Do you want to rule?
Do you see the problems in your country and know how to fix them?
If only you had the power to do so.
Well, you've come to the right place.
But before we begin this lesson in political power
ask yourself:
why don't rulers see as clearly as you?
Instead acting in such
selfish, self-destructive, short-sighted ways.
Are they stupid
these most powerful people in the world?
Or
is it something else?
The throne looks omnipotent from afar
but it is not as it seems.
Take the throne to act
and the throne acts upon you.
Accept that or turn back now before we discuss
The Rules for Rulers.
*somber music*
No matter how bright the rays of any sun king:
No man rules alone.
A king can't build roads alone
can't enforce laws alone
can't defend the nation or himself, alone.
The power of a king is not to act but to get
others to act on his behalf
using the treasure in his vaults.
A king needs an army, and someone to run it.
Treasure and someone to collect it.
Law and someone to enforce it.
The individuals needed to make the necessary things happen are the
king's keys to power.
All the changes you wish to make
are but thoughts in your head
if the keys will not follow your commands.
In a dictatorship, where might makes right
the number of keys to power is small
perhaps only a dozen generals
bureaucrats
and regional leaders.
Sway them to your side and the power to rule is yours
but never forget:
Displease them...
and they will replace you.
Now all countries lie on a spectrum
from those where the ruler needs few key supporters
to those where the ruler needs many.
This foundation of power is why countries are different.
Yet many keys or few
the rules are the same:
First:
Get the key supporters on your side.
With them, you have the power to act
you have everything.
Without them
you have nothing.
Now in order to keep those keys to power, you must
Second:
Control the treasure.
You must make sure your treasure is raised and distributed to you
for all your hard work
and to the keys needed to keep your position.
This is your true work as a ruler:
figuring out how best to raise and distribute resources
so as not to topple the house of cards
upon which your throne sits.
Now you
aspiring benevolent dictator
may want to help your citizens
but your control of the treasure is what attracts rivals
so you must keep those keys loyal.
But there is only so much treasure in your vaults
so much wealth your kingdom produces.
So beware:
Every bit of treasure spent on citizens
is treasure not spent on loyalty.
Thus, doing the right thing
spending the wealth of the nation on the citizens of the nation
hands a tool of power acquisition to your rivals.
Treasure poured into
roads, and universities, and hospitals
is treasure a rival can promise to key supporters
if only they switch sides.
Benevolent dictators CAN spend THEIR take on the citizens
but the keys must get their rewards
for EVEN IF you have gathered the most loyal, angelic supporters
they have the same problem as you
just one level down.
Being a key to power is a position of power.
They too must watch out for rivals from below or above
thus the treasure they get must also be spent to maintain their position.
The loyal and dim may stay by your side no matter what.
But smart key supporters, will always watch the balance of power
ready to change allegiance if you look to be the loser
in a shifting web of alliances.
In countries where the keys are few
the rewards are great.
And when violence rules
the most ruthless are attracted
and angels that build good works will lose
to devils that don't.
So buy all the loyalty you can
because loyalty
in dictatorial organizations of all kinds
is everything.
For the ruler, anyway.
Thus, the dictatorship exposed:
A king who needs his court
to raise the treasure
to keep the court loyal
and keep raising the treasure.
This is the self-sustaining core of power.
All
outside
is secondary.
Now a king with many key supporters has real problems:
not just their expense
but also their competing needs and rivalries are difficult to balance.
the more complicated the social and financial web between them all
the more able a rival is to sway a critical mass.
The more key supporters a ruler has on average
the shorter their reign.
Which brings us to the third rule for rulers:
Minimize Key Supporters
If a key in your court becomes unnecessary
his skills no longer required
you MUST kick him out.
After a successful coup
the new dictator will purge some of those who helped him come to power
while working with the underlings of the previous dictator
which from the outside seems a terrible idea.
Why abandon your fellow revolutionaries?
Are the old dictator's supporters not a danger?
But the keys necessary to gain power
are not the same
as those needed to keep it.
Having someone on the payroll who was vital in the past
but useless now is the same as
spending money on the citizens:
Treasure
wasted
on
the irrelevant.
And by definition, a dictator that pulls off a coup
has promised greater treasure
to those switching sides.
The size of the vault has not changed
so the treasure must be split among fewer.
A dictator that sways the right keys
takes control of the treasure
cuts unnecessary spending
kills unnecessary keys
will have a long and successful career.
