Reddit mentions: The best legal theory & systems books

A dictator is a fundamentally bad thing. The best interests of all leaders (dictators or democrats) usually reside in getting/staying in power. For democrats, that means keeping a winning coalition of the people at large happy, but since a dictator has only to keep a small group of powerful supporters happy (usually a military, or a group of rich elites), they have no direct motivation to invest in public goods that benefit the population as a whole when keeping just a small inner circle happy is so much cheaper.

This is not to say there is no such thing as a benevolent dictator. Altruism is rare, but it does exist. Lee Kuan Yoo, the former leader of Singapore, is the best example modern history has of someone with near-absolute power who used it mostly for the betterment of the people. The problem is that hoping for altruism is playing the lottery, with pretty bad odds since it usually does take some level of ruthlessness and conniving self interest in order to become a dictator in the first place. It's hoping that someone chosen for his lack of niceness might turn out to be nice after all.

Democracy doesn't function very well without democratic institutions. It needs a system where it's beneficial for all involved to maintain the system as opposed to exploiting it. Military leaders have to feel that they're better off supporting the ruler than strong-arming them. Lower class minority groups have to believe that the system is close enough to them to not be worth rising up against. Everyone has to feel that following the law is better than bribing officials or ignoring the rules, without the necessary threat of force for it. It's hard to get there, and especially when democracy is put in place from the top down. If the power of a leader is guaranteed by American military aid, then the leader has a bigger motivation to appease the American military than to invest in public welfare. If a democrat draws support from anything other than a winning coalition of the populace, democratic institutions will lack enough power to enforce stability through democratic means.

I think your question could be asking two different things: "Can dictators be good for the people they rule over?" and "Can keeping dictators in place be good for American interests?"

The answer to question 1 is a near-unequivocal "No," though there are a few counterexamples. The problem is however that replacing them is extremely difficult.

For question number 2,the answer is often "Yes." Be careful not to confuse the two.

It is however worth remembering that even the most successful democracies had a lot of difficulty getting there. Most European countries had monarchs slowly give up more and more power over time, and have had several different political systems over the years. The initial governments put together after the American and French Revolutions were failures. The American Revolution began in 1776, and Washington was inaugurated in 1788. One could reasonably argue that America didn't have working democratic institutions until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Remember that (and the progress made in Tunisia) whenever someone writes off everything about the Arab Spring.

If you're interested in the motivations for public welfare for dictators and democrats, I would suggest reading [Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's The Dictator's Handbook.] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Politics/dp/1610391845) It explains the way that preferences affect systems in an easy to understand way with great real-life examples.

I've never seen that term before, and the Wikipedia article on the subject was a good read. But it's not quite what I'm talking about (though it's definitely a closely related concept). Or perhaps it is, but the Wikipedia article, focusing on the management of democratic institutions rather than the direct power of corporations over individual lives, makes it look less like that than it should.

What I'm talking about is an application of the theory laid out in The Dictator's Handbook. In it, the authors lay out and analyze what they regard as the essential difference between dictatorial and democratic regimes: the number of people necessary for a successful leadership coalition. In dictatorships, this number is relatively small, allowing the leaders of such coalitions to keep the coalition loyal by rewarding the individual members for their assistance directly, through things like special privileges and direct bribes. In a democracy, on the other hand, this number is relatively large, making direct rewards prohibitively expensive, requiring instead more general "policy rewards" designed to keep the largest possible number of people happy with the regime at the lowest possible cost.

In their analysis, the authors point out the the corporation, under this model, functions in a manner identical to a dictatorship. Theoretically, the CEO is there to generate a profit which (s)he can either release as a dividend or use to pump up the value of existing shares by reinvesting it. In reality, because boards are small and most shareholders are too diversified to really pay attention to board politics, the CEO can better reward the coalition that brought him to power by "hiring" individual board members for a variety of made-up positions, the primary purpose of which is to put the money directly in their pockets, while cutting out the peripheral shareholders. Indeed, this can be so much cheaper, that the board majority can make more money hiring a CEO whose focus is to loot the company for their sake, rather than actually managing it well in the long term.

Now, in this country, we theoretically vote for our representatives and top officers of government. But who we have the option of voting for is typically determined by corporate support. Thus, our form of government is more comparable to the one-party-rule of places like the Soviet Union or China, than an actual democracy. But rather than the ruling elite being an official political party, it is instead an unofficial and loose coalition of corporate interests... a federation of corporations, so to speak, or as I put it before, a federation of dictatorships. Their direct control (ownership as property) over the majority of the resources in the world put us at their mercy; we must meet their demands in order to save our very lives. They decide who we can vote for, and then we legitimize their choice by choosing from among the approved candidates, in a process very similar to that in places like China or Iran.

First, in reality the whole thing is fluid and political science is more of an art than a science. There is a part of me that sees government from the lens of The Dictators Handbook which views governments without any regard to ideology but only on the number of people who control wealth (democratic governments have large groups of people while autocratic have smaller groups). From that perspective I'd imagine that AutDem, PatAut and NatPop are the same sort of oligarchy with an elite group of maybe a hundred people in government, industry, military, media and religion who make all of the decisions for the state.

However in my experience there is more motivating people than merely a desire for control of the budget. Though I could never get past the pornography in Game of Thrones but it had some great thought on the subject power is power and power lies where people believe it lies. The primary difference between the three authoritarian government has to do with the stories people tell to explain power. As best I can tell NatPop tells a story of a great people and the emphasis is on the blood of the people, they are the descendants of gods and are of a different sort then other people. AuthPat is a story about a great man, the world is filled with chaos but HE brings order and so we follow HIM. AuthDem is a story about a great nation, the government is better than other governments and its laws are better than other laws.

How I understand this is to say the OTL Churchill in the UK was an authoritarian democrat. The justification for his quasi-dictatorship was not that Churchill was just such a great man (though obviously that is implied in his telling of story) and certainly it was not that noble English blood is better than other blood (though that too he believed) but primarily it was that the United Kingdom was the greatest empire in the world because its laws were just and it made the world a better place. Churchill's narrative was that they would win because their whole system was just better than those of their enemies.

We can add Totalism to the same model since the number of people who controlled the budget was very similar to that of the others. Their story is that they have set the people free and any oppose them are seeking to enslave the people, therefore everyone should give up what they have for the cause of the world's freedom.

I would say that countries are really complex systems that cannot be simplified with a couple of variables into developed and underdeveloped.

I always thought that this oversimplification made sense but then I migrated from India to the US and realized that the United States is actually archaic in a lot of things that India is good at. A big example would be mobile payments and mobile internet in general - Even the poorest of Indians are comfortable using mobile wallets and more Indians have mobile wallets than they have credit cards. I think India sort of skipped the plastic money phase and went straight to mobile.

