.
Keys to Warfare
- When your enemies try to present themselves as more justified than you are, and therefore more moral, you must see this move for what it most often is: not a reflection of morality, of right and wrong, but a clever strategy, an exterior maneuver.
- You can recognize an exterior maneuver in a number of ways. First, the moral attack often comes out of left field, having nothing to do with what you imagine the conflict is about.
- Second, the attack is often ad hominem; rational argument is met with the emotional and personal. Your character, rather than the issue you are fighting over, becomes the ground of the debate.
- Appearances and reputation rule in today’s world; letting the enemy frame these things to its liking is akin to letting it take the most favorable position on the battlefield.
- In working to spoil your enemy’s moral reputation, do not be subtle. Make your language and distinctions of good and evil as strong as possible; speak in terms of black and white. It is hard to get people to fight for a gray area.
- Revealing your opponent’s hypocrisies is perhaps the most lethal offensive weapon in the moral arsenal: people naturally hate hypocrites.
- This will work, however, only if the hypocrisy runs deep; it has to show up in their values.
Payment
Control the flow of revenue-try to keep public poor and your own supporters rich
Pay your supporters just enough to be loyal to you. Most of your supporters would rather be you than dependent on you. Your advantage is that you know where there treasure is.
Dont take money out of your supporters pockets to help the masses. It doesnt get loyalty from essentials and its expensive.
Healthcare in Autocracies
Who doesn’t love a cute baby
The incentives to provide good healthcare are not so different from the incentives to provide basic education, keeping the labor force humming is the primary concern for leaders of small coalition countries, everything and everyone else is inessential. There is no point in spending lots of money on the health of people who are not in the labor force(Old people and children), and they won’t be in the labor force for a long time. One of the more depressing ways in which this can be seen is in the relation between the performance of healthcare systems for infants, and the size of a government’s winning coalition. It seems that a lot of dictators and their essential backers don’t love babies.
Essentials/influential/interchangeable.
All governments are based on a certain type of mix. Changing the size of these can make the difference
Essentials- support needed for support to continues (Lords, Senators, etc)
Influential- electrical coverage
Interchangeable- voting public
Dictatorships have less influencial, essentials and interchangeables.
Essentials/influential/interchangeable.
All governments are based on a certain type of mix. Changing the size of these can make the difference
Essentials- support needed for support to continues (Lords, Senators, etc)
Influential- electrical coverage
Interchangeable- voting public
Dictatorships have less influencial, essentials and interchangeables.
Make people reliant on you
In the old days Machiavelli related this to the concept of having soldiers who are solely dependent upon you for their livelihood and income. This would prevent them from deserving you should another offer come along, Machiavelli contrasted this desirable situation with the possibility of using hired mercenaries to carry out your orders, he stated this was undesirable as they would never truly be loyal and would always seek the next good offer to come along this concept of deriving security from being relied upon is as relevant now as it ever was. There is not a situation in which it is better to be at the mercy of those you need, rather than vice versa.
This can involve ensuring that people’s contracts are structured in a way which makes it difficult for them to leave you and go and work for another competing company, be fair to your employees while they are with you, but make sure it is very difficult for them to go elsewhere, if people know that they need you more than you need them, then you hold the balance of power in the relationship, this almost forces loyalty and makes people want to go the extra mile for your cause.
appeal to self interest, a key element of ensuring the loyalty of those you work with is to
Pay to play paying supporters
Not good governance, or representing the general will is the essence of ruling buying loyalty is particularly difficult when a leader, First comes to power. When deciding whether to support a new leader prudent backers must not only think about how much their leader gives them today. They must also ponder what they can expect to receive in the future. The supporting cast in any upstarts transitional coalition must recognize that they might not be kept on for . Long after doe took over the Liberian government, he greatly increased army salaries.
This made it immediately attractive for his fellow army buddies to back him, but they were mindful that they might not be rewarded forever. Don’t forget that 50 of his initial backers ended up executed allaying supporters fears of being abandoned is a key element of coming to power. Of course supporters are not so naive, that they will be convinced by political promises that their position in the coalition is secure. But such political promises are much better than tipping your hand as to your true plans. Once word gets out that supporters are going to be replaced. They will turn on their patron.
For instance, Ronald Reagan won the pro choice vote in the 1980 US presidential election over the pro life incumbent Jimmy Carter. When Reagan’s true abortion stance became apparent that pro choice voters, abandoned him in droves. Walter Mondale won the pro choice vote in the 1984 presidential election. Despite Reagan’s re election in a landslide leaders understand the conditions that can cost them their heads. That is why they do their level best to pay his central cronies enough that these partners really want to stay loyal. This makes it tough for someone new to come to power, but sometimes circumstances conspired to open the door to a new ruler.
Don’t over expose yourself.
Frank knows that sometimes, saying less is more effective. In sales, if you share too much of your strategy with others, then you’ll inevitably have to backtrack, or worse—lie— when plans change. And most buyers can sniff out a lie pretty well. The old sales adage still applies: “better to under promise and over deliver.”
Part I: Self-Directed Warfare
- To become a true strategist, you must become aware of the weakness and illness that can take hold of the mind. You must declare war on yourself to make yourself move forward.
Declare War on Your Enemies: The Polarity Strategy - Learn to identify your enemies, and then inwardly declare war.
- Your enemies, like the opposite poles of a magnet, can fill you with purpose and direction.
- The more clearly you define who youdo notwant to be, the clearer your own sense of identity.
- See yourself as a fighter, surrounded by enemies. Constant battle keeps you strong and alert.
- Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared.
Keys to Warfare: - Understand: people tend to be vague and slippery because it is safer than outwardly committing to something. If you are the boss, they will mimic your ideas. Their agreement is often pure courtiership. Get them emotional; people are usually more sincere when they argue. If you pick an argument with someone and he keeps on mimicking your ideas, you may be dealing with a chameleon, a particularly dangerous type.
- A tough opponent will bring out the best in you.
Reversal: - Always keep the search for and use of enemies under control. It is clarity you want, not paranoia. It is the downfall of many tyrants to see an enemy in everyone. They lose their grip on reality and become hopelessly embroiled in the emotions their paranoia churns up.
Have the press be tipped by anonymous sources that help you. Have the press write something before its true to put it in the mind of the people in power.
Have the press be tipped by anonymous sources that help you. Have the press write something before its true to put it in the mind of the people in power.
Always have a Plan B.
When Underwood’s key ally is backed into a seemingly unwinnable situation, the Congressman says, “If you don’t like how the table is set, turn the table over.” Being able to effectively control the conversation and, when necessary, turn the tables requires great skill, diplomacy and influence. Of course, Underwood is particularly effective in adding manipulation to the formula.
Taxation II
People are unlikely to work as hard to put money in government coffers as they do to put money in their own pocket. Economists often like to express taxation and economic activity in terms of pies. When taxes are low they say that people work hard to enlarge the pie, but the government only gets a thin slice of the pie. As the government increases taxes, its share of the pie increases, but people begin to do less work,so the overall size of the pie shrinks.
If the government sets tax rates to be extremely low or extremely high. Its take will approach zero. In the first case it gets very little of a large pie. In the latter case there’s hardly any buybecause hardly anyone works. Somewhere between these extremes. There is an ideal tax rate that produces the most revenue the state can get from taxation. What that ideal rate is depends on the precise size of the winning coalition that in fact is one of the many reasons that it is more helpful to talk about organizations in terms of how many essentials they depend on then to talk about imprecise notions, such as autocracy and democracy.
The general rule is that the larger the group of essentials, the lower the tax rate. Having said that, we return to the less precise vocabulary of autocracy, and democracy, but always mindful that we really mean smaller or bigger Coalition’s autocrats aim for the rate that maximizes revenue. They want as much money as possible for themselves and their cronies. In contrast, good governance dictates that taxes should only be taken to pay for things that the market is poor providing, such as national defense and large infrastructure projects.
Cut ties with a former friend if they become too toxic.
House of cards
Suspended Ego
Frank Underwood seems to be pure ego in action, but he also knows the importance of suspending his ego when it will serve his greater purpose.
When he finds out that he won’t be named Secretary of State, even though he was promised the position, he is at an impasse. He could tell them all to go to hell, but instead he makes the smarter move. He doesn’t burn bridges.
He responds, “Whatever the President needs.” He knows it’s more important to be perceived as a team player than be ousted from the group. By suspending his ego, he is able to adjust his plans and continue to influence from the inside.
Of course, his ego is only suspended. When he gets a moment to himself, he let his anger and frustration out by smashing his cabinet at home.
Which is more important: your ego or the mission? That’s a question you must answer in many influential endeavors.
No one rules alone.
No democracy / dictatorship rules alone.
Hit Them Where it Hurts: The Center-of-Gravity Strategy
- Everyone has a source of power on which he or she depends. When you look at your rivals, search below the surface for that source, the center of gravity that holds the entire structure together. That center can be their wealth, their popularity, a key position, a winning strategy. Hitting them there will inflict disproportionate pain. Find what the other side most cherishes and protects–that is where you must strike.
Keys to Warfare
- The key is analyzing the enemy force to determine its centers of gravity. In looking for those centers, it is crucial not to be misled by the intimidating or dazzling exterior, mistaking the outward appearance for what sets it in motion. You will probably have to take several steps, one by one, to uncover this ultimate power source, peeling away layer after layer.
- To find a group’s center of gravity, you must understand its structure and the culture within which it operates. If your enemies are individuals, you must fathom their psychology, what makes them tick, the structure of their thinking and priorities.
- It is almost always strategically wise to disrupt your enemy’s lines of communication; if the parts cannot communicate with the whole, chaos ensues.
- Your enemy’s center of gravity can be something abstract, like a quality, concept, or aptitude on which he depends: his reputation, his capacity to deceive, his unpredictability. But such strengths become critical vulnerabilities if you can make them unattractive or unusable.
Democrats are monsters overseas
Their concern extends only to their own people because they need their aids. Overseas they can freely plunder and enrich themselves.
Taxation
We all hate taxes and are impressively inventive and looking for ways to avoid them. Leaders however are rather fond of taxes, as long as they don’t have to pay them. Being a dictator can be a terrific job, but it also can be terribly stressful, especially if money is in short supply. Taxes are one of the great antidotes to stress for heads of governments. Taxes afterall generate much needed revenue, which can then reward supporters, as a general principle leaders always want to increase taxes.
That gives them more resources with which to reward their backers and not to be forgotten themselves. Nevertheless, they will find it difficult to raise taxes with impunity. Leaders face three constraints on how much money they can skim from their subjects. First, taxes diminish how hard people work.
Second,some of the tax burden inevitably will fall upon the essential backers of the leader. In general, the first constraint limits taxes and autocracies, and the second constraint sets the boundary on taxes and democracies. The third consideration is that tax collection requires both expertise and resources.
The costs associated with collecting taxeslimit what leaders can extract and shapes the choice of taxation methods. The first and most common complaint about taxes, is that they discourage hard work, enterprise and investment.
Control the Dynamic: Forcing Strategies
- People are constantly struggling to control you–getting you to act in their interests, keeping the dynamic on their terms. The only way to get the upper hand is to make your play for control more intelligent and insidious.
- Shift the conflict to terrain of your choice, altering the pace and stakes to suit you. Maneuver to control your opponents’ minds, pushing their emotional buttons, and compelling them to make mistakes. If necessary, let them feel they are in control in order to get them to lower their guard.
The Art of Ultimate Control
- The superior strategist understands that it is impossible to control exactly how an enemy will respond to this move or that. To attempt to do so will only lead to frustration and exhaustion. There is too much in war and in life that is unpredictable. But if the strategist can control the mood and mind-set of his enemies, it does not matter exactly how they respond to his maneuvers. If he can make them frightened, panicky, overly aggressive, and angry, he controls the wider scope of their actions and can trap them mentally before cornering them physically.
- Control can be aggressive or passive. It can be an immediate push on the enemy, making him back up and lose the initiative. It can be playing possum, getting the enemy to lower his guard, or baiting him into a rash attack. The artist of control weaves both of these into a devastating pattern–hitting, backing off, baiting, overwhelming.
- There are four basic principles of the art:
Keep them on their heels.
- Before the enemy makes a move, before the element of chance or the unexpected actions of your opponents can ruin your plans, you make an aggressive move to seize the initiative. You then keep up a relentless pressure, exploiting this momentary advantage to the fullest.
Shift the battlefield.
- An enemy naturally wants to fight you on familiar terrain. Terrain in this sense means all of the details of the battle–the time and place, exactly what is being fought over, who is involved in the struggle, and so on. By subtly shifting your enemies into places and situations that are not familiar to them, you control the dynamic.
Compel mistakes.
- Your enemies depend on executing a strategy that plays to their advantages, that has worked in the past. Your task is twofold: to fight the battle in such a way that they cannot bring their strength or strategy into play and to create such a level of frustration that they make mistakes in the process.
Assume passive control.
- The ultimate form of domination is to make those on the other side think they are the ones in control. Believing they are in command, they are less likely to resist you or become defensive. You create this impression by moving with the energy of the other side, giving ground but slowly and subtly diverting them in the direction you desire. It is often the best way to control the overly aggressive and the passive-aggressive.
- To control the dynamic, you must be able to control yourself and your emotions. Getting angry and lashing out will only limit your options. And in conflict, fear is the most debilitating emotion of all.
- Before anything else you must lose your fear–of death, of the consequences of a bold maneuver, of other people’s opinion of you. That single moment will suddenly open up vistas of possibilities. And in the end whichever side has more possibilities for positive action has greater control.
Part IV: Offensive Warfare
- The greatest dangers in war, and in life, come from the unexpected: people do not respond the way you had thought they would, events mess up your plans and produce confusion, circumstances are overwhelming.
- In strategy, the discrepancy between what you want to happen and what does happen is called friction.
- The idea behind conventional offensive warfare is simple: by attacking the other side first, you create your own circumstances before friction can creep in.
- To be successful at offensive warfare, you must plan in intense detail, thinking in terms of the whole campaign, not individual battles.
Rules for a prince
In reality, supporters of the late King are often best off to elevate his son, and hope that he then dances with the one that brought him to the ball, new leaders need supporters to stay in power, and with inheritance those supporters are all already in place. The prince knows who they are and how to pay them. Of course, as we saw with Francis Louie the 14th. The prince might radically alter the coalition, but supporters of the old king correctly believe in the old adage. Like father like son. It’s not a bad gamble for them. Essential supporters have a much greater chance of retaining their privileged position when power passes within a family from father to son, King to Prince than when power passes to an outsider. If you are a prince, and you want to be king, then you should do nothing to dissuade your father’s supportershave their chances of being important to you too.
They will curry favor with you. You should let them. You will need them to secure a smooth transition. If you want them gone, and you may not,then banish them from court later. But the first time they need to know your true feelings for them is when you banish them from court. Well after your investiture and not a minute before. Naturally, if you’re a young prince who hopes to be king, you’ll have to make sure to outlive your supporters first.
Leaders often nominate their successor, and sometimes choose from outside their immediate relation. Perhaps because they understand the dire risks the family, if they turn to one member and not another. For instance, the first Roman Emperor Augustus formally adopted his successor Tiberius, my bosses often do the same. Carlo Gambino nominated big Paul Castellano to succeed him as head of his New York mafia family. In each case, the designated successor was seen as someone likely to continue the programs and projects so the prior leader.Therefore, there wasn’t much rushed to replace the old leader.
The new designated successors might even enhance the old boss’s reputation for sick and decrepit leaders nominating a new air can help them live out the rest of their life in power, provided the essentials in the coalition believe the air will retain sufficient continuity in the coalition’s makeup inheritance, makes it very difficult for outsiders to offer essential coalition members, more than they expect from the Father Son succession.
Elections in dictatorships.
Elections for their own sake should never be the objective. When the international community pushes for elections, without being careful about how meaningful they are all that is accomplished, is to further entrench and nasty regime. International inspectors for instance like to certify whether people could freely goto the polling place, and whether their votes were properly counted as if that means there was a free and fair election. There’s no reason to impede the opportunity to vote, or to cheat.
When counting votes If, for instance, our regime first bans parties that might be real rivals, or if a government sets up campaign constraints that make it easy for the government’s party to tell its story. It makes it impossible for the opposition to do the same. Russian incumbents don’t need to cheat and counting votes to get the outcome they want. They don’t need to block people from getting into the polling place. They deprive the opposition from having access to a free press from holding rallies, so sure. Observers will easily conclude that elections were free and fair in the narrow sense. And just as easily we can all recognize that they were neither really free nor fair. Ultimately, elections need to follow expanded freedom and not be thought of as preceding it.
Keep the coalition Small
Supporters are made worse off because their share of private goods is greatly diluted as additional supporters are brought on board. However, as the coalition gets ever larger, the extent of the dilution declines. As a rough approximation, each of the two original coalition members must give up a third of their lucrative private rewards to compensate, bringing in a third coalition member. They are in part compensated for this loss by the greater availability of public goods and a more productive society. But they take huge personal losses in exchange for their societal gains.
The trade off works out differently in initially larger coalition. Again, as a rough approximation, consider the costs and benefits for a coalition of six members to bring in a seventh coalition member. Each of the six existing coalition members forsake about a seventh of their private members If it’s in exchange for the societal game, as the losses in private rewards from an expanded coalition decline, the coalition’s members, far from continuing to oppose expansion support additional members being brought into the coalition from this point onwards, which occurs in a coalition size of around seven members. In our admittedly simple example, the essentials prefer to continue expanding the coalition. This puts them at odds with their leader who remains committed to the first rule of staying in power. Keep the coalition small.Thus, except under extreme duress, leaders don’t expand the coalition the masses press for democratization Essential supporters vary and what they want.