Seeing the structure unveiled
you might be excited to get started
and control a country to the benefit of you and your cronies
or you might be exhausted
wishing to do good but seeing the structural difficulties
now turn to democracy for salvation.
So let us discuss
Rulers as Representatives.
You again might have grand dreams of the utopia you wish to build.
But
No man rules alone.
And never more so than in democracy.
Presidents and Prime ministers
must negotiate with their
senates and parliaments and vice versa.
And they all have their own key supporters to manage.
In a well-designed democracy
power is fractured among many
and is taken not with force
but with words.
Meaning you must get thousands or millions of citizens to
if not like you on election day
at least like you better than the alternative.
With so many voters and such fractured power
it's impossible to
as a dictator would
follow these rules and buy loyalty.
Or is it?
Of course not.
Don't think of citizens as individuals with their individual desires
but instead as divided into blocs:
the elderly
or homeowners
or business owners
or the poor.
Blocs you can reward as a group.
Democracies have wildly complicated tax codes and laws
not as accident but as reward for the
blocs that get and keep the ruling representatives in power:
Farming subsidies, for example
have nothing to do with the food a nation needs
but entirely with how key the vote of the farming bloc is.
Countries where farmers' votes don't swing elections
don't have farming subsidies.
If a bloc doesn't vote
such as younger citizens
then no need to divert rewards their way.
Even if large in number
they are irrelevant to gaining power.
Which is good news for you:
one less bloc to sway
and the treasure you give to your key blocs has to come from somewhere.
If you want long years in office
rule three is your friend in a democracy
just as much as a dictatorship.
You can't eliminate those who don't vote for you
but there is still much you can do.
Once in power
make it easier for your key blocs to vote
and harder for others.
Establish voting systems that reduce the number of blocs you need to win
the more rivals you get
very handy indeed.
Draw election borders to predetermine the results for you or your cronies
and have party pre-elections with Byzantine rules
to determine who blocs even CAN vote for.
Mix and match the above for even better power perpetuation.
When approval ratings couldn't be lower
yet re-election rates couldn't be higher
you'll know you've succeeded.
Now, enough with thinking about the citizens.
Even in a democracy
there still are very influential individual key supporters
you need on your side
because their money
or influence
or favors
keeps you in power.
While you can't just promise to give them treasure directly...
as a dictator would
...you can create loopholes for their investments
pass laws that they've written
or print get out of jail free cards for their actions.
Not a wheelbarrow of gold to the door
but contracts for their business.
You as ruler do have roads to build
or computers to maintain
or buildings to reconstruct.
No man rules alone, after all.
Or you could take the moral path
and ignore the big keys.
But you'll fight against those who didn't.
Good luck with that.
Corruption is not some kind of petty crime
but rather a tool of power
in democracies and dictatorships
but more on that another time.
So, accept the favors
sway the key blocs
and you will get into power
ruling with actions that look contradictory and stupid
to those who don't understand the game
privately helping a powerful industry you publicly denounced
or passing laws that hurt a bloc that voted for you.
But your job isn't to have a consistent understandable ruling policy
but to balance the interests of your keys to power
big and small.
That is how you stay in office.
Now with all this headache of being a representative
you may wonder...
looking at rule three
Why couldn't you skip all this bloc-building, favor trading nonsense and
just bribe the army to take power?
We must finally turn to:
taxes and revolts.
You must understand rule two
and how the treasure is raised and used
to hold a country together.
If we graph the tax rate of countries vs the number of key supporters the ruler needs
there's a clear relationship.
More democracy
lower taxes.
If you're sitting comfortably in a cushy democracy
you may scoff at this
but your fellow citizens who don't earn enough
don't pay income taxes and get rebates.
Bringing the AVERAGE tax rate down.
In dictatorships
this doesn't happen.
Dictatorships often forgo tax paperwork in favor of just
taking wealth directly.
It's common for the dictator to force farmers to sell their produce to him for little
then turn around and sell it on the open market.
Pocketing the difference at an unthinkably high equivalent tax rate.
So taxes in democracies are low
in comparison to dictatorships.
But why do representatives lower their take?
Well, cutting taxes is a crowd pleaser.
Dictators have no need to please the crowds
and thus can take a large percentage from their poor citizens
to pay key supporters.
But representatives in a democracy can take a smaller percentage
from each to pay their key supporters
because their educated, freer citizens
are more productive than peasants.
For rulers in a democracy
the more productivity the better.
Which is why they build universities
and hospitals
and roads
and grant freedoms
not just out of the goodness of their hearts
but because it increases citizen productiveness
which increases treasure for the ruler and their key supporters
even when a lower percentage is taken.