Planet Money has an excellent podcast on the topic of how and who determines the variables that make a country developed or underdeveloped - https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/01/31/582233478/episode-821-the-other-davos
Essentially it works just like how an inefficient, political system works - The powerful and well networked get to make the decision on what matters

Another thing to factor in is democracy and functioning of the government. There is and there never will be truly altruistic leaders. Every individual is essentially motivated by self interest. So lets a leader comes into power in a developing country, he will have a cohort of individuals whom he has to keep satisfied for him to stay in power longer. This cohort will consist of people who have the most resources in the country - Industrialists, people who own the media etc. The smaller the number of people he has to please, the better it is for him. If the country becomes developed, then there will be more people to keep satisfied and thus it becomes harder for the leader. So development is actually counter-intuitive for someone who wants to stay in power.

There are some interesting exceptions - Saudi Arabia, China etc. It would be really good if someone can explain the rationale of leaders in these countries and how they stay in power. It's difficult to rely on stats such as the Gini coefficient in these authoritarian countries - cause they may be manipulating it.

A really good book on this topic - https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

There is a video that explains the book perfectly. Could not find it. sorry.

Deviating a bit to reply to one of the comments....

One of the comments here say that knowledge comes at the charity of developed countries - nothing could be further from the truth. Developed countries invest in developing countries purely for utilitarian purposes. China for rare earth minerals and manufacturing, Inda and Bangladesh for clothes etc. There is nothing wrong with this. Capitalism at work. I think one thing that badly affects developing countries is "Interventionism". That is rich people thinking they exactly know what a kid in Kenya needs. This has historically lead to more inequalities and even civil wars in Africa. If you really want to help someone, just give them a small loan, they will know what to do with it.

I'll bite, friend.

Implementation of either system leads to inequality and genocide. History is straightforward on this. When human beings implement Capitalism, you get imperialism and, to name an example, the exploitation and killing of the Native peoples of America. Or Africa. When communism is implemented by human beings, the result always leads to some form of State Capitalism, and goals to be attained through the power of centralization lead to unintended consequences, the most popular being starvation. Communist regimes definitely rock the starvation numbers. Also, you give absolute power to a small group of people, which allows them to kill anyone they don't like. The most famous examples can be found here.

Communism attempts to force equality (a paradox), but universal equality doesn't exist in the real world. No matter the system, somebody has to be in charge, and they all get there and stay there the same way. A great book to read on the identical patterns of attaining and keeping political power is The Dictator's Handbook which brings up Selectorate Theory. Basically, whether you're the leader of a Communist regime, a Capitalist nation, a large private business, or any organization of a large group of people, the rules and tools of governance stay the same.

The ideology of Communism appears to come from a place of charity and mutual benefit, and that certainly is admirable. The pursuit of helping your neighbor is a high virtue. However, there are many people who do not hold charity as a virtue, or do not possess the constitution to act upon that charity beyond their own self-preservation. And this is why pure Communism stays in the vacuum of books and the imaginations of the literate peasant, and falls short of its high demands whenever it is attempted. One way or another, the good nature of Socialist doctrine is corrupted by greed and sociopathy (in the highest ranks) and, most importantly, laziness. Laziness really is the key here. Reading the long-winded Marx literature, then reading the revisionist literature, then reading the counterargument literature, then reading all the amateur Marxist campus-count literature, is exhausting (to say the least). Most people hate reading. If you're still reading this, I commend you. Then those people have to live it, and embody an ideal that doesn't form naturally. The only people with the energy to do it must possess a most fervent ambition, and and a towering mental capacity beyond your average human being. Those people are more often than not motivated by pure hatred for the existing system and the people who defend it. Which is fair. Capitalism in a vacuum would be a meritocracy, but in the real world only leads to a sort of "singularity" of accumulation of wealth and exploitation of the masses. Nobody wants that (unless you're the guy/gal on top). However, some issues arise when your entire belief system (one of charity towards fellow man) is fueled by hatred and rage. When I see these hardcore Communists who spend their days ripping apart the agents of Capitalism (a genocidal machine) and touting the benefits of Communism (another genocidal machine), I'm seeing someone who, if given absolute power, would absolutely become a dictator. Someone who personally wishes to harm those who they perceive as harmful. Someone who would take their turn at utilizing oppression in the name of the oppressed, and for oppression's sake.

My final thought is this: Our world is complicated, unpredictable, and chaotic. We think we have a rough idea on how our day is going to be when we wake up in the morning. We all have skills and natural talents to help us make this life more manageable, to give us a modicum of control. However, we are all subject to the void. We are pulled along by forces beyond our comprehension, and are motivated by desires both base and divine. "Capitalism" and "Communism" and its many, many derivatives are nothing more than labels, identified patterns, and projections of possibilities that could be accomplished with the uniformity of masses of individuals. Individuals are not perfect, and so the systems are not perfect. You are technically capable of getting a healthy amount of sleep every day, exercising regularly, eating vegetables every day, never drinking or abusing substances, being a good listener to your loved ones and your neighbor, and attaining the highest quality of living in the process. But you won't.

TL;DR Both systems lead to inequality and mass murder. No system can be foolproof against tools like you guys, or me for that matter.

02

>acting like you know what you're talking about and actually knowing what you're talking about are different things

Tell me about it -- Sophist.

I made a clear case why countries are different i.e. they fit into categories, and why they do so. You haven't presented any kind of coherent logical argument, but shouted expletives and made vague insinuations.

>Not privileged per se
>
>Thank you for admitting you're wrong

I've done no such thing. More sophistry. I never even mentioned privilege, at least not in the context you are trying to refer to. (Strawman attack.) At no point do you actually care about arriving at the truth, you are simply trying to engage in trolling and one-upmanship. What I actually said was: "benefit everyone rather than just a few privileged elites" indicating the OWO i.e. financial elite. You didn't even understand the initial concept.

>just throw every idea together and make dubious link

Not what narrow-minded Mandarins like to do, I know.

>We like to have smart people here

Well that excludes you by default then.

>Me criticizing your BS is basically public service

In your dreams, what you're actually doing is self-gratifying trolling, and reinforcing your own naive empiricism ("show me the sensory evidence") because you find it fun to troll and nitpick. You are psychopathic at least.

>=> Thinks he can just ignore language

The semantic language used isn't "strongly correlated" to the psychology of a society. Of course if you could actually think, you'd realize that.

>guess that was probably right

You whine about no evidence, and then you engage in naive guesswork, just like all irrational empiricists.

>strongest counter argument is from one line

That was more or less a trival point orthogonal to the main point -- you haven't even addressed the core thesis: you haven't shown that different societies have the same psychology everywhere, as opposed to there being key differences, as already laid out.

>change my point that you don't know shit about Europe

You haven't made any valid points, just vague assertions about how I'm allegedly wrong. Well done? Whatever makes you happy.

>What is the House of Lords?

Part of the Old World Order -- financial elite.

Since we're apparently now asking random questions: what is ontological mathematics?

>Oh my god, shut the fuck up

This is why this subreddit needs moderation, to get rid of vile, carping trolls such as yourself. Trolls like to identify as INTP, but they are predominantly an ESTP phenomenon. Trolls lie to themselves about their own type.

>the average dude certainly has power

Not in any meaningful sense, especially when compared to the power of the financial elite.