Pressure to reform II
Blind fools don’t often get to rule countries or companies. Pretty much any leader with assault can see the dangers he faces when economic circumstances leave him bereft of funds to buy loyalty. Under such circumstances, even leaders can believe that reform is their best shot, had political survival. They might look for a fix, even before their coalition does.
When the time or circumstances are ripe for change,coalition members must recognize that they do not pressure for an expansion of public goods and public welfare, then others will provided that the chances of success are good enough. And the expected gains from success outstrip the costs involved in gambling on a revolt, an intransigent coalition and leadership will find itself besieged by an uprising. in this circumstance, such as was seen in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. And as we saw in the proxy fight at HP over Carly Fiorina, his decision to merge with Compaq people are willing to take big risks to improve their lot.
Don’t alienate a potential future ally.
Diplomacy is an important characteristic of any politician. Granted, Underwood’s diplomacy borders on maniacal manipulation, but the end goal is the same. Understanding the motives and ambitions of everyone around him, he carefully plods through the complicated waters of politics while furthering his own agenda. And while this may come at the cost of compromise or consolation, his long term goal is his only priority.
Avoid the Snares of GroupThink:The Command-and-Control Strategy
- The problem in leading any group is that people inevitably have their own agendas. If you are too authoritarian, they will resent you and rebel in silent ways. If you are too easygoing, they will revert to their natural selfishness and you will lose control. You have to create a chain of command in which people do not feel constrained by your influence yet follow your lead.
- Create a sense of participation, but do not fall into Groupthink.
- A proper chain of command, and the control it brings you, is not an accident; it is your creation, a work of art that requires constant attention and care.
Keys to Warfare
- This is the game you must play: Do whatever you can to pressure unity of command. At the same time, hide your tracks. Work behind the scenes; make the group feel involved in your decisions.
- A critical step in creating an efficient chain of command is assembling a skilled team that shares your goals and values.
- In creating this team, you are looking for people who make up for your deficiencies, who have the skills you lack.
- Be careful in assembling this team that you are not seduced by expertise and intelligence. Character, the ability to work under you and with the rest of the team, and the capacity to accept responsibility and think independently are equally key.
- The single greatest risk to your chain of command comes from the political animals in the group. Try to weed them out before they arrive.
- Finally, pay attention to the orders themselves–their form as well as their substance. Vague orders are worthless.
- On the other hand, if your commands are too specific and too narrow, you will encourage people to behave like automatons and stop thinking for themselves–which they must do when the situation requires it. Erring in neither direction is an art.
blood.
Education in Autocracies
Rarely do any of us stopped to probe beneath these observations to find out why dictators paid to have well educated third graders, but do not carry that quality of education forward to higher learning. The logic behind political survival teaches us to be suspicious. We cannot help but believe that these public goods are not intended to uplift and assist the people unfortunate enough to live in such places.
The rules of politics as we know, instruct leaders to do no more for the people than is absolutely essential to prevent rebellion leaders who spend on public welfare at the expense of their essentials are courting disaster, these leaders whether dictators or democrats are all grappling with the same question. How much education is the right amount. For those who rely on few essential bankers, the answer is straightforward educational opportunity, should not be so extensive as to equip ordinary folks.
The interchangeable to question government authority, an IE person might look at any number of offload regimes, and yet come to the conclusion that because they provide such public benefits as nationalized health care or sound primary education, they’re actually better to their people than many democratic states are to theirs. This is nonsense, of course, in the vast majority of cases autocrats are simply keeping the peasants healthy enough to work and educated enough to do their jobs. Either way, literate or not, they’re still peasants, and they’re going to stay that way, a far better measure of leaders interest in education is the distribution of top universities with the sole exception of China and Singapore.
No, none democratic country has even one university rated among the world’s top 200. Despite its size and not counting universities in Hong Kong, which were established under British rule before Hong Kong’s returned to China in 1997, the best ranked Chinese University is only in 47th place. This by China’s opportunity to draw top minds from its vast population. The highest ranking Russian university with Russia as long history of dictatorship is 210.
By contrast, countries with relatively few people, but with dependence on many essential backers like Israel, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada have several universities ranked among the top 200, that this uneven distribution of top notch universities favors large coalition locales is no accident, highly educated people are a potential threat to autocrats, and so autocrats Make sure to limit educational opportunity autocrats want workers to have basic labor skills like literacy and they want their own children, they’re most likely successors to be truly well educated and so send them off to schools and places like Switzerland, or Kim Jong Hoon Kim Jong Il’s youngest son and designated successor was educated
Door in the Face Technique
Sometimes the most influential thing you can do is NOT get what you want.
This is known as the “door in the face” technique. This is when you purposefully ask for something that you know the other person is likely to say no to. The theory is that if they have said no to you for one thing, they are more likely to comply to the next…or the next. When done well, you trigger the “mark’s” desire to be polite and helpful and they are more likely to work with you because they did, after all, already shut you down on one thing.
Or, in Frank’s words:
FRANK:The only thing more satisfying than convincing someone to do what I want is failing to persuade them on purpose. It’s like a do not enter sign. It just begs you to walk in the door.
Why oil is a curse to poor nations
Take oil for example, it flows out of the ground, whether it is taxed at zero percent or 100% labor represents a small part of the value of oil extraction. This makes it a leaders dream and the people’s nightmare. In a phenomenon, often called the resource curse nations with readily extractable natural resources, systematically underperform nations without such resources resource rich nations have worse economic growth, are more prone to civil wars and become more autocratic than their resource poor counterparts, Nigeria, the most populous nation in Africa achieved independence from Britain in 1960. At the time of independence. It was a poor nation, but expectations were high these expectations grew with the discovery of oil, Nigeria is believed to have the world’s 10th largest reserves.
With the rise in oil prices during the oil crises in the early late 1970s Nigeria found itself awash with funds, and yet by the early 1980s, a country was swamped by debt and poverty. from 1970 to 2000, Nigeria, had accumulated 350 billion dollars in oil revenue. It has not helped the people over the same years. Average annual income per capita went from $1,113 in 1972to$1,084 in 2000, making Nigeria one of the poorest nations in the world. In spite of its vast oil wealth, poverty has risen to $1 per days a common standard used for assessing poverty in 1970 36% of Nigerians lived on less by 2000.
This figure in jumped to nearly 70%, the situation can hardly be said we have improved since then. Even with today’s inflated dollars a majority of Nigerians earn less than $1 a day and per capita income has continued to fall adjusted for inflation income is below what it was when Nigeria became independent Nigeria is not exceptional figure 4.2 shows exactly that, the horizontal axis shows the natural resource exports, as a percentage of GDP in 1970. The vertical axis shows the average level of economic growth, between 1970 and 1990. The trend is clear, nations flush with oil, copper, gold diamond, or other minerals grow more slowly. Nevertheless, natural resources are wonderful for leaders. I like getting their subjects to work leaders don’t have to encourage natural resources to work.
Admittedly, the minerals need to be extracted. But by and large autocrats can achieve this, without the participation of the local population in Nigeria, for instance, the oil is concentrated in the Niger Delta region, foreign firms with foreign workers do most of the extraction. Few Nigerians participate, the oil companies run security firms effectively small private armies to keep the locals from obstructing the business or complaining about the environmental degradation that results, VP and other foreign firms are free to act with impunity, provided they deliver royalty checks to the government. This is not so much a failing of these companies as the way business must be conducted in countries whose leaders rely on a few cronies to back them up, a company that acts responsibly will necessarily have less money to deliver to thegovernment. And that will be enough for them to be replaced by another company that is willing to be more cooperative.
“Generosity is its own form of power.”
Everything about House of Cards is give and take – with the emphasis on take. Even though Frank’s angle is always to someone’s detriment, there is a lesson to be learned here: the Law of Reciprocity.
In general, the Law of Reciprocity goes like this: someone is more likely to do you a favor if you have done something or given something to them first.
The interesting thing about the Law of Reciprocity is that you can likely get a return on value that well exceeds the value that you initially gave. Frank is aware of this when he helps Edward Meechum get back on his security detail.
FRANK:It requires very little of me and will mean the world to him. It’s a very inexpensive investment.
Simple favors can have a significant ROI. And Frank is right because that one favor earned him a highly loyal servant.
Frank also twists reciprocity into something much more diabolical when he says, “Generosity is its own form of power.”
Staying in power
Staying in power right after having come to power is tough, but a successful leader will seize power and reshuffle the coalition that brought him there to redouble his strength. A smart leader sacks some early backers replacing them with more reliable and cheaper supporters. But no matter how much he packs the coalition with his friends and supporters. They will not remain loyal, unless he rewards them as we will see in the next chapter rewards don’t come cheaply.
For steal from the poor, give to the rich. Whether you’re taking charge of the Ottoman Empire of corporation or Liberia, controlling the flow of funds is essential to buying support. However, once you’ve empty the state so the corporate coffers by buying off both your essential supporters and the replacements, if necessary, you must reckon with the entirely new challenge of refilling the Treasury. If a leader cannot find a reliable source of income, then it is only a matter of time until someone else will offer his supporters greater rewards then he can. Money is essential for anyone who wants to run any organization without their share the state’s rewards, Hardly anyone will stick with an incumbent for long.
Democracies and war
Democracies hardly fight each other. Losing men, equipment and money isnt popular and people will vote them out of office. They only really go to war if they think they will win.it has to be mostly certain. 93% of wars started by Democrats have been won by them.
Fixing Corporations
Corporations suffer from two big problems. first in big corporations there tend to be millions of little shareholders, a handful of big institutional shareholders and a bunch of insider owners, the millions of little shareholders might as well not exist. They are not organized and the cost to any of them to organize the massive owners, just isn’t worth it.
Second, the flow of information about the firm’s performance comes from pretty much only two sources. The firm itself and the financial media. Few owners read annual reports or SEC filings. And the financial media, don’t spend much time reporting on any one firm unless it is in huge trouble. By then it is usually too late for the shareholders to save the day. We live in the age of networking, much of the world including owners of shares, Twitter and chat with friends on Facebook. They aren’t LinkedIn. They can easily communicate with one another, even if they don’t always do so. Surely it would be relatively simple to design firm specific Facebook’s or other networking sites.
Companies maintain lively websites to put their view across, but entrepreneur owners have not stepped forward, to do the same to help organize the mass of little owners and to provide a way for them to share views. Sure, there are bloggers writing about anything and everything, but there don’t seem to be shareholder controlled sites to exchange thoughts and ideas about a company that participants own in common. If something like this existed. The size of the influential informed voters in any corporation would go way up. Then for the first time, boards would really be elected by their owners, and then the board would need like any leadership group to be responsive to their large coalition of constituents.
A simple change that exploits the internet to be a conduit for increasing coalition size can turn the AI G’s Bank of America’s General Motors and 18 T’s of the world into big coalition regimes that serve their millions of small owners, instead of a handful of senior managers. Ah, you were thinking, senior management can thwart such efforts.
They will, as they already do hold shareholder meetings in places. Most owners can’t afford to go, or the meetings will be so brief, that it will be impossible for dissidents to express their views, their preferred shareholder meeting strategy in Japan, and after all proxies pour in turning millions of votes over to a handful of board members. None of that of course will stop shareholder control. Once the millions of little owners have a cheap and easy way to exchange views. Then they will set the rules by majority vote for who casts proxies. They can set some of their own up to represent competing parties, and they can make the annual shareholders meeting a purely decorative event, all such skeptics should remember that social networking websites have already successfully mobilized revolutions and brought down governments.
Changing corporate governance is far easier corporations don’t have armies that can go out and bashing the heads of dissidents pursue a course of connecting and informing shareholders, and we will see whether shareholders who limit CEO salaries do better or worse, whether firms that alter behavior to meet the social expectations of their shareholders do better or worse, and whether shareholders care more about employees who are about themselves. Whatever the millions of little owners decide to do.
They will be responsible for their own fate management will serve them just as Democratic leaders are more constrained than autocrats to do what their citizens want. We also want to comment a bit on how not to improve corporate governance. In the wake of Enron’s collapse and other big frauds Congress decided to regulate corporate governance offensively to make it better. By now every listener knows that the interest of government leaders is not in making shareholders, or even the man or woman on the street better off their interest is in making themselves better off the regulations they imposed on corporate governance may have played well with voters, many of whom had little stake in many of the companies that were harmed by the regulations, but they have not made corporate governance better.
The Sarbanes Oxley bill passed in 2002 was supposed to tamp down management’s greed and make companies responsive to their shareholders interest in equity growth. Study after study however shows us that this is not what happened in a brilliant summary of the statistical assessments of each of the governance planks in Sarbanes Oxley for instance, he had a law professor, Roberto Romano shows that Sarbanes Oxley did not do what it was supposed to do, and often made things worse.
Oil is the devils excrement
Oil is the devil’s excrement at least according to one Pablo Perez alfonzo, a Venezuelan who founded the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC a cartel of oil producing nations. 10 years from now, 20 years from now, you will see oil will bring us ruin. And he was right. As many leaders have learned the problem with raising revenue through taxation is that it requires people to work tax to aggressively or failed to provide an environment conducive to economic activity, and people simply don’t produce actually extracting revenue from the land itself provides a convenient alternative cutting the people out of the equation all together.
The pillars of empire are fear, debt, rapid consumerism, divide and conquer mindset.
Economic Hitman
Economic hitman will first get the target snared in debt using public works that they cannot possibly pay back and using projections that are mostly false but benefit as small elite in the country. When the target defaults on the loan they then get concessions such as UN votes, access to oil and land for military bases.
The case in Iran:
After WWII the British allowed more popular participation in the government leading to a communist Mohammad Mossadegh to be elected. In 1952 the US and British engineered a coup to get him overthrown. (he was sorta of a dick though)
Kermit Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelts nephew, was the first EHM. He used bribe and intimidation in Iran to overthrow its leader and install one faithful the the US, UK and British petroleum (BP). He pushed the Shiah clergy to demonstrate against the Shah after a communist was elected
The shah was put back into power. He abolished the other political party. He tried to modernize the country, education and oil revenues, infant mortality fell etc. He was also very repressive and tried to give women the vote angering Islamic fundamentalists.
Iotolah Komenihi objected against the Shah and said he was corrupt and and election rigging (Though he was also a dick) This lead to protest, the protests lead to crackdown, which lead to overthrowing the monarchy.
He appointed the supreme leader (Faquih) who could interfere directly with the government leaders and veto anything he didn’t like. He was a stand-in for God. Now women can vote and there are women in congress, but criminals are still exectued at a high rate and is very repressive.
This is the biggest revolution. Bigger than the america, French, industrial.
The pillars of empire are fear, debt, rapid consumerism, divide and conquer mindset.
Penetrate Their Minds:Communication Strategies
- Communication is a kind of war, its field of battle the resistant and defensive minds of the people you want to influence. The goal is to advance, to penetrate their defenses and occupy their minds. Anything else is ineffective communication, self-indulgent talk. Learn to infiltrate your ideas behind enemy lines, sending messages through little details, luring people into coming to the conclusions you desire and into thinking they’ve gotten there by themselves. Some you can trick by cloaking your extraordinary ideas in ordinary forms; others, more resistant and dull, must be awoken with extreme language that bristles with newness. At all cost, avoid language that is static, preachy, and overly personal. Make your words a spark for action, not passive contemplation.
- To communicate in a deep and real way, you must bring people back to their childhood, when they were less defensive and more impressed by sounds, images, actions, a world of preverbal communication. It requires speaking a kind of language composed of actions, all strategically designed to effect people’s moods and emotions, what they can least control.
- It is imperative in life’s battles to be able to communicate your ideas to people, to be able to alter their behavior.
- Understand: you may have brilliant ideas, the kind that could revolutionize the world, but unless you can express them effectively, they will have no force, no power to enter people’s minds in a deep and lasting way. You must focus not on yourself or on the need you feel to express what you have to say but on your audience–as intently as a general focuses on the enemy he is strategizing to defeat. When dealing with people who are bored and have short attention spans, you must entertain them, sneaking your ideas in through the back door. With leaders you must be careful and indirect, perhaps using third parties to disguise the source of the ideas you are trying to spread. With the young your expression must be more violent. In general, your words must have movement, sweeping readers along, never calling attention to their own cleverness. You are not after personal expression, but power and influence. The less people consciously focus on the communicative form you have chosen, the less they realize how far your dangerous ideas are burrowing into their minds.
Keys to Warfare - What you need to pay attention to is not simply the content of your communication but the form–the way you lead people to the conclusions you desire, rather than telling them the message in so many words. If you want people to change a bad habit, for example, much more effective than simply trying to persuade them to stop is to show them–perhaps by mirroring their bad behavior in some way–how annoying that habit feels to other people.
- If you want to communicate an important idea, you must not preach; instead make your readers or listeners connect the dots and come to the conclusion on their own.
- Silence, for instance, can be used to great effect: by keeping quiet, not responding, you say a lot; by not mentioning something that people expect you to talk about, you call attention to this ellipsis, make it communicate.
- In putting this strategy into practice, avoid the common mistake of straining to get people’s attention by using a form that is shocking or strange. The attention you get this way will be superficial and short-lived. By using a form that alienates a wide public, you narrow your audience; you will end up preaching to the converted.
Reversal - Even as you plan your communications to make them more consciously strategic, you must develop the reverse ability to decode the subtexts, hidden messages, and unconscious signals in what other people say. When people speak in vague generalities, for example, and use a lot of abstract terms like justice, morality, liberty, and so on, without really ever explaining the specifics of what they are talking about, they are almost always hiding something.
- Meanwhile people who use cutesy, colloquial language, brimming with clichés and slang, may be trying to distract you from the thinness of their ideas, trying to win you over not by the soundness of their arguments but by making you feel chummy and warm toward them.