Democracies are better places to live than dictatorships
not because representatives are better people
but because their needs HAPPEN to be aligned
with a large portion of the population.
The things that make citizens more productive
also make their lives better.
Representatives want everyone productive
so everyone gets highways.
The worst dictators are those whose incentives
are aligned with the fewest citizens.
Those who have the fewest keys to power.
This explains why the worst dictatorships have something in common.
Gold or oil or diamonds or similar.
If the wealth of a nation is mostly dug out of the ground:
it's a terrible place to live
because a gold mine can run
with dying slaves
and still produce great treasure.
Oil is harder
but luckily foreign companies can extract and refine it
without any citizen involvement.
With citizens outside this cycle
they can be ignored
while the ruler is rewarded
and the keys to power
kept loyal.
Thus we live in a world where the
best, smartest democracies are stable
the worst, richest dictatorships are stable
and in between
is a valley of revolution.
The resource-rich dictators build roads
only from their ports to their resources
and from their palace to the airport.
And the people stay quiet
not because
"this is fine"
or even because they're scared
but because the cold truth is:
starving, disconnected, illiterates
don't make good revolutionaries.
Now a middling dictator without resources must
as mentioned before
take a large amount of wealth
directly from his poor farmers and factory workers.
Thus two roads won't do
and so he must maintain
some minimums of life for the citizens.
But keeping the work-force SOMEWHAT connected
and SOMEWHAT educated
and SOMEWHAT healthy
makes them more able to
revolt.
Now understand:
the romantic image of the people storming the gates
and overthrowing their dictator
is mostly a fantasy.
If you run a middling dictatorship
the people only storm the palace when
the army LETS THEM
to remove you
because you lost control over your keys
and are being replaced.
This is why after
"popular revolts"
in middling dictatorships, the new ruler is often
the same as the old
if not worse.
The people didn't replace the king
the court replaced the king
using the peoples' protest
they let happen to do it.
The very things a benevolent dictator wants to build
to cross this valley
take treasure away from the keys to power
and make the citizens more able to revolt
often ending in a stronger ruler
less likely to build bridges
and more loyal to his keys.
On the other side, the best democracies are stable
not just because
the large number of keys and their competing desires
makes dictatorial revolt near-impossible to organize
but also because the revolt would destroy
the very wealth it intended to capture.
The high productivity of the citizens.
Plus: those helping the would-be dictator in a democracy
know he plans to cull key supporters once in power.
That's what's a coup is.
So potential key supporters must weigh the probability of surviving the cull
and getting the rewards
versus the risk of being on the outside of a dictatorship
they helped create.
In a stable democracy
that's a terrible gamble:
MAYBE you'll be incredibly wealthy
but PROBABLY you'll be dead
and have made the lives of everyone you know
worse.
The math says no.
Being on the right side of a coup in a dictatorship
means having the resources to get you and your family
what the peasants lack:
Health care, education, quality of life.
This is what make the competition for power so fierce.
But in a democracy most already have these things
so why risk it?
So the more the wealth of a nation comes from
the productive citizens of the nation
the more the power gets spread out
and the more the ruler must maintain the quality of life for those citizens.
The less
the less.
Now if a stable democracy becomes very poor
or if a resource that dwarfs the productivity of the citizens is found
the odds of this gamble change
and make it more possible for a small group to seize power.
Because if the current quality of life is terrible
or the wealth not dependent on the citizens
coups
are worth
the risk.
When democracies fall
these are usually the reasons.
*Conclusion*
These rules for rulers explain not only why
some men are monsters
and others are merciful
but EVERYTHING about politics:
from war
to foreign aid
to political dynasties
to corruption.
All of which, we can talk about at another time.
But for now
you aspiring ruler
may be disgusted by the world of politics
and have decided to avoid it entirely
but you cannot
for rulers come in many forms.
Yes, Kings
Presidents
and Prime Ministers
but also Deans, Dons, Mayors, Chairs, Chiefs.
These rules apply to all and explain their actions:
from the CEO of the largest global corporate conglomerate
whom must keep his board happy
to the chair of the smallest home owner's association
managing votes and spending membership fees.
You cannot escape structures of power.
You can only turn a blind eye to understanding them
…and
if you ever want the change you dream about
there is a zeroth rule you cannot ignore.
Without power
you
can affect
nothing.
You may not like these rules
but surely
better you on the throne than someone else.
And who knows
maybe you'll be different.
*somber piano music, slowly fading*
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