>choose to "rule from the shadow" or whatever, it's just that they couldn't do it openly anymore

I don't engage in irrational conspiracy theories, you're projecting. Nobody "rules from the shadows", the financial elite rule openly. False consciousness isn't a "conspiracy theory", it's a psychological concept, you dunce. Look it up. False consciousness means that "the average dude" supports the OWO, even against his own best interests -- he has bought into the values of the elite class.

https://www.amazon.com/OWO-Anti-Elite-Book-Adam-Weishaupt-ebook/dp/B005VU2UMA

>restrained markets ? Guess you like China

Strawman. China has its own problems. I advocate meritocracy, with 100% inheritance tax and a rational, intelligent government (rule by philosophers and mathematicians, psychologists and scientific experts).

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Meritocracy-Political-Book-ebook/dp/B018W0ULVM

>Freedom of speech (restricted in Germany)

Well that was random -- and wrong. You try to bring up barely relevant details but can't see the larger picture.

"The Federal Republic of Germany guarantees freedom of speech, expression, and opinion to its citizens as per Article 5 of the constitution."

>taxes (heavy in scandinavia)

"Not paying taxes" is not a metric of freedom. If that were the case, you would be "free" in a jungle, with no human contact (that is of course the defining credo of all irrational libertarians). Freedom is not 'negative liberty' i.e. to be left alone to rot, to shop, etc. but the freedom for -- to choose the system of your society (i.e. to have a meritocracy rather than predatory capitalism) and to take part in transformative, communal projects (landing men on the moon for the first time was an example of a 'positive liberty' project). Less jungle, more Star Trek / Venus Project.

No wonder you felt so compelled to start trolling: I was contradicting your irrational libertarian biases.

>Here, I already won

Only inside your own psychopathic, delusional head. You've won nothing because you've made no valid points.

>than living under communist rule

Nobody was advocating communism. (Although your terror of it again, shows irrational right-wing 'negative liberty' and anti - intelligent design of society, as envisioned in Star Trek or the Venus Project).

Communism is equal outcomes, whereas meritocracy promotes equality of opportunity only (a fair start) and where you go from there is up to you -- it is an inequal outcomes system.

>constituions

I did reference the constitution above, to satisfy your fixation on minor details. Also, learn to spell if you're going to be a virulent troll. (Maybe if you spent less time trolling, you would be able to get it right!)

>Looks like you have bought into the false consciousness of the financial elite
>
>What are you even talking about ?

Of course a concept such as false consciousness would go right over your head. Whereas you are a Mandarin, empiricist and Sophist. I am a Sage/Gadfly, rationalist and ontological mathematician. You insist on bogging every sentence down on an online forum with "show me the sensory evidence" and "who wrote that? are they authorised, do they have 'status'?" -- as if that mattered.

If you want to waste everyone's time, and act in a manner not consistent with an NT, by all means, keep trolling.

If you want to learn and become rational, read The God Series by Mike Hockney.

https://www.amazon.com/Mike-Hockney/e/B004KHR7DC

Alright, if you're going to make blanket statements about my motivation to post this, I'll bite.

For one, I'm not left. I'll also note tell you who I voted for but it wasn't the liberals. I'm more in support of the democratic idea that when more people vote, it makes the system less easy to corrupt and also keeps the leaders in check.

If you want to read a book about democratic processes and why you should vote when you can, and encourage others too, "The Dictators Handbook" is great and it's only like 22 bucks.

As u/blex mentioned, of course I'm not unbias as no one is. But if your problem with a post encouraging people to vote is that "liberals do it," it implies you support parties who want as fewer people to vote, which are often more corrupt parties or parties that are only acting democratically, and not truely are (see Russia and see the book I linked).

I hope you learned a little bit on why it's important to vote, and why you should encourage others to.

> Since they clearly want to stay allies with us due to our strategic positioning?

Our strategic positioning which does them precisely no good at all, you mean?

They are only there because of Indonesia, and we have shown that we are more than capable of handling them ourselves.

> Where condemnation means condemnation? Hell did any nation even use the word 'condemn' once?

You're fucking kidding me. YES!

> Oh yes your vague, possible future 'realities'.

Which are a hell of a lot more reliable than your 'but… but… but… this is the way it's always been so this is the way it will stay!'

> And what exactly leads you to think that?

Oh I don't know - how about actually being familiar with what the ICC has done?

> So you agree that it's basically powerless then and dictators can committ all the crimes they want in their borders until it becomes something the UNSC cares enough about, usually becoming an international conflict, (since China basically has a policy to veto anything that allows action in internal matters as much as it can).

No, it is not basically powerless. It has power. You are deliberately being an idiot. I was simply agreeing that the ICC does not have any kind of direct control over UN security council forces. It is not basically powerless.

> Ahahaha, 1990? No wonder I couldn't find it, I was looking for something actually relevant. Oh yeah Israel is clearly on the verge of losing US support since they let that one whole wording issue through a quarter-century ago, nevermind all the times up to the present it's stopped any resolution that would actually hurt it.

Oh, yeah, it's not like even stuff from years ago can still have effects, can it?

Do you even think before you post?

Oh and er, nice job dodging all the more recent and serious resolutions against it too.

> Both are powerful, but ideology remains a strong force. And the only countries in the mid-East that genuinely care about Israel (it's direct neighbours and Iran basically) are of little importance to the US.

And the ones that don't care about Israel are even more important to the US - like Saudi Arabia.

> Because we, the citizenry, didn't know about it. Our government however doubtlessly knew all along. We've been in this for a while.

I'm sorry but your links prove absolutely nothing. There is no proof to support your claim that they were aware of it. They probably suspected, but there is nothing to suggest that they knew about it. Like I say, we share information, and work together. That is it.

> The entire case history of the court whose job it is to interpret the Constitution is irrelevant.

Yes it is - because it only deals with our constitution.

> Generally accepted where exactly? In every Australian case or legal text it's consistently capitalised.

Patently BS because the sources I showed you before demonstrate that it is not.

> The dick are you on about? The point is in not a single part of the excerpts is it ever used in the lower case. And you've still provided no evidence for even a single usage of it in the lower case in its noun form in that textbook, or any other Australian legal text or case.

Yes it is. Look inside the book.

> Also nice try dodging the point about how it's not even an Australian text.

Which is irrelevant to the initial point I was making.

> But hell I'll give you credit if you can provide a photo of a single usage of it in that book, I mean surely you didn't just cite it randomly and you have a physical or digital copy of it, right?

Well, you could have tried Amazon…

> I can only assume you're going for these completely non-sensical arguments now in attempt to confuse and hope no one else notices you have no idea what talking about.

It's not my fault you can't follow basic logic. It's also not my fault you don't know the difference between a codified Constitution (capitalisation intentional) and a non codified constitution and how that affects the convention of how the word is written.

> But hey don't let that stop you from linking to another quality source like Ask.com, go for Yahoo Answers next time maybe.

It's better than having a source irrelevant to the point.

> Ahaha, even assuming that was a thing, watering down a far more basic human right like that to free speech to protect one from 'emotional injury' is insanity.

What's more insane? Infringing on several other basic human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights just so one political right can be upheld, or maximising everybody's personal freedom and rights by limiting that one right?