- And people who use pretentious, flowery language, crammed with clever metaphors, are often more interested in the sound of their own voices than in reaching the audience with a genuine thought.
Defeat Them in Detail: The Divide-and-Conquer Strategy
- When you look at your enemies, do not be intimidated by their appearance. Instead look at the parts that make up the whole. By separating the parts, sowing dissension and division from within, you can weaken and bring down even the most formidable foe.
- In setting up your attack, work on their minds to create internal conflict. The joints are the weakest part of any structure.
- The best way to make an enemy divide is to occupy the centre.
- Think of battle or conflict as existing on a kind of chessboard. The chessboard’s center can be physical–an actual place like Marathon–or more subtle and psychological: the levers of power within a group, the support of a critical ally, a troublemaker at the eye of the storm. Take the centre of the chessboard and the enemy will naturally break into parts, trying to hit you from more than one side.
- To make people join you, separate them from their past. When you size up your targets, look for what connects them to the past, the source of their resistance to the new.
- A joint is the weakest part of any structure. Break it and you divide people internally, making them vulnerable to suggestion and change. Divide their minds in order to conquer them.
Keys to Warfare
- The divide-and-conquer strategy has never been more effective than it is today: cut people off from their group–make them feel alienated, alone, and unprotected–and you weaken them enormously.
- Divide and rule is a powerful strategy for governing any group. It is based on a key principle: within any organization people naturally form smaller groups based on mutual self-interest–the primitive desire to find strength in numbers. These subgroups form power bases that, left unchecked, will threaten the organization as a whole.
- The solution is to divide to rule. To do so you must first establish yourself as the center of power; individuals must know they need to compete for your approval. There has to be more to be gained by pleasing the leader than by trying to form a power base within the group.
- The divide-and-rule strategy is invaluable in trying to influence people verbally. Start by seeming to take your opponents’ side on some issue, occupying their flank. Once there, however, create doubt about some part of their argument, tweaking and diverting it a bit. This will lower their resistance and maybe create a little inner conflict about a cherished idea or belief. That conflict will weaken them, making them vulnerable to further suggestion and guidance.
Avoid protracted war
One of the key teachings in the art of war is avoiding protracted conflict, like many of sons whose concepts it can be updated and used in the modern era without meaning a literal aggressive conflict. Modern protracted wars in order to think about the idea of a protracted conflict in a way, which is useful for the modern era, think of it as any unusual situation which expands effort and resources at a rate which is more rapid than usual. A few examples of concrete situations which consists of modern protracted wars will now be expanded upon.
Personal situations are one way in which a modern protracted war can be seen as undesirable some situations which consist of a modern protracted war including putting in more hours than normal into a project, acquiring a new skill or traveling excessively. Basically, any unusual activity which saps energy, time or other resources in a more than unusual manner can be seen as a personal protracted conflict. Sometimes it is necessary to enter into a situation which will drain your time or resources. Before taking such a course of action However, a few things need to be clearly established. First, it must be considered whether the rewards of the action will be equal or greater to the resources expended in order to acquire it. Second, it should be considered whether some other less taxing course of action could result in the same benefits.
Finally, if the protracted personal war is seen as beneficial or unavoidable, it should be considered whether there are any ways to mitigate the negative effects shorten the war, often in the case of personal war There will be a way to achieve victory faster than it initially seemed.
Plan rapidly for every situation, life is chaotic and the pace of change can be fast. One mistake which often results in organizations or individuals becoming trapped in a long war is expecting things to go a certain way without considering the alternative possibilities. Let’s say for example, a company is launching a new product and competing directly against another organization. In such circumstance, a key mistake would be to assume there is only one possible way other act
Take Small Bites:The Fait Accompli Strategy
- If you seem too ambitious, you stir up resentment in other people; overt power grabs and sharp rises to the top are dangerous, creating envy, distrust, and suspicion. Often the best solution is to take small bites, swallow little territories, playing upon people’s relatively short attention spans. Stay under the radar and they won’t see your moves. And if they do, it may already be too late; the territory is yours, a fait accompli. You can always claim you acted out of self-defense. Before people realize it, you have accumulated an empire.
Keys to Warfare
- The truth is that most people are conservative by nature. Desperate to keep what they have, they dread the unforeseen consequences and situations that conflict inevitably brings. They hate confrontation and try to avoid it.
- The strategy works as follows: Suppose there is something you want or need for your security and power. Take it without discussion or warning and you give your enemies a choice, either to fight or to accept the loss and leave you alone. Is whatever you have taken, and your unilateral action in taking it, worth the bother, cost, and danger of waging war?
- The key to the fait accompli strategy is to act fast and without discussion. If you reveal your intentions before taking action, you will open yourself to a slew of criticisms, analyses, and questions.
- Finally, the use of the piecemeal strategy to disguise your aggressive intentions is invaluable in these political times, but in masking your manipulations you can never go too far. So when you take a bite, even a small one, make a show of acting out of self-defense. It also helps to appear as the underdog.
- In fact, it would be the height of wisdom to make your bite a little larger upon occasion and then giving back some of what you have taken. People see only your generosity and your limited actions, not the steadily increasing empire you are amassing.
2.) Politics is personal
Politics is often about personal relationships and favors, but also revenge. And behind many a handshake lies a world of hate. Sure, we’d likepersonaldifferences to be put aside, and sometimes they are. But people need to be aware that many public figures are incredibly egotistical and have no trouble plotting long-term revenge for even slight offenses. And Frank is never shy about warning people not to cross him or he will make the disagreement personal. The sex-feud between Zoe and Frank is one of many cases in point: he tells Zoe, quoting Oscar Wilde: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Sometimes these rivalries come to the surface (see the ever-obnoxious andstrongly-disliked-by-many-fellow-RepublicansTed Cruz) but many more times they will seethe below the surface, the public blithely unaware of how they drive major events, just like inHouse of Cards.
“I never make such big decisions so long after sunset and so far from dawn.”
When in doubt, sleep on it. Be it a new business venture or a momentous life change, it’s never wise to commit to a decision without first giving thoughtful consideration to every conceivable outcome.
People who avoid this tactic end up getting swindled into buying a timeshare in Barbados for $15,000 a year.
Dont save the dictator
Dont forgive debt until he democratize the country. The lease hint of fraud elections and taking away rights should be tied to a lose in fund. Foreign aid should be tied to actually of political reform and not to its promise. They just will steal aid money. Their books should be audited.
Democrats spend more money on war because they have less bribes to pay. Autocracies need to pay their coalition or be overthrown
Democrats would rather negotiate than fight when they can’t easily win like the us and Soviets
Defaulting on international loans.
Borrowing to much like Greece and Icelandcan have the effect of pushingup the cost of borrowing and making it much harder to secure, new loans. It is supply not demand that is shrunk markets limit how much a nation can borrow, if individuals borrow too much and either cannot or will not repay it, then banks and other creditors can seize assets to recover the debt .With sovereign lending to countries, however, creditors cannot repossess property. On a few occasions creditors have tried. For instance, France invaded Mexico in 1862, in an attempt to get Mexico to repay loans.
France also invaded the rural industrial area of Germany in 1923 to collect reparation payments due from World War One that Germany had not paid, both attempts failed. In practice, the only leverage lenders have over nations, is to cut them off from future credit. Nevertheless, this has a profound effect as the ability to engage in borrowing in financial markets is valuable.
For this reason nations generally pay their debt. However, once the value of access to credit is worth less than the cost of servicing the debt, then leaders should default. If they don’t, then surely a challenger will come along, will offer to do so. This was one of the appeals of Adolf Hitler to the German people in the 1930s, Germany faced a huge debt, in part, to pay reparations from World War One. Hitler defaulted on this debt. It was a popular policy with the German people, since the cost of servicing the debt was so high.
“There are two kinds of pain: the sort of pain that makes you strong, or useless pain; the sort of pain that’s only suffering. I have no patience for useless things.”
Grief is both natural and necessary. It breeds integrity and resolve. You can’t allow the pain to come to define you; rather, you must turn the tables on the pain and define it.
Show the world you are able to overcome your suffering. Grow from the experience; don’t become consumed by it.
Democrats and Despots
Democratic leaders listen to their voters because that is how they and their political party get to keep their jobs. Democratic leaders were elected after all, to advance the current interests, at least of those who chose them, the long run is always on someone else’s watch democracy overseas is a great thing for us if and only if the people of a democratizing nation happened to one policies that we like. When a foreign people are aligned against our best interest. Our best chance of getting what we want is to keep them under the yoke of an oppressor, who is willing to do what we, the people want. Yet, we want people to be free and prosperous, but we don’t want them to be free and prosperous enough to threaten our way of life, our interests and our well being.
And that is as it should be. That too is a rule to rule by for Democratic leaders, they must do what their coalition wants. They are not beholden to the coalition in any other country, just to those who help keep them in power. If we pretend otherwise we will just be engaging in the sort of utopianism that serves as an excuse for not tackling the problems that we can. We began with caches employing Brutus to act against Julius Caesar’s despotism. The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves. We humbly add that the reason the fault is in ourselves, is because we the people care so much for ourselves. And so little for the world’s underlings.
Power as force
There were many other Coalition’s that could have formed, but doe grabbed hold of power first and suppressed the rest. This is the essence of coming to power. Consider a room filled with 100 people. Anyone could take complete control. If only she had five supporters with automatic weaponspointed at the rest.
She would remain in power so long as the five gunman continued to backer, But there need be nothing special about her or about the government beyond the fact that they grabbed the guns first had someone else secured the guns and given them to five supporters of their own, then it would be someone else telling everyone what to do. Waiting is risky business. there is no prize for coming in second
Amidst the Turmoil of Events, Do Not Lose Your Presence of Mind:The Counterbalance Strategy
- You must actively resist the emotional pull of the moment, maintaining your mental powers whatever the circumstances.
- Make your mind tougher by exposing it to adversity. Learn to detach yourself.
The Hyperaggressive Tactic - In moments of turmoil and trouble, you must force yourself to be more determined and aggressive. Any mistakes you make can be rectified with more aggression.
The Detached-Buddha Tactic
- Presence of mind is the ability to detach yourself and see the whole battlefield with clarity. What gives you that distance is preparation, mastering the details beforehand. Let people think your Buddha-like detachment comes from some mysterious source. The less they understand you, the better.
Keys to Warfare
- What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness.
- No one can teach you this skill. It can only come through practice, experience, and even a little suffering.
To toughen your mind:
Expose yourself to conflict.
- It is better to confront your fears than to ignore them or tamp them down.
- The more conflicts and difficult situations you put yourself through, the more battle-tested your mind will be.
Be self-reliant.
- Dependency makes you vulnerable to all kinds of emotions.
- We tend to overestimate other people’s abilities, and we tend to underestimate our own. Compensate for this by trusting yourself more, and others less.
- Remember, though, that being self-reliant does not mean burdening yourself with petty details.
Suffer fools gladly.
- Your time and energy are limited, and you must learn how to preserve them.
- Instead, think of fools as you think of children, or pets, not important enough to affect your mental balance.
- Crowd out feelings of panic by focusing on simple tasks.
Unintimidate yourself.
- See the person, not the myth. Imagine him or her as a child, as someone riddled with insecurities.
- Develop yourFingerspitzengefuhl(fingertip feel).
- Presence of mind depends not only on your mind’s ability to come to your aid in difficult situations but also on the speed with which this happens.
- There are things you can do to help you respond faster and bring out that intuitive feel that all animals possess. Deep knowledge of the terrain will let you process information faster than your enemy, a tremendous advantage. Getting a feel for the spirit of men and material, thinking your way into them instead of looking at them from outside, will help to put you in a different frame of mind.
- Get your mind into the habit of making lightning-quick decisions, trusting your fingertip feel. Your mind will advance in a kind of mental blitzkrieg, moving past your opponents before they realize what has hit them.
“There is no solace above or below. Only us – small, solitary, striving, battling one another. I pray to myself, for myself.”
The only person who you can unfailingly rely on is yourself. Ultimately, we are all pitted against one another in the battle that is life.
We fight to climb the hierarchical ladder, clawing our way past one another in pursuit of a higher status. You can’t depend on some benevolent entity coming to your aid.
Deny Them Targets:The Strategy of the Void
- The feeling of emptiness or void–silence, isolation, nonengagement with others–is for most people intolerable. As a human weakness, that fear offers fertile ground for a powerful strategy: give your enemies no target to attack, be dangerous but elusive and invisible, then watch as they chase you into the void. This is the essence of guerrilla warfare. Instead of frontal battles, deliver irritating but damaging side attacks and pinprick bites. Frustrated at their inability to use their strength against your vaporous campaign, your opponents will grow irrational and exhausted. Make your guerrilla war part of a grand political cause–a people’s war–that crests in an irresistible revolution.
- The bigger your enemy, the better this strategy works: struggling to reach you, the oversize opponent presents juicy targets for you to hit.
Keys to Warfare
- The primary consideration should always be whether a guerrilla-style campaign is appropriate for the circumstances you are facing. It is especially effective, for instance, against an opponent who is aggressive yet clever.
- Having nothing to strike at neutralizes their cleverness, and their aggression becomes their downfall.
- It is interesting to note that this strategy works in love as well as in war and that here, too.
- This strategy of the void works wonders on those who are used to conventional warfare.
- Large bureaucracies are often perfect targets for a guerrilla strategy for the same reason: they are capable of responding only in the most orthodox manner.
- Once you have determined that a guerrilla war is appropriate, take a look at the army you will use. A large, conventional army is never suitable; fluidity and the ability to strike from many angles are what counts. The organizational model is the cell–a relatively small group of men and women, tight-knit, dedicated, self-motivated, and spread out. These cells should penetrate the enemy camp itself.
- You will win your guerrilla war in one of two ways. The first route is to increase the level of your attacks as your enemies deteriorate, then finish them off.
- The other method is by turning sheer exhaustion to your advantage: you just let the enemy give up, for the fight is no longer worth the aggravation. The latter way is the better one. It costs you less in resources, and it looks better: the enemy has fallen on his own sword.
- Remember: this war is psychological. It is more on the level of strategy than anything else that you give the enemy nothing to hold on to, nothing tangible to counter.
Tourism and Dictators
Tourism fuels change because the dictators need tourist dollars. This let’s people rise up because they can oppress them as much.
Percentage of possibilities
A good guiding rule when thinking through changes is to try and put a percentage probability on different impacts. This makes a range of different potential decisions and the consequences of executing them comparable and possible to understand. It is also important to think conservatively and skeptically, it is always better to be prepared for something worse than what actually happens, than to be caught out unaware by something which was not anticipated, and ends up causing bigger problems than expected, the best decision is often hidden.
Sometimes it is only through the process of careful exploration and evaluation of the range of decisions that are possible, and what their consequences may be that exposes the best course of action to take. Countless times leaders have been faced with a range of choices with one of the choices seeming to be the obvious course of action after delving deep into the process of rational evaluation and explanation. An unlikely course of action ends up emerging as the wisest, what are the implications of this first it is important to be open minded to every possible course of action within a given scenario, and not to rule anything out until it has been properly considered overlooking something without actually thinking it through may lead to a worthwhile course of action being forgotten or not acted upon when it would have ended up producing the best outcome.
Second, it is important to have a solid understanding of the criteria by which various courses of action will be compared to one another, for example, in a particular situation. Is it better to incur a loss of money, or a loss of time. It is better to take a course of action which results in lower organizational morale, or one which results in short term savings, without a clear methodology by which to make decisions, it is impossible to choose the best option at any given time
Appeal to the Higher Self
There is only one glimmer of positive influence from Frank Underwood in the series. It is when he convinces Congressman Russo to get sober and not have a drink for a month so that he can run for Governor. A month goes by and Russo accomplishes the task. He returns to Frank saying the he’s prepared and ready to run.
When they conclude the meeting, Frank says, “Peter, I feel like I just met you for the first time right now” – implying he’s a changed man now that he’s sober. Frank is positively reinforcing Russo’s behavior. With this, he is appealing to Russo’s higher self.
Everyone has a vision for themselves–the person they know they can become. One of the best positive ways to influence someone is to show them how your idea will help them attain their higher self.
Of course, in House of Cards this positive technique is overshadowed by Frank’s bigger plans.
Speed is essential.
Once the old leader is gone, it is essential to seize the instruments of power, such as the Treasury as quickly as possible. This is particularly important in small coalition systems. Anyone who waits will be a loser in the competition for power, speed is of the essence. The coalition size in most political systems is much smaller than a majority of the electorate.
Furthermore,even though we tend to think that if one leader has enough votes or supporters, then the other potential candidate must be short. This is wrong. There can simultaneously be many different groups trying to organize to overthrow a regime, and each might have sufficient numbers of lukewarm or double dealing supporters who could aid them in securing power, or just as easily aid someone else, if the price is right. This is why it is absolutely essential to seize the reins of power quickly to make sure that your group gets to control the instruments of the state, and not someone else’s.
Reform and dead ends
A reformer who takes what people say at face value, we’ll quickly find their reforms at a dead end. Everyone has an interest in change. But interchangeable influentials essentials and leaders don’t often agree on what changes they want. Leaders given their druthers would always like the set of interchangeable is to be very large. And there groups of influential and essentials, to be very Small. That’s why the world of business has so many massive corporations with millions of shareholders, a few influential large owners, and a handful of essentials on the board of directors who agree to pay CEOs handsomely, regardless.
That’s why so much of humanity. For so much of human history has been governed by petty despots, who steal from the poor,to enrich the rich. The masses, whether members of the selected or the holy disenfranchised, agree that their group, the interchangeable should be large, but they want all other groups to be big as well.