FYI - freedom of speech only ever referred to the right in government to get up and say what you wanted. What you are referring to in terms of rights is the right to freedom of expression, which is already more than amply allowed for in our current legislation.

> Except 18C prohibits it anywhere in public, the legal definition of which is extremely very wide. For example it could easily catch a situation where someone overhears two friends making 'offensive' and 'hurtful' jokes between themselves on the bus or a street corner.

Then do it as part of an artistic presentation, or as part of a political speech, or do it as part of academia, or as part of the public interest. You can do all of that in my state.

Failing that, if it is that important to you, you can go to a different country and have your free speech there. Like I say - 18C effectively does not limit your free speech - just where you can do it.

>Oh now there's the name of the crime you can prosecute at your Aus Nuremberg!

No - the crimes I would try this government for at any trial would be crimes against humanity.

> Yes, and they're covered by s18D, which I assumed (and was correct) you are already aware of.

Exactly. 18D removes a lot of the teeth of 18C and provides ample space for people to express racist views.

> Yes, and? I never said the law was wrongly applied. It's just that it is, in my opinion and the current government's, a terrible one whose only solution is repeal.

Well thank God it seems the majority of Australians are against you and them.

> One shouldn't need to meet any standards to make their speech legal outside of where it may cause imminent actual damage/lawlessness similar to the US standard.

But racist speech does, in every instance, cause imminent actual damage. That's what you don't understand.

Emotional damage is actual damage. End of discussion.

> Oh no, not calls.
This has never ever happened before and truly Israel will collapse within the month!

Yeah - nice job ignoring the staggeringly long list of genuine sanctions against them.

> Except it is. Again:

No it is not. Three words: stop the boats. They can only ever mean stop the boats. They cannot mean 'stopping the boats from leaving' or 'stopping the boats from arriving'. The phrase 'stop the boats' can only ever mean 'stop the boats'.

Even if you could take your interpretation as true (which you can't) his claim still does not come true. It's not true because the boats are still 'leaving' and they are still 'arriving'.

I've actually written a book on this: "Importing Democracy"

And I can say without a doubt, No, it would not.

Now, I'm not fan of first past the post. But honestly, the "Alternative Vote" system you describe is already known primarily in the U.S. as "instant runoff voting." It is used in a few places in the U.S. already; but it is functionally identical to "runoff voting."

In short, the system that you are describing is actually in use in most of America; the advocates for "instant runoff voting" are mostly interested in saving money by not having to pay for a runoff election.

But you're close.

Fixing campaign finance has to come first; and so I focus my efforts there, but you are right that having viable alternatives to the two major parties discourages hyperpartisanship through game theory - in short, in a two-party system, suppressing your opponent's votes is equal to a gain for your own. In a multiparty system, suppressing your opponent's votes is not effective - the voters will just move to a similar party and form a coalition.

But you cannot have a viable multiparty system without either a proportional or transferable system. Proportional representation is just like what it sounds like - people vote for a party, rather than a candidate, and the percentage of seats in the legislature are equal to the percentage of votes each party got.

The other way to do so is through transferable voting. This would use the exact same ballot as the "alternative vote" that you mentioned, but it would elect candidates in larger "superdistricts" and fill multiple seats.

In short, in transferable voting, a candidate does not have to get 50% of the vote to be seated. They only need enough votes to be "clearly elected" - that's 1/(number of seats +1) + 1. So if there were 4 representatives, you would only need 20%+1 of the votes to be seated.

The trick in transferable voting is that not only do the unsuccessful candidates' votes get transferred (as you describe) but also that the successful candidates overage gets transfered as well.

So, let's say you have 3 seats up for grabs, and 800 people voted. You need 201 votes to be elected.

Candidate A recieves 300 votes. 200 of them chose Candidate B as their second choice, while the other 100 chose Candidate C.

Candidate A would immediately be seated. Candidate B would then get 2/3rds of the 99 "overage" votes, or 66 votes. Candidate C would get the remaining third, or 33 votes. If these votes would put either Candidate B or C over the 200 vote threshhold, they would be seated as well.

This system is used in Scottish elections, Irish elections, the U.K. EU Parliament elections, and the Australian Senate.

What's interesting about the Australian Senate is that they have a bicameral system, and they only use Transferable Voting in the Senate. The house uses Instant Runoff Voting (or the AV system you describe.) The Australian House is effectively a 2-party system. The Senate is a multiparty system, with more independents and more minor parties.

Tellingly, the Senate also has better representation of minorities and women - a side-effect of multi-party systems. I go into why that is in my book, but suffice to say that that's really just kind of icing on the cake.

If your politicians are not doing what you expect them to do, it means the group you are part of is too inconsequential for them to be significant in their acquisition or hold on power.

So the resources that would be used to win the approval of your demographical block are used to win the approval of the segment of the population critical to their success.

Since their objective is to win they have to promise this critical segments more than the competition, so everything that is spent on you is wealth that their opponents can promise to the critical segment, winning over the politician that is trying to please you.

The solution is to find a party where your support is critical to their success. This holds true whatever your personal beliefs are.

If yo want a better explanation I suggest having a look at the book the dictator's handbook or if don't have time to read a big (and honestly) fairly heavy book this video is an interesting summary.

First Nation? Second Thoughts by Tom Flanagan is probably the most representative book on the conservative (small c) view of Indigenous issues; I know some people have a negative opinion towards Flanagan, but this work is great by most academic standards and I think it's a must read for anyone interested in Indigenous issues.

Citizens Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State by Alan Cairns. This was Cairns response to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal's people. Again, I think it's a must read to learn more about the various perspectives about Indigenous issues.

Wasase: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom by Taiaiake Alfred. Alfred is probably the most "extreme" in terms of his vision for Indigenous peoples in Canada, but he's a must read.

Unjust Society by Harold Cardinal. This book provides the greatest insight into why the White Paper was met with opposition from Indigenous peoples and to Indigenous issues in general (it's a little older, but if you were to read one book out of all the ones I recommended this would be it)

Governing from the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics by Donald Savoie. I haven't read this one yet (I hope to soon) so I can't speak to how it is, but I've been told it's a great book. It basically looks at how the federal government has become increasingly centralized into the PMO

EDIT: If you go to university/college and have free access to academic journals you should look in those. There are so many interesting articles and are less time consuming than books. Here's a directory of open access journals, but keep in mind not all of these journals are of "top quality"

> that i simply can't go through it all myself.

You could, if you hadn't left your research until a week before you hand your dissertation in. That kind of laziness will bite you on the ass in future.

> What were the factors involved in crash in april? What caused it's spike? And why was the drop so significant?

There's plenty of primary source material both here in /r/bitcoin and at https://bitcointalk.org/ that are accessible for free and without registration. While they amount to educated guesswork, I read widely over the Internet and I have to say that I've seen nothing elsewhere that isn't essentially ill-educated guesswork. The Economist is probably the best of the rest. Certainly this forum saw a massive increase in the number of undesirable posters leading up to the crash, all of whom were wanting to buy in, none of whom wanted to do any of the work of understanding why. Panic among them ensued.