Their best chance at having a better life comes from the coalition and the influential group growing in size such that they have a realistic chance of becoming one of its members, and of benefiting from the profusion of public goods such governance provides, even if they remain excluded from the coalition. As we have seen, it is this very hope of improving the people’s lot revolutionaries use as their rallying cry to get them to take to the streets. But even in a large coalition system, these masses are unlikely to get what they want all the time. Their hope is to get what they want more of the time. The group whose desires are most interesting from the perspective of lasting betterment is the set of essentials.
More often than not, they are the people who can make things happen. You see, they don’t like the idea that they might be purged to make the coalition smaller, but at the same time, ending up in a smaller coalition can provide them with fabulous wealth.
Price isn’t everything
Too many sales people are concerned about sharing their pricing too early, lest their prospects get sticker shock and decides not to buy. But great sales people know that transparency is the key to building trust with a prospect. Plus, you probably don’t want to waste your time talking to prospects that are going to have sticker shock anyway. Let your price speak for the quality of your product or service. Then, as Frank would advise, limit the fine print around what your pricing includes or doesn’t include. A savvy prospect will know how to read the fine print.
Do Not Fight the Last War:The Guerrilla-War-of-the-Mind Strategy
- What most often weighs you down and brings you misery is the past, in the form of unnecessary attachments, repetitions of tired formulas, and the memory of old victories and defeats. You must consciously wage war against the past and force yourself to react to the present moment.
- Never take it for granted that your past successes will continue into the future.
Keys to Warfare - Understand: the greatest generals, the most creative strategists, stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized.
- It can be valuable to analyze what went wrong in the past, but it is far more important to develop the capacity to think in the moment. In that way you will make far fewer mistakes to analyze.
- The first step is simply to be aware of the process and of the need to fight it. The second is to adopt a few tactics that might help you to restore the mind’s natural flow.
Reexamine all your cherished beliefs and principles.
- Your only principle, similarly, should be to have no principles.
Erase the memory of the last war.
- Attention to the details of the present is by far the best way to crowd out the past and forget the last war.
Keep the mind moving.
- Superior strategists see things as they are. They are highly sensitive to dangers and opportunities.
- Great strategists do not act according to preconceived ideas; they respond to the moment, like children.
Absorb the spirit of the times.
- Constantly adapt and change, and you will avoid the pitfalls of your previous wars. Just when people feel they know you, you will change.
- Reverse course.
Sometimes you must reverse course, break free from the hold of the past. Do the opposite of what you would normally do in a given situation. - Act in a novel manner in relationships to break up the dynamic.
Corruption empowers
if corruption empowers than absolute corruption empowers, absolutely. We have seen how leaders come to power, find money and provide public goods, sometimes even for the benefit of society. Yet precious few successful leaders are motivated, primarily by the desire to do good works on behalf of their subjects. Everyone likes to be liked, and there’s no reason to think that the powerful have anything against being beloved and honored by their people. Indeed, it could well be the case that there are many candidates for high office who pursue power with the intention of being benevolent leaders.
The problem is that doing what is best for the people can be awfully bad for staying in power, the logic of political survival teaches us that leaders, whether they rule countries, companies or committees, first and foremost want to get in keep our second they want to exercise as much control over the expenditure of revenue as they possibly can. While they can indulge their desires to do good deeds with any money at their discretion to come to power and to survive in office, leaders must rivet their attention on building and maintaining a coalition loyal enough that the ruler can beat back any and all rivals.
Understand people’s strengths and motivations.
Underwood excels at identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the people he surrounds himself with, and he understands well that all of his peers in politics have ulterior motives. He leverages this knowledge to motivate and get the best (or worst, as the case may be) from these people and does what is necessary to get the right people in the right place at the right time.
A man had 2 reasons for what is to be done. The good reason and the real reason.
-JP Morgan
Fixing Gerrymandering
They also achieved higher educational attainment and were more attractive places for other Americans to migrate into people live to small coalition states. In fact, the big coalition states or public services were better in all manner of public goods are more extensively provided foreign immigrants also flocked to the larger coalition states, even after correcting for proximity to large ports, per capita incomes are much higher and varied almost directly with coalition size, even after correcting for pre independence differences states with bigger Coalition’s simply did better. The lesson here is clear. Well all the states had the same nominal rules redistricting and enfranchisement criteria matter in creating differences and the competitiveness of political systems, and the development of the states if properly attended to districting and enfranchisement decisions could make the United States and even better place than it currently is.
Let’s start with the Decennial redistricting of Congress, the Supreme Court insists on the principle of one person, one vote. And that is an excellent guideline. But it is a principle so easily distorted as to make congressional elections, almost a farce except under extreme conditions. This is true for the simple reason that it is politicians and state legislators who get to draw up congressional district boundaries shockingly enough, they designed the boundaries to make it easier for their party to win gerrymandering is especially pernicious because it translates into two conflicting consequences.
The average American is gravely dissatisfied with the job that Congress does, and the average American is happy with his or her member of Congress. The latter is true because districts are constructed by politicians to give their preferred party a majority and so by definition the majority in any district is likely to be content. But this is a great perversion of governance, a small coalition of state legislators, pick their voters, instead of millions of voters picking their representatives, when politicians pick who votes for them. It comes as no surprise that politicians are easily reelected and barely held accountable. Fixing gerrymandering is something that can be done only once a decade in the United States. It can be done more frequently in many parliamentary democracies that equally suffering from this perversion of representative politics, whether the opportunity is ongoing or infrequent fixing gerrymandering is easy, but to be feasible, the voters must take up the cause and fight for it
Many scholars of American politics have worked out lots of better ways to allocate congressional districts than the way it is done now, all the methods come down to variations on a common theme district boundaries should not be manipulated to squeeze some voters in here, and others out there. Boundaries should reflect some basic principles of geometry and the natural constraints of the terrain, like major rivers or mountains. As a simple principle gerrymandering could be greatly diminished by turning redistricting over to some computer programmers and mathematical political scientists who could design rules that are not district specific, but that instead apply common principles of fair representation across all districts, a voter initiative in California has taken a step in this direction, it goes.
A voter initiative in California has taken a step in this direction, it calls for the appointment of a nonpartisan commission to handle redistricting. We will see how well that does it being nonpartisan a computer program drawn up in ignorance of any specific districts distribution of political preferences, would be much more likely to achieve fairness and impartiality while fulfilling the spirit, as well as the letter of the Supreme Court’s insistence on one person, one vote, along with wiping out coalition reducing gerrymanders, the time may well have come to amend the US Constitution to get rid of the Electoral College. Here we have an institution, whose founders original intent is pretty clear. They wanted to ensure that the slave states would join the United States. And that meant erecting constitutional provisions that would protect slavery.
Part V: Unconventional (Dirty) Warfare
- Dirty war is political, deceptive, and supremely manipulative. Often the last recourse of the weak and desperate, it uses any means available to level the playing field.
- The unconventional has its own logic that you must understand.
- First, nothing stays new for long. Those who depend on novelty must constantly come up with some fresh idea that goes against the orthodoxies of the time.
- Second, people who use unconventional methods are very hard to fight. The classic, direct route–the use of force and strength–does not work. You must use indirect methods to combat indirection, fight fire with fire, even at the cost of going dirty yourself. To try to stay clean out of a sense of morality is to risk defeat.
Weave a Seamless Blend of Fact and Fiction:Misperception Strategies - Since no creature can survive without the ability to see or sense what is going on around it, you must make it hard for your enemies to know what is going on around them, including what you are doing. Disturb their focus and you weaken their strategic powers. People’s perceptions are filtered through their emotions; they tend to interpret the world according to what they want to see. Feed their expectations, manufacture a reality to match their desires, and they will fool themselves. The best deceptions are based on ambiguity, mixing fact and fiction so that the one cannot be disentangled from the other. Control people’s perceptions of reality and you control them.
- More than likely, your concept of deception is wrong. It does not entail elaborate illusions or all sorts of showy distractions. Deception should mirror reality.
- Your false mirror must conform to people’s desires and expectations. It must incorporate things that are visibly true. It must seem somewhat banal, like life itself, and can have contradictions.
Keys to Warfare
- In essence, military deception is about subtly manipulating and distorting signs of our identity and purpose to control the enemy’s vision of reality and get them to act on their misperceptions. It is the art of managing appearances, and it can create a decisive advantage for whichever side uses it better.
- To master this art, you must embrace its necessity and find creative pleasure in manipulating appearances-as if you were directing a film.
- The following are six main forms of military deception, each with its own advantage:
The false front.
- This is the oldest form of military deception. It originally involved making the enemy believe that one was weaker than in fact was the case.
- Theappearanceof weakness often brings out people’s aggressive side, making them drop strategy and prudence for an emotional and violent attack.
- Controlling the front you present to the world is the most critical deceptive skill.
- The best front here is weakness, which will make the other side feel superior to you, so that they either ignore you (and being ignored is very valuable at times) or are baited into an aggressive action at the wrong moment. Once it is too late, once they are committed, they can find out the hard way that you are not so weak after all.
- In the battles of daily life, making people think they are better than you are–smarter, stronger, more competent–is often wise.
The decoy attack.
- The key to this tactic is that instead of relying on words or rumors or planted information, the army really moves. It makes a concrete action. The enemy forces cannot afford to guess whether a deception is in the works: if they guess wrong, the consequences are disastrous.
- The decoy attack is also a critical strategy in daily life, where you must retain the power to hide your intentions. To keep people from defending the points you want to attack, you must follow the military model and make real gestures toward a goal that does not interest you.
- Actions carry such weight and seem so real that people will naturally assume that is your real goal.
Camouflage.
- The ability to blend into the environment is one of the most terrifying forms of military deception.
- The camouflage strategy can be applied to daily life in two ways. First, it is always good to be able to blend into the social landscape, to avoid calling attention to yourself unless you choose to do so. When you talk and act like everyone else, mimicking their belief systems, when you blend into the crowd, you make it impossible for people to read anything particular in your behavior. That gives you great room to move and plot without being noticed.
- Second, if you are preparing an attack of some sort and begin by blending into the environment, showing no sign of activity, your attack will seem to come out of nowhere, doubling its power.
The hypnotic pattern.
- Human beings naturally tend to think in patterns.
- This mental habit offers excellent ground for deception. Deliberately create a pattern to make your enemies believe that your next action will follow true to form.
Planted information.
- People are much more likely to believe something they see with their own eyes than something they are told. They are more likely to believe something they discover than something pushed at them. If you plant the false information you desire them to have–with third parties, in neutral territory–when they pick up the clues, they have the impression they are the ones discovering the truth. The more you can make them dig for their information, the more deeply they will delude themselves.
- No matter how good a liar you are, when you deceive, it is hard to be completely natural. Your tendency is to try so hard to seem natural and sincere that it stands out and can be read. That is why it is so effective to spread your deceptions through people whom you keep ignorant of the truth–people who believe the lie themselves.
Shadows within shadows.
- Deceptive maneuvers are like shadows deliberately cast: the enemy responds to them as if they were solid and real, which in and of itself is a mistake. In a sophisticated, competitive world, however, both sides know the game, and the alert enemy will not necessarily grasp at the shadow you have thrown. So you have to take the art of deception to a level higher, casting shadows within shadows, making it impossible for your enemies to distinguish between fact and fiction.
- If you are trying to mislead your enemies, it is often better to concoct something ambiguous and hard to read, as opposed to an outright deception.
- By creating something that is simply ambiguous, though, by making everything blurry, there is no deception to uncover.
Reversal
- To be caught in a deception is dangerous. If you don’t know that your cover is blown, your enemies now have more information than you do and you become their tool.
- Always leave yourself an escape route, a cover story that can protect you if exposed.
Reach for the long-term deal.
What if Frank had gotten the bid for Secretary of State? Would he have stopped there? Or was his plan to secure the Presidency all along? While we can’t know for sure, it appears Frank always had the end-goal in mind. The sales lesson? Don’t settle for the quick win when, with a little more coaxing and patience, you could land a longer term, more valuable deal. Do you have a prospect that only wants a free sample of your product or a trial of your service, but doesn’t want to pay for anything? Instead of nickel and diming them over a small offer, give them the freebie, and prove why they should spend more money with you down the line.
Leverage your connections.
Sometimes (read: often) in sales, you need to call in a favor. You’ll need an introduction from a friend, a person to transfer your call instead of hanging up, your customer service rep to take good care of your customer. Frank knows that in order toleverage connectionswell, you need to have the right connections in the first place. Just look at Zoe Barnes, Peter Russo, and Rachel Posner. He carefully identifies and cultivates relationships with the right people so that, later on, he can leverage those connections to win the deal. And even if that relationship doesn’t pan out as you planned, you can always just push them off the Metro platform.
Pressure to Reform.
As we have learned, when a country’s economy is in trouble, the big problem from a rulers perspective is that she doesn’t have enough money to buy continued loyalty. When the privileges enjoyed by essentials are shrinking, they are likely to be tuned into the possibility of change. They know the leader will want to purge people to use what little money is around more effectively.
They not wanting to be purged will be amenable to expanding their group, trading their privilege for their future security and well being. coalition members arenot the only ones willing to contemplate changing the rules when circumstances warrant. If the economic crisis is severe enough, and foreign aid donors stay away, then even leaders must ponder whether they might be better off liberalizing democratization jeopardizes their long term future. But if they don’t pay their supporters today, whether they can win an election tomorrow is not a salient consideration.
Clean Drinking Water
For autocrats, money spent on people like convincing little children who are years away from contributing to the Academy is money wasted resources should instead be focused on those who help the rulers stay in power now, not those who might be valuable in the distant future. When you see pictures and images flowing out of populations and crisis, it’s apparent that suffering at the extremes of the lifespan is hardly uncommon in autocracies. It’s not that these terrible conditions can’t be reversed. It’s that the autocrat must choose not to reverse them as a simple matter of cost funds diverted in such a fashion or take him right out of her own pocket, and the pockets of the coalition.
Considering the availability of his basic and essential in the public good is clean drinking water. In a world in which easily prevented waterborne diseases like cholera dysentery, diarrhea, kill millions of the young and old, non workers, clean water would be a tremendous lifesaver. The problem is that these are lives that autocrats seem not to value. Sure enough, drinking water is cleaner and more widely available in democratic countries than in small coalition regimes.
Appear Inactive when you are Active: Warfare
Let’s look at Modern Warfare to show how this works take two modern situations the conflict in Korea between the North and South and the ongoing threat of terrorism in Korea. The threat is obvious and near troops are masked on either side of the border and there is a constant awareness of the potential for conflict. Both sides are prepared and ready and therefore are in something of a stalemate. Terrorism on the other hand remains under the radar.
There is no formal membership structure, people assume they’re safe and then suddenly a bomb goes off. The proximity of the threat is unknown at any given time and therefore cannot be adequately expected. So what are some of the non violent uses of strategic deception relating to proximity? market entry is one area of business where seeming to be distant can provide an advantage.
If you wish to enter a new market such as a region then it may be useful to prepare to do so quietly and discreetly. If your competitors don’t know you are close to entering a market, their attention is not drawn to it, they are unlikely to assume the market is worthy of consideration as a result. Have your interest in it.
“Friends make the worst enemies.”
What could be worse than finding an adversary in someone who knows you intimately? This is an enemy who is able to identify your vulnerabilities and capitalize on your weaknesses more effectively than your typical opponent.
Nurture your friendships and avoid burning bridges. If you fail to heed these words, don’t be surprised when a former confidant leads the campaign to cement your downfall.
Have a partner in crime.
Where would Frank be without his wife, Claire? While working in sales may seem like a constant competition, the best sales people know how to partner up so that they’re workingwiththeir colleagues instead ofagainsttheir colleagues. Just look atsales and marketingas the perfect example. The two teams are typically portrayed as being at-odds with one another and bickering about leads. But a strong marriage between the two teams leads to greater success than each trying to pave their own independent path to success.
Trade Space for Time:The Nonengagement Strategy
- Retreat in the face of a strong enemy is a sign not of weakness but of strength. By resisting the temptation to respond to an aggressor, you buy yourself valuable time–time to recover, to think, to gain perspective. Let your enemies advance; time is more important than space. By refusing to fight, you infuriate them and feed their arrogance. They will soon overextend themselves and start making mistakes.
Keys to Warfare - Your task as a strategist is simple: to see the differences between yourself and other people, to understand yourself, your side, and the enemy as well as you can, to get more perspective on events, to know things for what they are.
The perils of meritocracy
One lesson to be learned from our Kurt’s ultimate removal in HP is that doing a good job is not enough to ensure political survival. That is true whether one is running a business a charity or a national government, how much a leaders performance influences remaining in office is a highly subjective matter. It might seem obvious that it is important to have people in the coalition of key backers are competent and performing the duties associated with implementing the leaders policies. But autocracy isn’t about good governance, it’s about what’s good for the leader, not what’s good for the people.
In fact, having competent ministers or competent corporate board members can be dangerous mistake, competent people after all, a potential, and potentially competent rivals. The three most important characteristics of a coalition are one, loyalty to loyalty. Three loyalty successful leaders surround themselves with trusted friends and family in rid themselves of any ambitious supporters.
Carly Fiorina had a hard time achieving that objective. And as a result, she failed to last long. Fidel Castro, by contrast, was a master of course he had fewer impediments to overcome and what he could do then did Fiorina, and he lasted in power for nearly half a century, the implications of this aspect of political logic are profound, particularly in small coalition governments Saddam Hussein in Iraq, like, Ed amin and Uganda, and so many other eventual national leaders started as a street thug autocrats don’t need West Point graduates to protect them. Once in power, people like me was saying wisely surround themselves with trusted members of the wrong tribe or clan installing them in the most important positions. Those involving force and money and killing anyone that may turn out to be a rival.