> How was the cyprus crisis a factor?

It wasn't. The time taken to download a client, open an exchange account, fund it and get trading means the crash had started before the Cyprus confiscation could get going, never mind that ordinary Cypriots themselves couldn't obtain funds as at March 25th. There was an increase in interest from the Spanish in Bitcoin at the time, but that's about it.

> Where in the world has it been taken to heart and used?

Kreuzberg, Germany.

> Who gains and who loses from its existence?

At the moment, almost no-one. It's thought that in future, those who are involved in transfer payments will be most affected, starting with the likes of Western Union and Paypal, then onto the banks. That will then reach the sovereigns who'd be less able to detain or tax international transactions. That inability, coupled with the Internet, would lead to an increase in 'international' companies that would previously have been national, migrating online for the tax benefit. Transfer payments would then start drying up for many welfare recipients, by which I mean both corporates who benefit from defense budgets, as well as people who benefit from State pensions.

> Anything you deem important in a comprehensive analysis of Bitcoin and Cryptography.

The first half of this book, covering the context we find itself in: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-End-Politics-Birth-iDemocracy/dp/1849544220

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip saga from years back which was among the first occasions where individual rights vs the State with respect to cryptography was played out

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk history, which informs much of where those individual rights were first expressed

The (ongoing) story of the Darkmarkets will tell you much about nation state (in)ability to get a grip on what's happening.

Good luck with your work! I look forward to seeing it here in due course!

Bugger. You stole my suggestion. OP, read this book. It is great.

On a simliar bent but obviously inferior, I'd recommend The Dictator's Handbook which covers more of a political science approach, and will make you reconsider 'stupid' political actions and Freakonomics which covers economics and unintended consequences.

However, the recommendation I'm going to make, in line with my flair, is The Lion and the Unicorn, a dual biography of the greatest political rivalry in British politics, between William Gladstone (the intellectual champion of classical liberalism) and Benjimin Disraeli (the cynical strategist who created the modern conservative party and massively expanded the franchise.

On the face of it, a book about 19th century British prime ministers might not be what you immediately thought of, but it has everything. Parties being created, and destroyed. Idealism against strategy, moral outrage against cynicism, Imperialism and foreign interventions against liberal internationalism, where a candidate elected on a ticket of anti-imperialism inadvertantly triggered the largest colonial expansion in world history. It covers how British politics was created, and the strategies and ideologies that were perfect then remain in place to this day, with Neoliberalism, Globalisation and 'One Nation' effectively a bastardisation of Gladstone's economic policies, Free Trade vs Imperial Preference debates, and the original One Nation Conservatism championed by Disraeli allying the industrious elite with the upper working class populace against the liberal elite (remind you of anything...)

So legitamcy, like others have said.

Then other things from the Dictator's Handbook:

1. It helps keep their supporters in line
   
2. It helps them get money
   
   2 is fairly straightforward. Current efforts to help democratize autocracies like to demand changes in governance in exchange for loans; Since giving loans / debt forgiveness without changes doesn't result in change, commonly. So an easy answer for a dictator is to just throw a sham election and say: "See? I'm all democratic n' shit". If they're sneaky enough to do the rigged election right, then they can meet the letter of the terms of the loan / debt forgiveness and immediately get themselves more money.
   
   1 is a bit of a walk, but in summary: dictators need people to rule (someone to run the police, someone to collect the taxes, etc), so they pay their supporters to keep them in line while stealing from the populace. But their supporters are also those that are most likely to work to overthrow them, so a ruler needs a way to keep them in line in addition to the rewards I mentioned. One easy way is to show that they're replaceable, you get replacements from the population that supports them. A sham election can then be used to show a wide range of support from the populace; This isn't very convincing to any thinking person, but does create uncertainty about how popular a leader really is (since there are some actual supporters in that 90%+ voting rate that the election returns) and thus how unlikely it would be to stir up a rebellion to overthrow the leader. This balance of "carrot" and "stick" helps to keep the supporters in line and off balance.
   
   Good overview by CGP grey. It doesn't cover the election per-say, but it does get you used to thinking like this.
   
   Also since I'm less than half way through the book there may be other reasons, but these were the reasons I've come accross.

I love The Little Book of Hygge - it's a fun read!

You might also like The Cozy Life. It is very similar.

I also enjoyed The Nordic Theory of Everything. It's not about hygge particularly. It's more about relationships and Danish culture/lifestyles, but it's a nice read.

And this might be an odd recommendation, but I love to read children's books like [The Christmas Wish] (https://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Wish-Lori-Evert/dp/0449816818), The Polar Express, and The Snowman - and not just at Christmastime! They're a great way to spend 15 minutes relaxing by the window on a cool, rainy evening.

Happy reading!

I am more in the renly camp myself. As in I dont think he is a idiot.

> Why? Because the people of Westeros follow power, charisma and leadership

That is false. The people do not matter much. This is fudalism, not democracy. The amount of people that matter for your 'election' as king are about 1-5% of people.

Renly gained support because had a big house behind him, good relation with another big house. This much power draws more power.

These lords knew that if the where in the winning groupe the would get favers, casels, lands tax releases and so on.

Stannis expected people to follow him, not because he would grant them faver just because it is right. The simply fact is, ranly understand how feudalism works, stannis does not.

> They criticize him for being slow

I agree that the slow play was probebly a good one. A robert like stick against Kings Landing would probebly have been just as effective. I dont think that it really mattered, both the slow and the fast way would lead to victory.

> Renly's men truly loved and believed in him, Renly could make friends like no other.

That is not really importent. Its about the money. Do you think Randly Tarly like the Lord Blowfish? Do any of the Lords of the Reach like Tywin? No. Non of this really matters a huge amount.

> getting rid of men like Varys and Littlefinger who did not work for the good of the realm

Again why do so many people talk about ' the good of the realm', nobody (almost) nobody cares about 'the realm'. They care for themselfs, there power there money or some other think like LF overcomming his inferiority complex. Renly does not fight for the good of the realm, stannis does not fight for the good of the realm, and so on.

Why is it so hard to understand that in feudalism nobody cares about the cood of the common man. Its about the what the people in power want.

> knew what it took to be a King

Its called using your own power to gather a winning colition.

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Renly was a pretty good player, he had a good starting position ie. having the faver over his brother and getting storms end and beeing born one of the top 5 familiys.

Renly would have easly taken King Landing from the smash Tywin between him and Robb. He would probebly not have to fight with robb, much more lickly the would have come to terms. Renly would not have started a war with Dorne, while the Dorne and the Reach dont like each other neither renly nor doren would push for war.

Renly would probebly had governed a stable kingdom. He spending his time having fun, not fighing pointless wars. He was also not cruel, in the sence that he would hurt people for fun. I think as far as feudal kings go he would have been as good as any.


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Some might be intressted in actual analysis of dictatorships and how they can be analysed. I would higly recomend the work of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.