Khomani and Timing
We’re counting the best opportunity. Wow. Most unavoidably and therefore first on the list of risks of being deposed is the simple inescapable fact of mortality. Dead leaders cannot deliver rewards to their coalition dying leaders face, almost as grave a problem. If essential backers know their leader is dying, then they also know that they need someone new to assure the flow of revenue into their pockets. That’s a good reason to keep terminal illnesses secret. Since a terminal element is bound to provoke an uprising, either within the ranks of the essential coalition, or among outsiders, who see an opportunity to step in and take control of the palace Ayatollah Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran and the Corazon Aquino and the Philippines, both chose the right time to seize power, take the case of Ayatollah Khomeini. He was one of the most senior Shia clerics in Iran, and a vehement opponent of Shah Mohamad Araiza lobbies secular regime during early 1960 he spoke out against the regime and organized protests. His activities resulted in his being repeatedly arrested in 1964 he went into exile.
First, Turkey in Iraq, and eventually to France, continuing to preach his opposition to the Shah, wherever he was tapes of his speeches were popular throughout Iran in 1977 with the death of the Shahs rival Ali Shariati Khomeini became the most influential opposition leader. Although he urged others to oppose the Shah, he refused to return to Iran, until the Shah was gone, except for a privileged few almost everyone in Iran hungered for change. The Shahs regime and those associated with it were widely disliked seeing that there was a chance for real change people through their support behind the one clearly viable alternative Khomeini. After the Shah fled the country. An estimated 6 million people turned out to cheer Khomeini’s return. Judging from what he did next. They may have cheered too soon. Immediately after his return command he challenged the interim government, which was headed by the Shahs former prime minister. Much of the army defected and joined Khomeini. And when he ordered a jihad against the soldiers remaining loyal to the old regime resistance collapsed. Then he ordered a referendum to be held in which the people would choose between the old monarchy of the Shah, or an Islamic Republic. With the endorsement of 98% for the latter, he rewrote the constitution basing it on rule by clerics. After some dubious electoral practices, this constitution was approved, and he became the supreme leader with a Council of Guardians to veto non Islamic laws and candidates.
The many secular and moderate religious groups who had taken to the streets on his behalf, providing the critical support needed for his rise to power, found they were left out excluded from running the new regime. Khamenei became leader because he provided a focal point for opposition to the Shahs regime. And because the army did not stop the people from rising up against the monarchy. Once the Shah was gone. Command he quickly asserted that it was he not an interim government council representing all interests, who was in charge. Although the masses brought down the old regime in hopes of obtaining a more democratic government Khomeini ensured that real power it was retained by a small group of clerics. The Parliament are popularly elected could only contain politicians who would support and be supported by the Council of Guardians. There is nothing special or unique about Khamenei success that millions wanted the Shahs regime overturned is unsurprising, the Shah ran a brutal oppressive government under which a thousands disappeared imprisonment, torture and death were commonplace. But that was equally true 14 years earlier, when Khomeini went into exile and the Shahs government seemed invulnerable.
The key to Khamenei success at the end of the 1970s was that the army refused to stop the unhappy millions from taking to the streets. They had not allowed such protests before. What changed. The army was no longer willing to fight to preserve the regime because they knew that the Shah was dying. The New York Times published accounts or the forest of a sick leader, desperate to hide the progression.
Keep it secret
Keep it secret, they will never know your attack is coming and will be will be unable to defend themselves against your intentions in time. Large scale attacks. The idea of hiding your intention to attack so your targets are unprepared does not just apply on a small scale personal level. It also works on a larger scale, such as the actions and strategic plans of an entire organization. This concept is easy to illustrate with an example Apple product launches. Think about the drama and excitement that comes with the launch of a new Apple product. people speculate like crazy about what the new unveiling will bring Apple is as secretive as possible ahead of time. Then on the day of the launch, the product is revealed and usually announced to be on sale within a very short period of time as a result of his competitors are on the backfoot.
They never know exactly what is coming and what they should do. As a result, the launch of the original iPhone was a game changer, Apple did not necessarily seem set to attack the portion of the tech market that they chose. As a result of this competing firms had no real time to prepare. Look at the fates of blackberry and Motorola if you doubt this concept, stealth. Another famous quote on deception from the Art of War states when using forces seem inactive. This is more true than ever these days. We live in an era where people are encouraged to broadcast their every thought plan and intention through social media. Countless cases of people being caught out in terms of identity fraud, affairs or going against workplace rules have come to light because of people not being cautious enough.
This can be done through sleight of hand. Let’s say for example, a skill is valued in a workplace. A number of people are working hard to acquire this skill in the hope of advancing up the career ladder. Someone is Also acquiring this skill but in secret, they not only do this secretly, but make a point of seeming to be uninterested or uninvolved
Lenin and his ‘elections’
The best way to stay in power is to keep the coalition small and crucially, to make sure that everyone in it knows that there are plenty of replacements for them. This is why you will often read about regular elections and tyrannical states. Everyone knows that these elections don’t count, and yet people go along with them. rig elections are not about picking leaders. They’re not about gaining legitimacy. How can an election be legitimate when its outcome is known before the vote even occurs rigged elections are a warning to powerful politicians that they are expendable. If they deviate from the leaders desired path.
Vladimir Lenin was the first to really exploit the idea of substitute coalition members in a one party state, he nonetheless perfected a rigged election universal adult suffrage system, any action he took say sending so and so to Siberia, was the will of the people, and any of the people in the replacement pool had a chance. Albeit a slight one of being called up to serve as an influential, or maybe even an essential somewhere down the line. Everybody in the Soviet Selectric could with a very small probability grow up to be General Secretary of the Communist Party, just like the petty criminal Joseph Stalin and the uneducated, Nikita Khrushchev those already in the inner circle knew they had to stay in line to keep their day jobs.
Bravo Lenin,
Know Your Enemy: The Intelligence Strategy
- The target of your strategies should be less the army you face than the mind of the man or woman who runs it. If you understand how that mind works, you have the key to deceiving and controlling it.
- Our natural tendency is to see other people as mere reflections of our own desires and values.
- The best way to find the leader’s weaknesses is not through spies but through the close embrace. Behind a friendly, even subservient front, you can observe your enemies, get them to open up and reveal themselves. Get inside their skin; think as they think. Once you discover their vulnerability–an uncontrollable temper, a weakness for the opposite sex, a gnawing insecurity–you have the material to destroy them.
Keys to Warfare
- The greatest power you could have in life would come neither from limitless resources nor even consummate skill in strategy. It would come from clear knowledge of those around you–the ability to read people like a book.
- In general, it is easier to observe people in action, particularly in moments of crisis. Those are the times when they either reveal their weakness or struggle so hard to disguise it that you can see through the mask.
- A warning: never rely on one spy, one source of information, no matter how good. You risk being played or getting slanted, one-sided information.
- Finally, the enemy you are dealing with is not an inanimate object that will simply respond in an expected manner to your strategies. Your enemies are constantly changing and adapting to what you are doing. Innovating and inventing on their own, they try to learn from their mistakes and from your successes. So your knowledge of the enemy cannot be static. Keep your intelligence up to date, and do not rely on the enemy’s responding the same way twice.
Reversal
- Even as you work to know your enemies, you must make yourself as formless and difficult to read as possible. Since people really only have appearances to go on, they can be readily deceived. Act unpredictably now and then.
“Treading water is the same as drowning for people like you and me.”
If you want to be successful, never be content standing still. Comfort leads to apathy. Apathy kills ambition.
Without ambition, you’re on the fast track to being consumed by regret, forever wondering what might have been. Step outside your comfort zone and don’t be afraid to take risks.
Borrowing
Borrowing is a wonderful thing for leaders, they get to spend the money to make their supporters happy today. And if they are sensible set some aside for themselves, unless they are fortunate enough to survive in office for a really long time, repaying today’s loan will be another leaders problem autocratic leaders borrow as much as they can and democratic leaders are enthusiastic borrowers as well. We are all, at least a little bit impatient. It’s in our nature to buy things today, and better financial acumen might suggest saving our money. Politics makes financial decision making even more suspect. To understand the logic and see why politicians are properly good borrowers.
Of course borrowing more today means higher indebtedness and a smaller ability to borrow tomorrow. But such arguments are rarely persuasive to a leader. If he takes a financially reasonable position by refusing to incur debt. Then he has less to spend on rewards, no such problem will arise for a challenger who offers to take on such debt in exchange for support from members of the current incumbents coalition. This makes the current leader vulnerable incurring debt today is attractive because after all, the debt will be inherited by the next administration. That way, it also ties the hands of any future challenger, a leader should borrow as much as the coalition will endorse and markets will provide.
There is surely a challenger out there who will borrow this much. And in doing so, use the money to grab power away from the incumbent. So not borrowing jeopardizes a leaders hold on power, heavy borrowing is a feature of small coalition settings. It is not the result is some economists argue of ignorance of basic economics by third world leaders in an autocracy, the small size of the coalition means that leaders are virtually always willing to take on more debt
Destroy from Within: The Inner-Front Strategy
- A war can only really be fought against an enemy who shows himself. By infiltrating your opponents’ ranks, working from within to bring them down, you give them nothing to see or react against–the ultimate advantage. From within, you also learn their weaknesses and open up possibilities of sowing internal dissension.
So hide your hostile intentions. To take something you want, do not fight those who have it, but rather join them–then either slowly make it your own or wait for the moment to stage a coup d’etat. No structure can stand for long when it rots from within.
Keys to Warfare
- The basic principle here is that it is easiest to topple a structure–a wall, a group, a defensive mind–from the inside out.
- A variation on the lotus strategy is to befriend your enemies, worming your way into their hearts and minds. As your targets’ friend, you will naturally learn their needs and insecurities, the soft interior they try so hard to hide.
- For a more immediate effect, you can try a sudden act of kindness and generosity that gets people to lower their defenses–the Trojan Horse strategy.
- The main weakness in any conspiracy is usually human nature: the higher the number of people who are in on the plot, the higher the odds that someone will reveal it, whether deliberately or accidentally.
- There are a few precautions you can take. Keep the number of conspirators as small as possible. Involve them in the details of the plot only as necessary; the less they know, the less they have to blab. Revealing the schedule of your plan as late as possible before you all act will give them no time to back out. Then, once the plan is described, stick to it.
- Too few conspirators and you lack the strength to control the consequences; too many and the conspiracy will be exposed before it bears fruit..
- In destroying anything from within, you must be patient and resist the lure of large-scale, dramatic action.
- Finally, morale plays a crucial part in any war, and it is always wise to work to undermine the morale of the enemy troops.
Reversal - There are always likely to be disgruntled people in your own group who will be liable to turning against you from the inside. The worst mistake is to be paranoid, suspecting one and all and trying to monitor their every move. Your only real safeguard against conspiracies and saboteurs is to keep your troops satisfied, engaged in their work, and united by their cause.
Take the Line of Least Expectation: The Ordinary-Extraordinary Strategy
- People expect your behavior to conform to known patterns and conventions. Your task as a strategist is to upset their expectations. Surprise them and chaos and unpredictability–which they try desperately to keep at bay–enter their world, and in the ensuing mental disturbance, their defenses are down and they are vulnerable. First, do something ordinary and conventional to fix their image of you, then hit them with the extraordinary. The terror is greater for being so sudden. Never rely on an unorthodox strategy that worked before–it is conventional the second time around. Sometimes the ordinary is extraordinary because it is unexpected.
Unconventional Warfare - Unconventional warfare has four main principles, as gleaned from the great practitioners of the art.
Work outside the enemy’s experience.
- Know your enemies well, then contrive a strategy that goes outside their experience.
Unfold the extraordinary out of the ordinary.
- Fix your opponents’ expectations with some banal, ordinary maneuver, and then hit them with the extraordinary, a show of stunning force from an entirely new angle.
Act crazy like a fox.
- Upon occasion, allow yourself to operate in a way that is deliberately irrational, to frighten people.
- As an alternative, act somewhat randomly. Randomness is disturbing to humans.
Keep the wheels in constant motion.
- Make a point of breaking the habits you have developed, of acting in a way that is contrary to the way you acted in the past.
- When striving to create the extraordinary, always remember: what is crucial is the mental process, not the image or maneuver itself. What will truly shock and linger long in the mind are those works and ideas that grow out of the soil of the ordinary and banal, that are unexpected, that make us question and contest the very nature of the reality we see around us.
Expose and Attack Your Opponent’s Soft Flank: The Turning Strategy
- When you attack people directly, you stiffen their resistance and make your task that much harder. There is a better way: distract your opponents’ attention to the front, then attack them from the side, where they least expect it.
- Individuals often show their flank, signal their vulnerability, by its opposite, the front they show most visibly to the world.
- Life is full of hostility–some of it overt, some clever and under-handed. Conflict is inevitable; you will never have total peace.
- At all cost you must gain control of the impulse to fight your opponents directly. Instead occupy their flank. Disarm them and make them your ally; you can decide later whether to keep them on your side or to exact revenge. Taking the fight out of people through strategic acts of kindness, generosity, and charm will clear your path, helping you to save energy for the fights you cannot avoid.
Keys to Warfare
- The people who win true power in the difficult modern world are those who have learned indirection. They know the value of approaching at an angle, disguising their intentions, lowering the enemy’s resistance, hitting the soft, exposed flank instead of butting horns. Rather than try to push or pull people, they coax them to turn in the direction they desire. This takes effort but pays dividends down the road in reduced conflict and greater results.
- The key to any flanking maneuver is to proceed in steps. Your initial move cannot reveal your intentions or true line of attack.
- When people present their ideas and arguments, they often censor themselves, trying to appear more conciliatory and flexible than is actually the case. If you attack them directly from the front, you end up not getting very far, because there isn’t much there to aim at. Instead try to make them go further with their ideas, giving you a bigger target. Do this by standing back, seeming to go along, and baiting them into moving rashly ahead. (You can also make them emotional, pushing their buttons, getting them to say more than they had wanted to.) They will expose themselves on a weak salient, advancing an indefensible argument or position that will make them look ridiculous. The key is never to strike too early. Give your opponents time to hang themselves.
- The more subtle and indirect your maneuvers in life, the better.
- The ultimate evolution of strategy is toward more and more indirection. An opponent who cannot see where you are heading is at a severe disadvantage.
5.) Stop caring about who’s sleeping with whom
If you want someone who is a “moral” leader in his personal, non-professional life, look to a religious leader. Above all, don’t look to your Congressman. Frank is sleeping with intrepid and dreadfully shallow/annoying Zoe Barnes, reporter for some crap blog we really shouldn’t care about but in the real world actually does matter, and possibly one of his old (male) school buddies. And oh, Claire is sleeping with that corny French-seeming photographer. And…who cares. Yes, there comes a time where all the sleeping around affects the passage of Rep Russo’s river development bill, but honestly, all kinds of petty things affect all kinds of bills and we’ll usually never know it. It’s just the way it is. And always has been. Why get more up-in-arms over sex than anything else? Honestly, sex is as good a reason to screw with a bill as any of the other far-too-common reasons we find today. And there is a lot, and I meana lot, of against-the-rules sex going on Capitol Hill. Do you know how…oldand howmalemany lawmakers are? And howyoungandattractiveandfemalemany interns and staffers are?? When I was on the Hill, interns were generally referred to asskinterns, withspaghetti strapsandshort hemlinesever-present (not a coincidence). And let’s just add drugs (shout out to self-described “hip-hop conservative” Rep. Henry “Trey Songz” Radel,arrested in 2013on cocaine possession and doing his best Peter Russo imitation) to this rule, too, while you’re at it.
Do the unpleasant yet necessary things.
In the opening scene of season 1, we see Frank kill a suffering dog that has been hit by a car with his bare hands. As he tells us, nobody wants to do the unpleasant yet necessary things. To be a great sales person, you also need to do unpleasant yet necessary things sometime. You need to Google your prospects and find out more about them before you cold call them. You need to do some digging to find a new POC when your old contact falls off the face of the planet. Sure, you can try to push that work off to someone else, but like Frank says, nobody really wants to do it for you. The top performers know that, and they put in the time to do the less-fun side of sales.
Carrot and Stick
Approach your relationship with them in coldly rational way, don’t ever expect people to do things for you out of loyalty or liking this may work some of the time but it’s guaranteed to eventually not work Machiavelli strongly believed that it was vital to see people as the fickle self interested creatures that they are in to interact with and motivate them on this basis, the key way of getting inside people’s heads from the Machiavellian standpoint, is to always think in terms of incentives, understand what any given person has to lose or gain in any given situation, when the dual principles of pain and pleasure which are fundamental sources of positive and negative human motivation, are understood and applied in any given situation.
It allows a Machiavellian leader to take a carrot and stick approach to ensuring loyalty. Always think not only in terms of what people want. But what they don’t want this allows you to offer positive incentives to encourage behaviors and negative incentives to discourage behaviors, of course, the negative incentives should be so severe that people are forced to comply with what you want.
Asymmetric risk reward.
Always think in terms of asymmetric risk and reward. What is meant by this basically in any course of action you take, you should have a lot more to gain than you have to lose at any given time. This is a key element of protecting what is already yours, risking very little at any given time. What are some of the ways you can seek out asymmetric risk and reward in the modern context. If you were leading a commercial operation in a sales context, bonus and financially incentivized methods of remuneration are great ways of ensuring your risk and reward are asymmetric. If your sales team performs for you, you will make profit, and they will take a small piece of it. If your sales team doesn’t perform, they don’t get paid and you lose nothing.
This is a prime example of setting up situations so that you have more to gain than you have to lose at any given time. If you make this way of living a core part of your philosophy, then it is inevitable you will steadily increase your gains over time. This is because the only time you will ever take action is when it protects what you already have and stands to add to it, the cash reserves of a business, your personal investment portfolio and your skill sets are some examples of areas you should always seek to protect first before adding to understand how vulnerabilities, open up.