Some easly understandable podcast here:
> The Political Economy of Power (http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/08/the_political_e.html)
> Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on Democracies and Dictatorships (http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/02/bruce_bueno_de.html)

If you are more the reading type, his most easy to read book, witch is his theory explaind for non sientists:
> The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics (http://www.amazon.com/The-Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Politics/dp/1610391845)

This stuff might sound borring, but I would really recomend it, if you are into the poltics part of Game of Thrones I cant belive you would not enjoy this stuff.

Relevant excerpt from The Accidental Superpower: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JJ322NC/


>The question was what to do with the war gains. One obvious option was to absorb the Axis and Western European empires into itself and establish a Pax Americana over the global system. That’s certainly what the occupied Europeans and the opposing Soviets expected. After all, it was what they had been doing to each other and all parts of the world within their reach for the entirety of the deepwater era.

>But direct global control just wasn’t the Americans’ style. It wasn’t so much a moral distinction as a practical one.

>Despite America’s numerical superiority vis-à-vis every foe it had battled to date, occupation doesn’t play to American strengths. A Pax requires long-term occupation of key distribution and gathering nodes, large-scale urban pacification, and in general making the occupied populations offer up a sizable chunk of their wealth and income to their occupiers. Put another way, it means fighting a wide-ranging, manpower-heavy, low-intensity war of occupation. Forever. The Americans may have been numerous, but they were still maritime. Maritime powers favor highly mobile units that zip about, bringing superior firepower to discrete conflict zones, smashing foes and then flitting off before their adversaries can reposition their land-based forces. A long-term occupation would have parked U.S. detachments across the length and breadth of its new territories and compelled them to police local populations. Their mobility advantages would be surrendered.

>The tactics of occupation aside, the strategic picture a Pax presented wasn’t very promising either. As of 1946, it was obvious that a cold war with the Soviets was already under way. The Soviet military was not only numerically larger, but clear and extremely present across the bulk of northern Eurasia. In a Pax arrangement the Americans would be draining money and resources from their occupied territories, so expecting Pax subjects to fight to maintain an American empire would have been a tough sell. That meant that the Americans wouldn’t just need a few million men to keep the British and French and Italians and Germans and Dutch and Arabs and Persians and Indians and Indonesians and Taiwanese and Japanese and Chinese and Koreans and Filipinos in line, but that Washington would also need additional American forces in the millions to hold the defensive lines against the numerically superior Russian and Red Chinese forces. The Americans were powerful, but they just didn’t have the numbers to occupy the bulk of the globe. With a Pax, the American “peacetime” army would have had to exceed wartime force levels.

>In contrast, the Soviet/Russian military was built expressly for occupation. Russia has no geographic barriers at its borders. Gaining security comes from a simple, two-pronged strategy: occupying everyone nearby to secure strategic buffers, and establishing an intrusive intelligence service to infiltrate the occupied populations in order to keep them docile. The same techniques used to occupy Ukraine and Armenia and Central Asia were already being applied with brutal success in 1946 to occupy Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria and Latvia. As of the late 1940s, it was apparent that while the Americans had come in first in the war, they simply lacked the staying power to hold on to their gains in the face of strident Russian challenges backed by more men, simpler supply chains, a higher tolerance for casualties, and a practiced, casual willingness to apply massive violence to civilian populations to achieve political ends.

>A direct American-soldier-for-Soviet-soldier face-off couldn’t be won. What the Americans needed were not just allies to help carry the defense burden, but allies who were so eager that they would be willing to stand up against the awesome force of the Red Army, a Red Army that was still roused by the fact that it had single-handedly decimated the Nazi Wehrmacht at Stalingrad. That requires a special kind of motivation.

>Specifically, it requires a hell of a bribe. And what the Americans came up with was one of the great strategic gambits in history. They assembled a plan, and then assembled their wartime allies on July 1, 1944, for a conference in New Hampshire to lay out their vision for the new world. Which returns us to Bretton Woods.


> Waging Peace: Free Trade as a Weapon

>The three-point American plan was nothing short of revolutionary. They called it “free trade”:

> • Access to the American market. Access to the home market was the holy grail of the global system to that point. If you found yourself forced to give up the ability to control imports, it typically meant that you had been defeated in a major war (as the French had been in 1871) or your entire regime was on the verge of collapse (as the Turks were in the early twentieth century). A key responsibility of diplomats and admirals alike was to secure market access for their country’s businesses. The American market was the only consumer market of size that had even a ghost of a chance of surviving the war, making it the only market worth seeking.

> • Protection for all shipping. Previously, control of trade lanes was critical. A not insubstantial proportion of a government’s military forces had to be dedicated to protecting its merchants and their cargoes, particularly on the high seas, because you could count on your rivals to use their militaries to raid your commerce. As the British Empire expanded around the globe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they found themselves having constantly to reinvent their naval strategies in order to fend off the fleets of commerce raiders that the Dutch, French, Turks, and others kept putting into play. The Americans provided their navy—the only one with global reach—to protect all maritime shipping. No one needed a navy any longer.

> • A strategic umbrella. As a final sweetener, the Americans promised to protect all members of the network from the Soviets. This included everything right up to the nuclear umbrella. The only catch was that participants had to allow the Americans to fight the Cold War the way they wanted to.

>Accepting the deal was a no-brainer. None of the Allies had any hope of economic recovery or maintaining their independence from the Soviets without massive American assistance. There really was no choice: Partner with the only possible consumer market, the only possible capital source, and the only possible guarantor of security—or disappear behind the Iron Curtain.

I encourage you to buy it, read it, and maybe send the author a snippy comment if you still disagree.

Edit: Incidentally, I think "Coming in first in war, but lacking the staying power to hold gains" pretty neatly summarizes Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Interesting analysis.

Yet I'd like to challenge the fundamental argument : both authoritative and centralized states like Russia and the more pluralistic nation like the US, Canada or UK do not directly act to benefit their people. In all nations a governing elite forms as well a a civil service bureaucracy - and these two groups always act in ways that first and foremost benefit themselves.

There was a famous study of the US (by Harvard researchers iirc) that showed less than 1% of decision by US congress were consistent with what is perceived to be the public benefit or interest - rather it was shown that congress votes according to sectoral interests 99 out of 100 times.

All governing elites in all nations act with such similar selfish interests - but often enough these interests will also benefit the rest of the nation, it's not the intent but it is a byproduct. for example: big trade interests (corporations, share-holders, however you choose to define them) in the US want to keep the south-china seas open for trade because they profit billions off of it (as does the government/civil-service/bureaucracy - indirectly) - the benefit to American citizens in contrast is a secondary by-product.

Situation is similar in Russia: taking over Crimea is something Putin perceives as an interest for his regime but indirectly this is also in the interest of Russians because as you mentioned having Ukraine integrate with western economy weakens all of Russia - thereby worsening the economic situation and the quality of life for all Russians.

Now I am not claiming there are no difference between the western democracies and the Russian democracy (and I believe it is some type of democracy or pseudo-democracy - even if different than the "western" models) - but at the end of the day the fundamental core difference is how big the beneficiary elite is - in Russia it's tiny and in the west it's much bigger.