Part II: Organizational (Team) Warfare
- It is the structure of your army - the chain of command and the relationship of the parts to the whole - that will give your strategies force.
- You must build speed and mobility into the structure of your army.
- That means having a single authority on top, going soldiers a sense of the overall goal to be accomplished and the latitude to take action to meet that goal. It means motivating soldiers, creating an overall esprit du corps that gives momentum.
- Before formulating a strategy or taking action, understand the structure of your group.
Stay focused on the end goal.
The congressman always puts his goals ahead of his emotions, with a stoic indifference to revenge, grunges and petty bickering. Ultimately, he has one goal (the White House), so even when faced with personal challenges and threats, he calculates his actions based on what will suit him long term.
Overall, Underwood teaches us that success comes from excruciatingly calculated and effectively executed long term strategies. And while you might feel guilty, or even a little sullied, for taking management and leadership tips from a cold and manipulating political stereotype, understand that you don’t need to be malicious in the execution. As you watch Underwood’s accession into power, there is a clear sense of impending doom. Implemented with empathy and compassion, these business lessons can be effectively leveraged in a good way, making you the good guy instead of the villain.
There are three ways to remove an incumbent leader.
The first and easiest is for the leader to die. If that convenience does not offer itself a challenger can make an offer to the essential members of the incumbents coalition that is sufficiently attractive, that they defect to the challengers cause. Third, the current political system can be overwhelmed from the outside, whether by military defeat by a foreign power or through revolution and rebellion in which the masses rise up to oppose the current leader and destroy existing institutions.
That is the general rule of thumb for rebellion, is that revolutions occur when those who preserve the current system are sufficiently dissatisfied with their rewards that they are willing to look for someone new to take care of them. On the other hand, revolts are defeated through suppression of the people always an unpleasant task.
So coalition members need to receive enough benefits from their leader that they are willing to do hardly distasteful things to ensure that the existing system is maintained. If they do not get enough goodies under the current system, then they will not stop the people from rising up against the regime.
“Insecurity bores me.”
Confidence is key. Confidence is what allows you to fully appreciate your skills and faults and use them to your advantage. No one wants to surround themselves with people immersed in self-doubt.
It comes down to optimism and pessimism. Do you want to be friends with the person who is consistently positive or the person who constantly seeks your validation of his or her worth?
Build a network that works for you.
Underwood understands well the playing field on which he games, and he heavily invests his time in surrounding himself with the people who can help him, even if at personal cost. More importantly, he doesn’t waste time with and often removes people who are not useful or can ultimately hold him back from his goals. (Of course, I am not advocating that you use his methods to “remove” them.)
Oil and Human Rights
The upshot is that the resource curse can be lifted. If aid organizations want to help the peoples of oil rich nations, then the logic of our survival based arguments suggests they would achieve more by spending their donations and lobbying the governments in the developed world, to increase the tax on petroleum, then by providing assistance overseas.
By raising the price of oil and gas such taxes would reduce worldwide demand for oil. This in turn would reduce oil revenues and make leaders more reliant on Taxation. Effective taxation requires that the people are motivated to work, but people cannot produce as effectively. If they are forbidden such freedoms has freedom to assemble with their fellow workers and free speech, with which to think about, among other things, how to make the workplace perform more effectively and how to make government regulations, less of a burden on the workers.
Silence is golden
On June 12 1966, he announced that there would be a Politburo meeting a week later, and that the purpose of the meeting was to discuss three major issues. One changes in the cabinet to changes in the Army Command three the liquidation of the military opposition. He then left Algiers for RM. This announcement was tantamount to telling his essential supporters that he was getting rid of some of them. Since he did not say who wants to go, he created a common interest among the whole group and getting rid of Ahmed benBella’s foolish announcement was just the opening that who are egomania needed.
No one was certain who would be replaced, or given Ben Bella’s sweeping statement. clearly, many would be in this unforced error, then Bella threw away his incumbency advantage and lefthis general a week to organize a plot of his own. Then Bella returned to Algiers the day before the scheduled meeting, and he was awakened at gunpoint by his friend, Colonel Tahar. Heimmediately grasp is opportunity, and the essential supporters defected silence. Ben learned far too late. Truly as golden. There is never a point in showing your hand before you have to. That is just a way to ensure giving the game away.
1.) There is no loyalty
In the end, there isno loyalty. Sure,somepeople do try to be loyal. But the system tends to punish (not reward) them, making them pay aprice. Just ask Peter Russo where his loyalty got him (discarded, if you’ll excuse the pun). The amount oftell-all books,leaks, andbackstabbing(often done by people looking you in the eye with a smile) are proof enough of this. In the absence of a significant sense of loyalty, there are only three things: utility/usefulness, opportunity, and timing. Loyalty is like the stock market: it is bought and paid for by your utility when you are rising or hot, and can swing up or down based on the mood of the market and your performance. Where there are other opportunities, people are already shopping for other options, and the “loyalty” lasts until the timing for that opportunity seems right. That does not mean, just like in the market, that patience can’t and doesn’t pay off, but that should not be mistaken for any sense of loyalty. There are, predominantly, just the early jumpers and those who know when to time their desertion so that it looks better and protects their image. But make no mistake, before someone is abandoned, the act has been long in the works, and even when someone has not been abandoned, there has been exploration of other opportunities behind the scenes.
This is nothing new in politics. Von Clausewitz, the famous Prussian military philosopher and strategist, is best known forhis quipthat “War is the continuation of policy [or politics] by other means.” And, going backalmost two-and-a-half thousand years, the Greek historian Thucydideswroteinhis historyof the Peloponnesian War that “right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” whichTom Ricks says“may be the most brutal line I’ve ever read.”
Segment Your Forces:The Controlled-Chaos Strategy
- Speed and adaptability are critical elements in war, and come from flexible organization.
- Decentralize your army, segment into teams, and let go a little to gain mobility.
- Give your different corps clear missions that fit your strategic goals, then let them accomplish them as they see fit.
Keys to Warfare
- The essence of strategy is not to carry out a brilliant plan that proceeds in steps; it is to put yourself in situations where you have more options than the enemy does.
- The key to the mission command is an overall group philosophy. This can be built around the cause you are fighting for or a belief in the evil of the enemy you face. It can also include the style of warfare–defensive, mobile, ruthlessly aggressive–that best suits it. You must bring the group together around this belief. Then, through training and creative exercises, you must deepen its hold on them, infuse it into their blood.
4.) Politicians generally don’t put their families first
Whether it’s for the causes they believe in or their own careers/power, politicians generally aren’t putting their families first, or they wouldn’t be politicians. If more people would just realize this, accept it, and move on, we stop wasting endless hours examining the family. Leave them out of it (even if they do stupid things). I mean, seriously, if you’re going to vote for a public policy professional based on what his kid, brother, or wife say/do, maybe you shouldn’t vote. Or engage in politics. Ever. Because do we really elect politicians to put their families first, or ours? Frank and Claire, like many power political couples throughout history, are a marriage of convenience. That does not mean here is not a form of love or genuine affection. And who are we to judge a marriage? Judge the political performance, and the rest is none of our business.
Create a Threatening Presence: Deterrence Strategies
- The best way to fight off aggressors is to keep them from attacking you in the first place. To accomplish this you must create the impression of being more powerful than you are. Build up a reputation: You’re a little crazy. Fighting you is not worth it. You take your enemies with you when you lose.
- This art of deterrence rests on three basic facts about war and human nature: First, people are more likely to attack you if they see you as weak or vulnerable. Second, they cannot know for sure that you’re weak; they depend on the signs you give out, through your behavior both present and past. Third, they are after easy victories, quick and bloodless. That is why they prey on the vulnerable and weak.
- The following are five basic methods of deterrence and reverse intimidation. You can use them all in offensive warfare, but they are particularly effective in defence:
Surprise with a bold maneuver.
- This will have two positive effects: First, they will tend to think your move is backed up by something real–they will not imagine you could be foolish enough to do something audacious just for effect. Second, they will start to see strengths and threats in you that they had not imagined.
Reverse the threat.
- Turn the tables with a sudden move designed to scare them. Threaten something they value. You needn’t go too far, just inflict a little pain to indicate you are capable of worse.
Seem unpredictable and irrational.
- In this instance you do something suggesting a slightly suicidal streak, as if you felt you had nothing to lose. You show that you are ready to take your enemies down with you, destroying their reputations in the process. (This is particularly effective with people who have a lot to lose themselves–powerful people with sterling reputations.)
Play on people’s natural paranoia.
- Instead of threatening your opponents openly, you take action that is indirect and designed to make them think. This might mean using a go-between to send them a message–to tell some disturbing story about what you are capable of. Or maybe you “inadvertently” let them spy on you, only to hear something that should give them cause for concern.
Establish a frightening reputation.
- This reputation can be for any number of things: being difficult, stubborn, violent, ruthlessly efficient. Build up that image over the years and people will back off from you, treating you with respect and a little fear.
The Familiarity Principle
We watch Frank’s climb to power by how close he is to the President during press events. At first, he’s barely in the shot, then he’s only one or two people removed from the President, and then he is standing right behind him during the State of the Union.
In his words…
FRANK:Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location. The closer you are to the source, the higher your property value.
A related influential lesson is thefamiliarity principle. This basically states that people tend to build a preference for things simply because they have been exposed to them often enough. This is also called the mere-exposure effect. It’s the reason why companies spend so much in advertising and product placement. They want you to become familiar with their brand so that you develop a preference towards it.
There is personal application for this principle as well. If you want to influence someone, plan out how they can regularly be exposed to you. Attend events that they will be at, communicate periodically, and include video conversations in your plan because you want them to see and hear you. Video is much more influential than email.
Know How to End Things:The Exit Strategy
- You are judged in this world by how well you bring things to an end. A messy or incomplete conclusion can reverberate for years to come, ruining your reputation in the process. The art of ending things well is knowing when to stop, never going so far that you exhaust yourself or create bitter enemies that embroil you in conflict in the future. It also entails ending on the right note, with energy and flair. It is not a question of simply winning the war but the way you win it, the way your victory sets you up for the next round. The height of strategic wisdom is to avoid all conflicts and entanglements from which there are no realistic exits.
- The worst way to end anything–a war, a conflict, a relationship–is slowly and painfully. The costs of such an ending run deep: loss of self-confidence, unconscious avoidance of conflict the next time around, the bitterness and animosity left breeding–it is all an absurd waste of time. Before entering any action, you must calculate in precise terms your exit strategy. How exactly will the engagement end, and where it will leave you?
- And if you do find you have made this mistake, you have only two rational solutions: either end the conflict as quickly as you can, with a strong, violent blow aimed to win, accepting the costs and knowing they are better than a slow and painful death, or cut your losses and quit without delay.
Keys to Warfare
- Endings in purely social relationships demand a sense of the culminating point as much as those in war.
- Overstaying your welcome, boring people with your presence, is the deepest failing: you should leave them wanting more of you, not less. You can accomplish this by bringing the conversation or encounter to an end a moment before the other side expects it. Leave too soon and you may seem timid or rude, but do your departure right, at the peak of enjoyment and liveliness (the culminating point), and you create a devastatingly positive afterglow.
- Since defeat is inevitable in life, you must master the art of losing well and strategically. First, think of your own mental outlook, how you absorb defeat psychologically. See it as a temporary setback, something to wake you up and teach you a lesson, and even as you lose, you end on a high note and with an edge: you are mentally prepared to go on the offensive in the next round.
- Second, you must see any defeat as a way to demonstrate something positive about yourself and your character to other people. This means standing tall, not showing signs of bitterness or becoming defensive.
- Third, if you see that defeat is inevitable, it is often best to go down swinging. That way you end on a high note even as you lose. This helps to rally the troops, giving them hope for the future.
- Planting the seeds of future victory in present defeat is strategic brilliance of the highest order.
Always think in terms of Chess
The first key question for a leader to ask when carrying out a course of action is what does this change. Let’s take a few examples to make this clear, say for example a leader chooses to allocate a portion of the annual budget towards hiring a new member of staff, this decision should not be seen in isolation, but rather as part of a wider sequence of events, let’s explore some possible answers to the question of what does this change in relation to the new hire first hiring a new member of staff incurs costs, both in terms of time and resources, the money that has been expended on the process of the new hire, which is money that can’t be spent on anything else.
This is known as opportunity cost, this change in terms of a lessening of financial resources, must be evaluated, for example, could the money be spent better elsewhere. Will the reduced budget mean there is not enough money available to cover something else in the future. This is one of the first aspects of change that a leader must think about. Second, the new hire will require members of the organization to devote their time and effort towards the hiring process, will this mean that they’re unable to carry out some other type of duty. Will there be a shortfall in productivity.
As a result of this aspect of change is vital for a leader to have a comprehensive plan in place for the course of action they’re carrying out rather than simply carrying it out haphazardly. Third, there’s likely to be a human or staff consequences as a result of the new hire will other members of the organization react well, will they feel that their own jobs are under threat. It is important to consider the aspects of a change which are less easy to quantify, such as the human cultural or psychological consequences of any given decision. It is not enough for a leader to think only in terms of what does this change as Machiavelli states in the prince, what matters is not so much a thing itself, but how that thing appears. It is therefore vital to think in terms of not only the actual change itself, but also how the change will be perceived by other interested parties, and how the change will impact them when this is known the leader can then determine how they wish the change to be perceived aka what type of spin they wish to put on things, the above step of considering how a change will be perceived is absolutely vital, it is not enough to know only what will take place, a leader must also anticipate and take proactive measures to manage the perception of and impact as a result of any decision the leader makes neglecting this step is almost willfully surrendering control and taking a lazy approach to implementing decisions rationality is victory naivete is suicide.
Democracies aren’t angels
Democrats aren’t angels. As we all know, the victor writes history leaders should therefore never refrain from cheating if they can get away with it. Democrats may have to put up with real and meaningful elections in order to stay in power, but it shouldn’t be shocking to see that whenever they can. They’ll happily take a page out of Lenin’s book. There’s no election better than a rigged one, so long as you’re the one rigging it. The list of tried and trusted means of cheating as long, just as quickly as electoral rules are created to outlaw corrupt practices, politicians find other means.
For instance, leaders can restrict who is eligible and registered to vote and who is not. In Malaysia, under a system known as Operation icy immigration is controlled, so as to create demographics favorable to the incumbent party. New York City’s infamous Democratic Party machine Tammany Hall acquired its Irish flavor by meeting and recruiting immigrants as they left the boat, promising citizenship and jobs for their vote. When leaders can’t restrict who is eligible to vote, or else are unable to buy enough votes, they can use intimidation and violence to restrict access to polling places.
Maneuver Them Into Weakness: The Ripening-for-the-Sickle Strategy
- No matter how strong you are, fighting endless battles with people is exhausting, costly, and unimaginative. Wise strategists generally prefer the art of maneuver: before the battle even begins, they find ways to put their opponents in positions of such weakness that victory is easy and quick. Bait enemies into taking positions that may seem alluring but are actually traps and blind alleys. If their position is strong, get them to abandon it by leading them on a wild-goose chase. Create dilemmas: devise maneuvers that give them a choice of ways to respond–all of them bad. Channel chaos and disorder in their direction. Confused, frustrated, and angry opponents are like ripe fruit on the bough: the slightest breeze will make them fall.
Maneuver Warfare
- In a society full of attrition fighters, you will gain an instant advantage by converting to maneuver. Your thought process will become more fluid, more on the side of life, and you will be able to thrive off the rigid, battle-obsessed tendencies of the people around you.
- The following are the four main principles of maneuver warfare:
Craft a plan with branches.
- Maneuver warfare depends on planning, and the plan has to be right. Too rigid and you leave yourself no room to adjust to the inevitable chaos and friction of war; too loose and unforeseen events will confuse and overwhelm you. The perfect plan stems from a detailed analysis of the situation, which allows you to decide on the best direction to follow or the perfect position to occupy and suggests several effective options (branches) to take, depending on what the enemy throws at you.
Give yourself room to maneuver.
- You cannot be mobile, you cannot maneuver freely, if you put yourself in cramped spaces or tie yourself down to positions that do not allow you to move. Consider the ability to move and keeping open more options than your enemy has as more important than holding territories or possessions. You want open space, not dead positions. This means not burdening yourself with commitments that will limit your options.
Give your enemy dilemmas, not problems.
- Most of your opponents are likely to be clever and resourceful; if your maneuvers simply present them with a problem, they will inevitably solve it. But a dilemma is different: whatever they do, however they respond–retreat, advance, stay still–they are still in trouble. Make every option bad: if you maneuver quickly to a point, for instance, you can force your enemies either to fight before they are ready or to retreat. Try constantly to put them in positions that seem alluring but are traps.
Create maximum disorder.
- Your enemy depends on being able to read you, to get some sense of your intentions. The goal of your maneuvers should be to make that impossible, to send the enemy on a wild-goose chase for meaningless information, to create ambiguity as to which way you are going to jump.
- If you meet the dynamic situations of life with plans that are rigid, if you think of only holding static positions, if you rely on technology to control any friction that comes your way, you are doomed: events will change faster than you can adjust to them, and chaos will enter your system.
- Use this strategy in the battles of daily life, letting people commit themselves to a position you can turn into a dead end. Never say you are strong, show you are, by making a contrast between yourself and your inconsistent or moderate opponents.
- The greatest power you can have in any conflict is the ability to confuse your opponent about your intentions.