I believe the book "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" does a good job explaining this idea - that ultimately the difference between a centralized/pseudo-totalitarian state and less-centralized democracies is only the relative size of the ruling elite - that's still a big difference but it's a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one - as we might like to think.

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita : The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
>For eighteen years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been part of a team revolutionizing the study of politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don't care about the “national interest”—or even their subjects—unless they have to.
This clever and accessible book shows that the difference between tyrants and democrats is just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters, or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is not pretty. But it just may be the truth, which is a good starting point for anyone seeking to improve human governance.


This book explains so much in such a minimal amount of time it is scary. Every complete piece of idiocy corruption good and bad deed, why capitalism or socialism or communism or liberalism or anarchism in any political system. It was written before the current political climate but makes mention to our current major players. I wonder why? If anything just watch CGP's video. Morals have nothing to do with much of anything important.

> “Simply the best book on politics written…. Every citizen should read this book.”

-CGP Grey (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

> "In this fascinating book Bueno de Mesquita and Smith spin out their view of governance: that all successful leaders, dictators and democrats, can best be understood as almost entirely driven by their own political survival—a view they characterize as 'cynical, but we fear accurate.' Yet as we follow the authors through their brilliant historical assessments of leaders' choices—from Caesar to Tammany Hall and the Green Bay Packers—we gradually realize that their brand of cynicism yields extremely realistic guidance about spreading the rule of law, decent government, and democracy. James Madison would have loved this book."

-R. James Woolsey Director of Central Intelligence, 1993-1995, and Chairman, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, July, 2011

>Explain that. Even the US of A couldnt run away from corruption.

We don't need a perfect system. We only need a system that makes it incredibly inconvenient and difficult to abuse.

No nation is corruption free. However, the US's system is far better than Malaysia's when it comes to curbing government power. To get any new law done at all you need to go through 4 stages of checks (House, Senate, White House, Supreme Court).

Remember Trump's Muslim ban? Overturned by the courts. Not even the President who controls the most powerful military in the world can do anything about it. It's why TIMES magazine named Putin the most powerful man in the world, not Obama at that time. Putin can do anything, Obama has to beg the House, Senate and Supreme Court for everything.

On top of all that you have 50 state governments. All of which has their own armed forces (National Guard and State Reserve system), and have the right to ignore Federal law and protect their own state. It's how marijuana can be illegal on the Federal level, but if you go to Colorado you can smoke until you syok.

Compare it to Malaysia's system, where somehow you had a PM who is also Finance Minister, and almost ended up with the PM holding absolute power. Power is highly centralized in the hands of the Federal government, and thus the PM.

>As for lack of natural resources as a reason for failure, I disagree. There is this theory called "resource curse". Its the contries with a lot of natural resources who are doomed. They get susceptible to colonisation and corruption.

This one my theory is based on The Dictator's Handbook and CGP Grey's The Rules For Rulers (also based on the same Handbook):

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

The summary is that all government power is based on the distribution of Treasure since no man rules alone.

In a resource rich nation, the Treasure is said resources, and if the government is able to keep the extraction of resources going, and makes enough Treasure to keep everyone happy, it will be stable.

In a human rich nation, the Treasure is the talents of those humans. The Treasure is based on increasing the amount of Treasure those humans generate (tax dollars). If the government keeps the humans happy, and get a lot of Treasure from it, it will be stable.

Malaysia is neither one or the other. And it falls into a valley where revolution and bloodshed is cyclical once it starts.

There's a book specifically on this subject that you might find interesting - "Debunking Utopia: Exposing the Myth of Nordic Socialism". The author is Nima Sanandaji, a Swedish-Iranian/Kurdish author, and the president of the think tank European Centre for Entrepreneurship and Policy Reform. He is also a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and the Centre for the Study of Market Reform of Education, both in London. He is a co-founder of the Stockholm-based think tank Captus, which he headed as CEO for several years until 2011. He has conducted research at Chalmers University of Technology, Royal Institute of Technology and Cambridge University, and holds a PhD from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (in polymer engineering). His earlier work, "Scandinavian Unexceptionalism: Culture, Markets and the Failure of Third-Way Socialism", also deals with the topic.


The book is partially an examination of, and a response to, the discussions regarding the possibility and desirability of implementing the Nordic model of democratic socialism, as popularized and propagated by Bernie Sanders and his supporters during the presidential election, elsewhere, including the United States. The gist of the book's argument is that what American liberals like about Nordic societies is not a product of socialism, but rather has more to do with their unique culture—and free markets—than with their welfare state policies.


He argues that the culture in place in Scandinavia allowed it to achieve the bulk of its current prosperity and equality early on, before the introduction of third-wave socialist policies and the expansion of the welfare state in the second half of the 20th century. According to his data, everything that Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, and other leading Democrats admire about Nordic countries already existed in the middle of the twentieth century, when these societies had small public sectors and low taxes. In fact, and I think this is one of the most interesting aspects of the book's argument, these outcomes seemingly can be found in the United States, too, among a specific group of people: Americans with Nordic ancestry. According to the book, today, measured by GDP per capita, Danish Americans’ living standards are 55 percent higher than those of Danes; living standards of Swedish Americans are 53 percent higher than those of Swedes; and Finnish Americans’ living standards are 59 percent higher than the Finns’. Even for Norwegian Americans, who lack the oil wealth of Norway, living standards outpace those of the Norwegians by three percent, which the author presents as an argument in favour of his thesis that the prosperity of the Nordics is not a product of their policies.

The overall line of argumentation the author presents along this and his other works is that there is nothing magical about the Nordics which, like most other countries, have thrived economically in periods of free market reforms and have stagnated when taxes and government involvement in the economy have increased.

Personally, I do not have a very strong opinion as I find the argument over whether this approach would benefit a country like the United States to be strictly academical, but I do find Sanandaji's writing and research to be rather convincing.

So I'm by no means an expert on this, but a while back I read a book called The Dictator's Handbook that goes into why executives and monarchs do this to their companies/counties.

A condensed version of the book can be seen by watching this CGP Grey video.

The TL;DW version of this:

Nobody rules alone. Executives have to answer to their board of directors, who in turn have other people they have to answer to and so on and so forth. These people have the power to throw you out if you don't please them.

How do you please people best? Bribe them. Give them incentives to keep you as top dog. How do you get the resources to bribe? Pillage your country/company for wealth.

You shower your immediate underlings with gifts and benefits and they won't oust you. Partially because they're in a good situation from it. Partially because if they do there is a risk that they'll get culled in a change of power (fewer people = more wealth for each person).

As a result top executives who find that they cannot get the resources to give to their underlings by improving the company will instead just grapple for anything they can get a hold of to keep their position.

This is of course a simplified explanation and the book goes into it way better.

There are three books I'd like to add as suggestions:

• Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen. 285 pages, 5 hour and a half read without pauses.
  
  
• The Dictator's Handbook, by Bruce B. de Mesquita and Alistair Smith. 300 pages, 5 hour read without pauses.
  
  
• Making Globalization Work, by Joseph Stiglitz. 5 hour, fifteen minute read without pauses.
  
  For reference, the site I used says World Order by Henry Kissinger, the book we read previously, takes 6 hours to read. So these books a bit shorter.
  