- The goal of maneuver is to give you easy victories, which you do by luring opponents into leaving their fortified positions of strength for unfamiliar terrain where they must fight off balance
Voters
Although we could fill the whole book with the tricks parties used to monitor vote choices. The reality is that today votes are likely to be anonymous, at least in real democracies bribing voters works far better at the block level. Suppose, there are just three villages and suppose a party call it party a negotiates with senior community figures in the villages and makes the following offer. If party a wins. It will build a new hospital or road or pick up the trash.Send police patrols plow the snow and so on. In the most supportive of the three villages. Once a village elder declares for a party a voters in that village can do little better than support party a, even if they don’t like it.
The reality is that there are so many voters that the chance that any individuals vote matters is inconsequential yet voters are much more influential about where the hospital gets built, or whose streets get swept than they are about who wins the election to see why, consider the case where two or three of the village elders have been clear in favor of party a, and most voters in these villages, go along with them. Consider the incentives of an individual voter since at least two of the three villages have declared for party a, an alternative party is unlikely to win.
Aid volunteering.
Volunteers undermine the economy by working in subsistence economies for free while workers arent paid
Taxation in autocracies
Resource extraction and borrowing are the best ways of acquiring funds for enriching a coalition. discussions that portray taxation differently, are either window dressing to make the process seem more palatable or making arguments based on how people would like the world to work. Leaders tax because they need to spend on their coalition successful leaders, raising as much revenue as they can. The limits of taxation are one, the willingness of people to work as they are taxed to what the coalition is willing to bear and three, the cost of collecting taxes.
Having filled government coffers leaders spend resources in three ways. First, they provide public goods that is policies that benefit or Second, they deliver private rewards to their coalition members, this mix of private and public benefits differs across political systems, and it’s worth noting that any resources left over after paying off the coalition are discretionary leaders therefore have a third choice to make about spending money. They could spend discretionary money, promoting their pet projects. Alternatively, and all too commonly as we shall see. They can add them in a rainy day fund.
Know your own weaknesses
Along the same lines, you can only assure prospects that you’re the superior choice if you intimately understand your own shortcomings. If you don’t, your competitors will uncover them first.
Make friends in high places. But start at the bottom.
Frank’s a master at getting access to decision makers. How does he do it? He works his way up the food chain and offers his time, advice, and services generously. Then, when it comes time to ask the decision maker for the sale, he has a league of lower-level supporters (often related or close to the decision-maker) singing his praises and supporting his agenda. The analogy to sales here is quite obvious, but I’ll spell it out—no prospect is too unimportant or a waste of your time. It’s only a matter of figuring out how helping a less qualified prospect can get you in touch with a more qualified prospect.
Weinberger V Sun Tzu II
Weinberger doctrine does not emphasize swift victory, but rather a willingness to spend, however much is needed to achieve victory point made even more emphatically in the Powell doctrine Weinberger and Powell argue that the United States should not get involved in any war in which it is not prepared to commit enough resources to when they and Madeleine Albright to argue for being very cautious about risking war.
Once a decision is made to take that risk then as Weinberger and Powell recognize the United States must be prepared to raise a larger army and to spend more treasure. if necessitated by developments on the ground war should only be fought with confidence that victory will follow. And that victory serves the interests of the American people.
Sun Tzu emphasizes the benefits of spoils to motivate combatants. When you capture spoils from the enemy. They must be used as rewards, so that all human may have a keen desire to fight each on his own account Weinberger emphasizes the public good of protecting vital national interests. For Sun Tzu, the interest of soldiers have in the political objectives behind a fight, or they’re concerned for the common good, is of no consequence in determining their motivation to wage war. That is why he emphasizes that soldiers fight each on his own account.Sun Tzu’s attentiveness to private rewards and Weinberger his concentration on the public good at protecting the national interest, however, that may be understood, represent the great divide between small coalition and large coalition regimes.
Our view of politics instructs us to anticipate that leaders who depend on lots of essential backers only fight when they believe victory is nearly certain.Otherwise theylook for ways to resolve their international differences peacefully leaders who rely only on a few essential supporters incontrast, are prepared to fight, even whenthe odds of winning are not particularly good Democratic leaders try hard to win. If the going gets tough autocrats make a good initial effort. And if that proves wanting they quit.
“Money is the Mc-mansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries.”
This isn’t to say that being rich and being powerful are mutually exclusive. However, those who aspire to craft an enduring legacy, move mountains with their words and accrue respect and admiration from the masses, must pursue power above all else.
Without influence, your ability to overcome obstacles in your path is compromised.
Getting and Spending.
At last, a new ruler has shaken up the coalition that first brought him to power, and he has the right supporters in place, money is coming in thanks to the taxes being levied. Now comes the real task of governing allocating money to keep the coalition happy, but not too happy and providing just enough to keep the interchangeable from rising up and revolting, as we’ve seen in North Africa and the Middle East in the past few years. And as we saw in Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. This can be an awkward tightrope to traverse for any leader. The last few decades encourage us by showing that in time, many autocrats fall off that tightrope.
It is really hard to strike just the right balance between benefits for one’s coalition and a massive interchangeable. Any new incumbent who wants to be around for a long time, needs to fine tune the art of spending money. Of course you can err on the side of generosity to the coalition or two people, but only with any money that is left for his own discretionary use after taking care of the coalition’s need to have better not err on the side of shortchanging anyone who could mount a coup, or revolution shortchange the wrong people.
And any leader’s fate will confirm our abuse of William Wordsworth his famous line, getting in spending, we lay waste our powers. Let’s return to the essential question of all democracies, how to allocate resources, aimed at providing policies of benefit everyone in the society. These public goods come in a variety of different forms depending on the tastes of those in a position to demand such policies.
Influence the Influencer
In the first episode, Frank shares a poignant piece of influential advice.
FRANK:When it comes to the White House, you not only need the keys in your back pocket, you need the gatekeeper.(referring to the President’s Chief of Staff)
When you need to influence someone, you need to know who already influences that person. Whose opinion do they heed. Sometimes the best route to influencing your “mark” – the person you want to influence – is to actually build rapport with the person who already has influence over your “mark” and get them to do the convincing.
This comes up again later in the series when Frank says,
FRANK:The president is like a tree, bending which ever way the wind blows. And Raymond Tusk’s wind blows a little too strongly for my taste.
Frank knows that he has a strong opponent to either win over or remove from the equation. He is always aware of who holds sway over his “mark.”
Wienberger V Sun Tzu
Caspar Weinberger maintain that first in the United States should not commit forces to combat overseas, unless that particular engagement or occasion is deemed vital to our national interest or that of our allies.
Second, if we decide it is necessary to put combat troops into a given situation. We should do so wholeheartedly. And with the clear intention of winning. If we are unwilling to commit the forces or resources necessary to achieve our objectives. We should not commit at all.
Third, if we decide to commit forces to combat overseas. We should have clearly defined political and military objectives. And we should know precisely how our forces can accomplish those clearly defined objectives. And we should have and send the forces needed to do just that.
Fourth, the relationship between our objectives and the forces we have committed their size composition and disposition must be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary conditions and objectives, invariably change during the course of a conflict. When they do change, then so must our combat requirements.
Fifth, before the United States commits combat forces abroad. There must be some reasonable assurance, we will have the support of the American people and their elected representatives in Congress.
Finally, the commitment of US forces to combat shouldn’t be a last resort.Sun Tzu’s ideas can coarsely be summarized as follows.One in advantage and capabilities is not as important as quick action in war to the resources mobilized to fight should be sufficient for a short campaign that does not require reinforcement, or significant additional provisions from home. And three, the provision of private goods is essentialto motivate soldiers to fight.
Sun Tzu says that if the army initially raised proves insufficient. Or if new supplies are required more than once, then the commander’s lacks sufficient skill to carry the day. In that case, he advises that it is best to give up the fight, rather than risk exhausting the state’s treasure.
Envelop the Enemy:The Annihilation Strategy
- People will use any kind of gap in your defenses to attack you or revenge themselves on you. So offer no gaps. The secret is to envelop your opponents–create relentless pressure on them from all sides, dominate their attention, and close off their access to the outside world. Make your attacks unpredictable to create a vaporous feeling of vulnerability. Finally, as you sense their weakening resolve, crush their willpower by tightening the noose. The best encirclements are psychological–you have surrounded their minds.
Keys to Warfare
- There are many ways to envelop your opponents, but perhaps the simplest is to put whatever strength or advantage you naturally have to maximum use in a strategy of enclosure.
- To envelop your enemies, you must use whatever you have in abundance. If you have a large army, use it to create the appearance that your forces are everywhere, an encircling pressure.
- Remember: the power of envelopment is ultimately psychological. Making the other side feel vulnerable to attack on many sides is as good as enveloping them physically.
- Often, in fact, less is more here: too many blows will give you a shape, a personality–something for the other side to respond to and develop a strategy to combat. Instead seem vaporous. Make your maneuvers impossible to anticipate.
- The best encirclements are those that prey on the enemy’s preexisting, inherent vulnerabilities. Be attentive, then, to signs of arrogance, rashness, or other psychological weakness.
- The impetuous, violent, and arrogant are particularly easy to lure into the traps of envelopment strategies: play weak or dumb and they will charge ahead without stopping to think where they’re going.
Reversal
- The danger of envelopment is that unless it is completely successful, it may leave you in a vulnerable position.
Solving Oppression in poorest countries
People who live with freedom are rarely impoverished and oppressed, give people the right to say what they want to write what they want. And to gather to share ideas about what they want and you are bound to be looking at people whose persons and property are secure, and whose lives are content, you are looking at people free to become rich and free to lose their shirts in trying, you are looking at people who are not only materially well off, but spiritually and physically too. Sure. Places like Singapore and parts of China prove that it is possible to have a good material life with limited freedom.
Yet the vast majority of the evidence suggests that these are exceptions and not the rule, economic success can postpone the democratic moment. but it ultimately cannot replace it, a country’s relative share of freedom is ultimately decided by its leaders, behind the world of misery and oppression, like governments run by small cliques of essential, who are loyal to leaders who can make them rich behind the world of freedom and prosperity by governments that depend on the backing of a substantial coalition of ordinary people, drawn from a large pool of influentials who are in turn, drawn from a large pool of interchangeable.
It is not difficult to draw a line from the poverty and oppression of the world, to the corrupt hunters and brutal dictators who scam from their country’s revenues to stay in power politics and political institutions to find the bounds of the people’s lives. By now it should be clear that there is a natural order governing politics. And it comes with an ironclad set of rules that cannot be altered.
But that does not mean that we cannot find better paths to work within the laws of politics, we’ve suggested some ways to work within the rules to produce better outcomes. At the end of the day, the solutions we’ve suggested will not be applied perfectly, there are good reasons for that. And trenched ways of thinking, make altering our approach to problems difficult. Many will conclude that it is cruel and insensitive to cut way back on foreign aid. They will tell us that all the money spent on aid is worth it, it just one child has helped. They will forget to ask, how many children are condemned to die of neglect because in the process of helping a few aid prompts up leaders who look after the people only after they have looked after themselves and their essential backers, if at all.
But before we shift the blameonto our flawed Democratic leaders for their failures to make the world a better place. We need to remember why it is that they enact the policies that they do. The sworn duty of Democratic leaders, is to do precisely what we, the people want.
Seizing power from the bankrupt
That’s one thing that is always expedient is remaining solvent. If a ruler has run out of money with which to pay supporters, it becomes far easier for someone else to make coalition members and attractive offer financial crises are an opportune time to strike the Russian Revolution is often portrayed through the prism of Marxist ideology in class warfare. The reality might be much simpler currencies revolutionaries were able to storm the Winter Palace in February 1917 because the army did not stop them. And the army did not bother to stop them because the Tsar did not pay them enough. The Tsar could not pay them enough because he foolishly cut the income from one of his major sources of revenue, the vodka tax.
At the same time that he fought World War One Tsar Nicholas confused what might seem like good public policy with bad political decision making. He had the silly idea that a sober army would prove more effective than an army that was falling over drunk. Nicolas it seems thought that a ban on vodka would improve the performance of Russia’s troops in World War One. He missed the obvious downsides however vodka was vastly popular with the general populace and most assuredly with the troops, so popular and widely consumed was vodka, that it sell provided about a third of the government’s revenue, with vodka banned his revenue diminished sharply.
His expenses in contrast, kept on rising, due to the costs of the war. Soon Nicholas was no longer able to buy loyalty. As a result, his army refused to stop strikers and protesters Alexander kolinsky, formed Russia’s shortly democratic government. After toppling the Czar’s regime. But he couldn’t hang on to power for alone, his mistake was operating a democratic government, which necessitated a large coalition and implementing and unpopular policy, continuing the Czar’s war, thereby alienating his coalition right from the start. Lenin and the Bolsheviks made no such mistakes.
The Tsar fell once there was no one to start the revolution, Louie the 16th suffered much the same fate and the French Revolution, successful leaders must learn the lesson of these examples, and put raising revenue and paying supporters above all else, consider Robert Mugabe success and staying on as Zimbabwe’s president, the economy has collapsed in Zimbabwe, thanks to my god these terrible policies starvation is common and epidemics of cholera regularly sweep the country.
Mugabe succeeds because he understands that it does not matter what happens to the people, provided that he makes sure to pay the army. And despite regular media speculation, so far he has always managed to do so, and to keep himself in office well into his 80s.
Use Their Words, Not Yours
Once again Frank takes a blow when he finds out that the President wants to nominate someone else, Raymond Tusk, instead of Frank.
And once again, Frank is faced with the need to suspend his ego so that he can serve is bigger mission.
When the President asks Frank what he thinks about the idea, Frank responds,
FRANK:I think that Raymond Tusk is an exciting, bold idea.
Clearly, Frank doesn’t share what he actually thinks. He did something even smarter.
Frank chose those words – “exciting” and “bold” – specifically because he was told prior to the meeting that that’s how the President felt about the decision. Frank used the President’s words – instead of his own – which made the President feel good and validated.
Be aware of the specific words your “mark” uses to describe a person, situation, thing, or their feelings. When the opportunity presents itself, use those keywords in conversation and you’ll get the same effect that Frank did. They will feel heard. They will feel validated. They will feel like you “get” them.
War carrot and stick
Foreign aid buys policy concessions, war enforces them
Fixing The Electoral College
Electoral College. Here we have an institution, whose founders original intent is pretty clear. They wanted to ensure that the slave states would join the United States. And that meant erecting constitutional provisions that would protect slavery.
Here’s a great example where original intent. Most assuredly should not guide modern day politics. Slavery has been outlawed for about 150 years. And yet, the electoral college persists, and the primary reason, even if rarely spoken out loud for its survival is that it allows politicians to construct a coalition of essential supporters that is substantially smaller than would be the case under direct election.
Today the electoral college is justified by its defenders on the principle that it protects the interests of the small states, since they are over represented in terms of electoral college votes. Indeed, that is exactly what it does. But what happens to the idea of one person, one vote. Apparently, a vote in Wyoming or Montana should by this argument. Count more toward choosing the president and vice president than a vote in California or New York. That’s a convenient argument, if you’re from Wyoming or Montana. The rules of the electoral college make it possible in a two candidate race for one candidate to win a majority of the popular vote, and the other candidate to be elected President of the United States. Indeed, judiciously placed votes in a multi candidate race, such as in the cases of john quincy adams and Abraham Lincoln can allow someone to become president, with a surprisingly small amount of support and the general electorate.
When the right combination of states rather than the most voters, and you can be president. This is just another mechanism to keep the winning coalition smaller than it could be, and thereby to empower politicians more than the people less. Just this mechanism helped distort American politics right up to, and contributed to precipitating, the Civil War, and it helps today to favor candidates popular in the right places, rather than across all the country,
Taxation is redistributing wealth
Democrats and Republicans, each use taxation, when they can to redistribute wealth from their opponents to their supporters. So democratic governments also have an appetite for taxation, but they cannot indulge that appetite, to the extent autocrats can since their numbers are small, an autocrat can easily compensate his essential backers for the tax burden that falls on them. This option is not available to a Democrat, because his number of supporters is so large, tax rates are therefore limited by the need to make coalition members better off than they can expect to be under alternative leadership on the campaign trail US president George HW Bush told the American people: “Read my lips no new taxes:, yet budget shortfalls left him scrambling for revenue.
The result was more taxes. In the wake of the first Gulf War just 18 months earlier Bush had approval ratings of over 90%, but a declining economy and his broken promise on taxes led to his ouster in the 1992 election, all leaders want to generate revenue with which to reward supporters democratic incumbents are constrained to keep taxes relatively low, a Democrat taxes above the good governance minimum, but he does not raise taxes to the autocrats revenue maximization point.
Incremental Change
The inherent problem with change is that Improving life for one group generally means making at least one other person worse off, and that other person is likely to be a leader, if change really will solve the people’s problems. If the individual harmed by change is the ruler, or the CEO, the same person who has to initiate the changes in the first place, then we can be confident that change is never going to happen. From the beginning, we said we would focus on whatisrather than what ought to be. Now we need to talk a bit about what ought to be. In doing so. We want to lay down the ground rules.
First among theseis that we should never let the quest for perfection, walk the way to lesser improvement. utopian dreams of a perfect world are just that utopian, pursuing the perfect world for everyone is a waste of time, and an excuse for not doing the hard work of making the world better for many. It is impossible to make the world great for everyone. Everyone doesn’t want the same thing. Think about what is good for interchangeable influentials and essentially, the three dimensions of political life
hardly ever Is it true that what is good for leadersand their essential backers is good for everyone else. If they all had the same once they wouldn’t be misery in the world.
So even as we are trying to change theworld for the better, we are tied to the dictates of political reality. A fix is not a fix unless it can actually be done or can be done must satisfy the needs of everyone required to implement change.
Wishful thinking is not a fix and a perfect solution is not our goal and should not be any well intentioned to person’s goal. Even minor improvements in governance. can result in significant improvements in the welfare of potentially millions of people or shareholders, shareholders and publicly traded corporations.
THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA
The concepts of dominant strategy and Nash equilibrium can be used to understand the prisoner’s dilemma, easily the most famous and the most famously frustrating example in all of game theory.
• Imagine two career criminals—call them Tony and Uncle Junior—are arrested in connection with a serious crime—say, armed robbery. There isn’t enough evidence to convict either of them of armed robbery, but there is enough evidence to convict both of something much less serious, such as parole violation. If both Tony and Uncle Junior keep their mouths shut, they’ll be convicted of parole violation and spend one year in prison. If, on the other hand, both confess to committing armed robbery, both will be convicted of armed robbery. But because they’ve spared the state the expense of a trial, the judge will take it easy on them and send both to prison for a relatively moderate five years.
• The game is most interesting when one player confesses and the other denies. Let’s say Tony denies any knowledge of the armed robbery, but Uncle Junior agrees to cooperate with the district attorney. Uncle Junior admits to being involved in the armed robbery, but he depicts Tony as the mastermind. In that case, Uncle Junior will be set free in exchange for his cooperation, while Tony will be sentenced to 20 years in prison.
What does game theory predict the prisoners will do if they’re
interrogated simultaneously but separately? Once again, this is a game with two players, each with two potential strategies. They can either confess or deny. Payoffs in this game are measured in terms of prison sentences, where a longer sentence is worse from the standpoint of an individual prisoner.
If Tony thinks Uncle Junior is going to confess, his best response is to confess, too: He’ll spend five years in prison if he confesses but 20 years if he denies. If Tony thinks Uncle Junior is going to deny, his best response is still to confess—now, he’ll spend just one year in prison if he denies, but he’ll get off completely free if he confesses.
- No matter what Uncle Junior is going to do, Tony is better off if he confesses. This is his dominant strategy. And because Uncle Junior’s payoffs look just like Tony’s, Uncle Junior’s dominant strategy is also to confess.
- In games where both players have a dominant strategy, finding the Nash equilibrium is easy. It’s simply where both players play their dominant strategy—that is, when both Tony and Uncle Junior confess to armed robbery.
• What makes the prisoner’s dilemma so frustratingly counterintuitive is that both players would obviously be better off if both played deny rather
than confess. In that case, they’d both go to prison for just one year rather than five. But we’re not likely to end up at that better outcome, because it’s always in each individual player’s best interest to confess.
GOLDMAN’S DILEMMA
A different version of the prisoner’s dilemma is Goldman’s dilemma, named for Robert Goldman, a doctor specializing in sports medicine. Between 1982 and 1995, he asked fighters, bodybuilders, and power lifters the following question:
If I had a magic drug that was so fantastic that you’d win every competition you would enter … for the next five years, but it had one minor drawback—it would kill you five years after you took it—would you still take the drug?
Goldman found that more than half said yes—the median athlete in this sample would die to win.
What does this mean for the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports? Suppose Hans and Franz are the world’s top bodybuilders. One of them will be this year’s Mr. Olympia, the top honor in professional bodybuilding. These two are so equally matched, there’s no predicting who will win.
This is a game with two players and two potential strategies: stay clean or dope. The players’ payoffs can be measured in terms of the probability of winning and the likelihood of suffering negative side effects from doping.
What happens if both Hans and Franz stay clean? Because they’re both equally matched, they both have a 50% chance of winning. But what if Hans dopes while Franz stays clean? Now Hans has a clear edge, virtually guaranteeing he’ll win the Mr. Olympia title. However, he’s also taking on the risks associated with performance-enhancing drugs.
Finally, what if both use performance-enhancing drugs? In that case, they remain equally matched. Both have a 50% chance of winning, but both open themselves up to negative side effects.
• In order for doping to be both players’ dominant strategy in this game, both have to believe
that increasing their chances of winning the Mr. Olympia title by 50% is worth risking their life.
That might sound farfetched, but Robert Goldman’s research shows the typical power athlete from his
practice is willing to die to win.
• If Hans thinks Franz will stay clean, and assuming he’s willing to die to win, his best
response is to dope, increasing his chances of winning from 50% to 100%. If he thinks Franz will
dope, his best response is still to dope, increasing his chances of winning from 0% to 50%.
• The same logic applies to Franz, so both have a dominant strategy to dope.** The Nash
equilibrium is for both to dope, in which case they are equally likely to win the Mr. Olympia
title—just as they would have been if both had stayed clean—but both also may suffer the
potentially deadly side effects from doping. This leaves both worse off than if they’d stayed
clean.
• The outcome of the prisoner’s dilemma game doesn’t always have to be so relentlessly
depressing. When the same two players play the game together again and again, it’s possible they’ll
learn to cooperate.
COO PERATION AND DEFECTION (Long term prisoners dilemma)
Imagine you and another player are playing a game where you each have to decide whether to cooperate or defect.* If you both choose to cooperate, you both earn $3. If you both choose to defect, you both earn $1. But if you cooperate while the other player defects, she earns $5 and you earn nothing. Likewise, if you defect while she cooperates, you earn$5 and she earns nothing.
• If you think the other player is going to cooperate, your best response is to defect. Defecting
earns you $5, while cooperating earns you just
$3. If you think the other player is going to defect, your best response is still to defect. Here,
defecting earns you $1, while cooperating earns you nothing.
• This means your dominant strategy in this game is to defect. It’s always your best response,
regardless of what you think the other player will do. By that same logic, defecting is the other
player’s dominant strategy as well.
• Just as with the prisoner’s dilemma and Goldman’s dilemma, the Nash equilibrium is for both
players to play their dominant strategy, even though the $1 payoffs at that Nash equilibrium are
clearly worse than the $3 payoffs you’d earn if you both cooperated.
REPEATED GAME
- This game is more interesting, but just as frustrating, if you play it twice. Imagine your opponent tells you that if you cooperate in the first of two rounds, she’ll reward you in the second round by cooperating, earning you both $3 per round.
- But there’s a serious problem here: Because you’re only playing two rounds, in the second round, you have a strong incentive to defect no matter what you did in the first round. Here, you start by thinking about what makes sense in the last round and then work your way back to the first round. This is called backward induction.
- In the second—and last—round, you both have an incentive to defect regardless of what happened in the first round. You can’t credibly promise to cooperate in the second round in exchange for the other player’s cooperation in the first. You could say that’s what you’d do, but it wouldn’t be wise for the other player to believe you, given what you both know about the incentives you face in the second round.
- Since the other player knows you’re likely to defect in the second round, she has no incentive to cooperate in the first round. Naturally, you respond by defecting in the second round, but she knew you were going to anyway.
- The outcome of the repeated game is the same outcome from the one-time game, but twice. From a theoretical standpoint, nothing would change if you played the game 20 times or even 200 times. In each case, both players have an incentive to defect in the last round.
Games of chicken
Payoffs in this game can be measured in utils*—a unit that economists use to measure satisfaction, especially when there is no other natural measure. The more satisfying an outcome is, the more utils you derive from that outcome.
• Imagine that at the very last second, you decide to keep driving straight, while your opponent simultaneously decides to swerve. You look tough, so you’ll have a payoff of 1 util. Your opponent looks weak, so he’ll have a payoff of −1 util. And the opposite is true if your opponent decides to keep driving while you decide to swerve.
• If you both swerve—assuming you don’t crash into each other in the process—it’s a draw. Neither of you looks tougher than the other, and neither looks weaker, so you’ll both earn a payoff of 0.
• If you both drive straight as fast as you can go, it’s fair to assume you’d both be horribly injured—perhaps even killed—in the crash. Figuring out the payoff in this situation requires a value judgment: Is it worse to suffer a horrible, life-threatening injury or to look weak?
• Opinions will vary, but for the sake of the game, let’s say suffering a life-threatening injury is worse than looking weak. Both you and your opponent will receive −10 utils in this situation.
- Imagine that at the very last second, you decide to keep driving straight, while your opponent simultaneously decides to swerve. You look tough, so you’ll have a payoff of 1 util. Your opponent looks weak, so he’ll have a payoff of −1 util. And the opposite is true if your opponent decides to keep driving while you decide to swerve.
- If you both swerve—assuming you don’t crash into each other in the process—it’s a draw. Neither of you looks tougher than the other, and neither looks weaker, so you’ll both earn a payoff of 0.
- If you both drive straight as fast as you can go, it’s fair to assume you’d both be horribly injured—perhaps even killed—in the crash. Figuring out the payoff in this situation requires a value judgment: Is it worse to suffer a horrible, life-threatening injury or to look weak?
- Opinions will vary, but for the sake of the game, let’s say suffering a life-threatening injury is worse than looking weak. Both you and your opponent will receive −10 utils in this situation.
Hawk and Dove
- A real-life application of the chicken game comes from biology. It’s based on a paper by John Maynard Smith and George Price titled “The Logic of Animal Conflict.” The authors use game theory and computer simulations to understand why animals fighting over mates usually only engage in limited war, meaning the conflict doesn’t lead to serious injuries.
- This is true even for animals that possess fearsome offensive weapons, such as fangs, horns, or antlers. For example, the authors point to male snakes that wrestle with one another but don’t use their fangs. This is a puzzle—a male willing to do whatever it takes to beat his rival would seem to have a major advantage in the competition for mates. Why, then, do we most often see limited war?
- We can capture the spirit of the authors’ results with a one-time game where each player has two strategies: hawk and dove.*** A hawk will always fight and won’t stop fighting until it’s either won or been gravely injured. A dove, on the other hand, makes an initial display of fighting but will always yield to a hawk and will always share with another dove, splitting the gain from winning.
• Payoffs in this game will account for the gains from winning, the cost of being seriously injured while losing a fight, and the cost associated with a dove yielding to a hawk. We can use the following numerical values: ʶ
V is the gain from winning, which will be 40.
ʶ C is the cost of losing, which will be −80.
ʶ Y is the cost of yielding, which will be 0.
- Imagine you’re one of the animals playing this game. If you and your opponent both play hawk, you’ll both fight until you’ve either won or been injured by your opponent. Assuming you’re equally matched, each of you has a 50% chance of winning and a 50% chance of losing. Since we can’t be sure what will happen, we need to calculate your expected payoff: the probability—or the fraction of time—some events occurs times the payoff a player receives if that event occurs.
- You and your opponent are equally matched, meaning that if the two of you were to play this game again and again, we’d expect you to win half of your encounters and lose the other half. So your expected payoff from any one encounter is the probability you win times your payoff if you win, plus the probability you lose times your payoff if you lose:
- Finally, if you both play dove, we assume you split the gain from winning. Both you and your opponent earn a payoff of 20 (half of 40).
- You can now use best‑response analysis to find this game’s pure‑strategy Nash equilibria. If you think your opponent will play hawk, your best response is to play dove. And if you think your opponent will play dove, your best response is to play hawk. The same is true from your opponent’s perspective.
- Like the original game of chicken, this game has two pure‑strategy Nash equilibria, with another mixed‑strategy Nash equilibrium lurking in the background. This shows that we don’t expect the population to be made up entirely of hawks or entirely of doves; instead, we expect there to be some mix of the two.
Coordination Games
- According to the technology website CNET, the next big advancement in how we charge our devices will be over-the-air wireless charging. But this new technology won’t take off until the industry settles on a single standard.
- Imagine a game with two players—Apple and Samsung—who must simultaneously choose one of the approved standards for over-the-air wireless charging—Powercast or WattUp—to incorporate into their next generation of phones. Their strategies, then, are the two charging standards they can choose between.
- In the simplest version of this game, we’ll assume the two charging stations have some minor differences but are equally good. All that matters from Apple and Samsung’s standpoint is whether they adopt the same standard or different ones. If they adopt the same standard, it will catch on quickly and people will be eager to buy new phones.
- But if Apple and Samsung adopt different wireless charging standards, companies like Toyota, Boeing, and Starbucks won’t be so eager to incorporate either technology into their cars, planes, and coffee shops, because it’s not so clear which of the standards will catch on. This gives the phone-buying public less of an incentive to buy new phones.
Solution
If both Apple and Samsung adopt the Powercast standard, each phone maker earns a relatively high payoff. Suppose each firm’s profits increase by $30 billion. The same is true if both Apple and Samsung choose theWattUp standard. But if one of the phone makers chooses Powercast and the other chooses WattUp, each phone maker earns a relatively low payoff of $10 billion.
- Apple and Samsung both have the best response of choosing whichever standard the other chooses. This earns each a payoff of $30 billion rather than the $10 billion each would receive if they chose different standards.
- Unlike in the prisoner’s dilemma, neither player in this game has a dominant strategy. There’s no one strategy that offers a better payoff no matter what the other player chooses.
- Like in the game of chicken, best-response analysis shows that this game has two pure-strategy Nash equilibria. But unlike in the game of chicken, these equilibria involve both players making the same choice, not the opposite choice.
This is called a game of pure coordination. It doesn’t matter which standard Apple and Samsung coordinate on, so long as they coordinate.
Zero Sum Game / Run or Pass
- Run or Pass, a game developed by Matt Rousu, is a dramatically simplified version of American football. It’s not necessary to have any knowledge of football beyond that gaining more yards is good for the offense and bad for the defense.
- Imagine that you are your team’s offensive coordinator, which means that you call the plays for your team’s offense, or the players who have the ball and try to move it down the field. Your opponent is the other team’s defensive coordinator, which means he calls the plays for his team’s defense, or the players who are trying to stop yours from moving the ball down the field.
- Because this is a simplified version of football, you will each choose between just two strategies: You have to choose whether your team will run or pass, and your opponent has to simultaneously decide whether his team will prepare to stop the run or stop the pass.
Your objective is to gain yards, and your opponent’s objective is to stop you from doing that. Both of your payoffs can therefore be measured in yards, where gaining yards is a good thing for you and an equally bad thing for your opponent.
- What happens if you decide your team should pass while your opponent simultaneously decides his team should prepare to stop the pass? You don’t do too well—you gain just two yards, and the other team gives up only two yards. This is because he correctly anticipated that your team was going to pass.
- But what happens if you decide your team should pass while he decides his team should prepare to stop the run? This time, you do much better: You gain seven yards, which means the other team gives up seven yards.
- If you decide to run the ball while your opponent prepares to stop the run, you gain just one yard. But if he prepares his team to stop the pass on a play when you’ve decided to run, you gain six yards.
- This is a constant-sum game, or a zero-sum game, because the payoffs in each cell of the payoff matrix add up to zero. This is also a game of pure conflict: Every yard you gain is a yard your opponent gives up. You can’t do well unless he does poorly.
- You can use best-response analysis to figure out what you should do given what you think your opponent is going to do. If he’s going to prepare to stop the pass, you’d gain two yards if you pass but six yards if you run, so your best response is to run. If he’s going to prepare to stop the run, you’d gain seven yards if you pass and only one if you run, so your best response is to pass.
- Whatever you think your opponent is going to prepare for, you want to do the opposite. And he wants to be ready to stop whatever he thinks you’re going to do.
- In every other game discussed so far, there was at least one pure-strategy Nash equilibrium. Here, for the first time, that’s not the case. That doesn’t mean there’s no equilibrium.* Instead, the Nash equilibrium in this game will involve mixed strategies. Both you and your opponent need to be unpredictable. You’ll also need to be deliberate about the way you randomize, or your opponent can take advantage of you.
- This example comes from Games of Strategy by Dixit, Skeath, and Reiley. Think of the lawmaking process as a sequential-move game with two players: Congress and the president. Congress has to decide which, if either, of two provisions to include in a bill they’ll send to the president. Assume Congress loves provision A and hates provision B, while the president loves B and hates A.
- Congress has four potential courses of action to choose from. It can pass a bill that includes only A, the provision it loves; a bill that includes only B, the provision it hates; a compromise bill that includes both A and B; or nothing.
- Congress moves first in this game, deciding whether to pass a bill and, if so, whether that bill should include provision A, provision B, or both. If Congress passes the bill, the president moves second, deciding whether to sign the bill into law or veto it.
- The sequential nature of this game can be captured using a game tree, which has branches representing each of the player’s potential decisions.
- The initial decision node* represents Congress. It has four branches depicting Congress’s four potential choices: pass A, pass B, pass a combination of A and B, or do nothing.
- If Congress passes nothing, the game ends at a terminal node,** where both Congress and the president earn a payoff of 2. If Congress actually passes one of the bills, the president decides whether to sign it or veto it. Whatever he decides, the game ends with a terminal node.
- For example, if Congress passes a bill including only provision A and the president signs it, Congress earns a payoff of 4—the best possible payoff from its standpoint—and the president earns a payoff of 1—the worse possible payoff from his standpoint.
- If the president vetoes that bill instead, and Congress doesn’t have the votes to override the veto, nothing will get signed into law. Both Congress and the president earn a payoff of 2.
EQUILIBRIUM PATH OF PLAY
• The game’s equilibrium is described in terms of strategies, not payoffs. In sequential-move games like this one, a player’s strategy tells you what that player would do at every decision node she might conceivably find herself at. You should think of a strategy as a comprehensive set of instructions detailing what a player would do in any possible state of the world.
- In this game, Congress only has one decision node—the initial decision node—so it has only four potential strategies: pass A, pass B, pass A and B, or do nothing.
- But the president’s strategy doesn’t just tell us what he’ll do when Congress passes the bill including both A and B. It also tells us what he’ll do if Congress passes only A and if it passes only B.
- Since this game is solved using backward induction, you can’t know what Congress will do at the initial decision node until you determine what the president will do at each of his three decision nodes.
- If the president were playing a different strategy—for example, signing every bill that comes across his desk—Congress would behave differently. In this case, it would pass a bill containing only A, its favorite provision.
- With all of this in mind, the equilibrium strategies for this game are for Congress to pass the combination of A and B and the president to veto A, sign B, and sign the combination of A and B.