  Development as Freedom:
  
  This book proposes a relatively new theory for public policy based on free agency. Amartya Sen's thesis is that the objective of governing and developing a country is to provide freedom to its citizens. He does a pretty good analysis of how a country works policy-wise and he makes a proposal to reach this free agency goal. I think this book would broaden perspectives on how to view a government's labor, on what development is, and what it should be.
  
  The Dictator's Handbook:
  
  In this book, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alistair Smith decompose multiple historical situations both in governing and in private enterprises in order to define the universal dynamics of power. It is a great book and it explains, with sufficient evidence, what a leader needs to capture and retain power in any system imaginable by redefining how we view government systems.
  
  Making Globalization Work:
  
  I have read a bit of the previous books, but only a single chapter of this one, so instead I'm going to quote a review on amazon:
  
  > Three years ago, I was a little freshman economics student at a small college. My World Politics professor assigned me this book to read halfway through the semester, and I am quite happy that I read it. Stiglitz is blessed with both brains and writing ability, something that too many economists do not have [...] Stiglitz does an exceptional job of summarizing much of the baggage that international policy makers carry from their past mistakes.
  
  >The largest criticism that people have of the book is that much of what he says has been said by other people. This is true. But those other people can't write and aren't remotely as accessible as Stiglitz is. If you're looking for a good jump-in, read this book.
  
  

> I still think she legitimately cares about the country and wanted to make people's lives better.

I'd hate to burst your bubble, but I doubt that she actually cares about people. She clearly cares about some things. However, this doesn't mean that she cares about you even in the abstract, because - let's be honest over here - power doesn't work this way. Here's a quick guide on how it works. Enjoy. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Edit: Those down voting me should really read the book CGP Grey references and the classics as well. All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again;

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845
https://www.amazon.com/Discourses-Niccolo-Machiavelli/dp/0140444289

One way to measure societal health is through the level of inequality, usually quantified through the Gini coefficient. In general, societies that have a very wide inequality gap seem to develop sociological pathologies that are bad for both those who have amassed a measure of wealth, and those who have not. For instance, the haves become increasingly afraid that the have nots are going to kick in the gates of their suburbs and mess with their stereo knobs and then burn the place down. They come to see themselves as a rightful superior ruling class and infer that their position of power and privilege is 'the natural order of things' instead of the result of a great many variables and historical power dynamics, accident of birth, etc.

As the wealthy have the means to organize and hire professional help to push their share of the taxation burden downmarket, this increases the burden on the less wealthy, and as socially constructed services begin to decline, the wealthy end up spending a far far greater % of their personal income hiring private services that do the same thing, individually, and this atomized pricing costs all of the wealthy a great deal more in aggregate. Since the wealthy are most likely paying those with far less to provide these services, and they are already worried about 'the barbarians at the gates' so to speak, they end up with money and power and a near total fear of everyone outside their economic class, therefore ending up in gilded prisons of their own creation, all the while paranoid that their nannies are robbing them and their security forces are just waiting for the chance to sell them out to the highest bidder.

As for the have nots, as these basic services decay and they lose easy access to healthcare, vacation time, decent workplace treatment and safeguards, they begin to morph into a permanent underclass, and since all of the money and power is being concentrated into fewer hands, a form of neofeudalism or serfdom develops where 'meritocracy' becomes replaced with 'catering to the manners, whims, fashions, and fleeting desires of the upper class' which means that their skillsets and livelihoods are constantly under threat, after all, if you make really nice Large Hats for Rich Women, and then hats go out of vogue, you just got 'made redundant' and will need to find a new way to derive an income by pleasing the people where all that potential income resides.

As the have nots get priced out of markets for things necessary to human life (clean water, food that does not blow out your insulin regulation system and kill you in 20 years time, healthcare) by the inflationary nature of the ultra wealthy bidding up the prices of these services with their discretionary income, they come to see the wealthier members of society as living in a safe bubble of stability that they could only dream of, and I don't mean dreaming of sports cars and caviar, I mean dreams of 'wow, it must be nice to know that if you need your wisdom teeth pulled, or you get a week long cold, you aren't going to get charged more than you make in a month for medical care while simultaneously losing your job for missing a few days in a flexible labor economy where some other barely surviving person will jump at the chance to replace you.'

This sort of instability for hierarchy of needs things, and social standing things make people lose their minds and consider extreme actions just to survive day to day which creates even more net losses for society; it is way easier to be criminally indifferent to other people when you are certain that society at large couldn't give a shit if you and yours life with dignity or die in a gutter. In essence, the rich enclose themselves and become further isolated from the experiences of their less prestigious fellow citizens, and the not rich get ground underfoot while a huge ocean of resentment builds up at watching the comparatively carefree and decadent sphere the comfortable move in (try and avoid watching the court dramas of the well heeled in any modern society, and see how it goes for you when you go to the grocery store or look at any glowing screen).

Also, it is very likely that the merely wealthy are being predated upon far more by the extremely wealthy than the poor when it comes to their taxation burden, as the extremely wealthy enlist elite services to push their potential tax burden down on to them; the guy with a million in assets (half of which are probably a residence) goes to H&R block and they find you some tax breaks, while the oligarch drops 7 figures on a tax opinion letter from a white shoe firm that explains to the government how all of their tax dodges are perfectly legal. Subsidizing the costs of living for the entire society and ensuring that no one falls into privation and misery most likely has a smaller price tag than the losses to societies from the tax dodging of the super elite, much less the cost of the negative externalizes that develop in a regressive taxation regime where those with the most have the most deploy-able tools to pay the least.

This does not speak to the actions of government when it comes to decisions about how taxes are spent, nor the way that currency is created in the modern financial world, nor the merits of productive vs unproductive asset accumulation and occupations, nor to corporate welfare subsidies, nor the question of if markets exist without government and vice versa. Only that in a society where basic needs are met for everyone without all of the poor-punching, everyone will generally be happier, have more of what they need and less of what they don't, and have a greater standard of living and mental health, even if nominally the well off have a lower number left in their accounts at the end of the day.

Also, you shouldn't have to work as hard as you to do get by or be comfortable. No one should, we have gone through an automation and productivity boom the likes of which the world has never seen in the past 40 years or so, however the fruits of that boom have been distributed in a manner that belongs buried in the 1600's. I am sure some of these ideas will be considered fairly radical by some or most.

Some sources relating to the formation of this opinion https://rwer.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/the-plutonomy-reports/ (blog post because the actual internal reports have gotten harder and harder to find online)
http://www.amazon.com/Oligarchy-Jeffrey-A-Winters/dp/0521182980/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375142202&sr=8-1&keywords=oligarchy Marvelous book when it comes to understanding the world we live in presently
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
There are others, but I don't have links readily available.

EDIT: Semi Serious paragraphs. (which then made the formatting even worse, which I hope I fixed in edit 2 )

The Dictator's Handbook does a great job of explaining why this doesn't happen (this is a book written by some political scientists).

All of the members of the winning coalition (the 'inner circle' of the autocratic leader) absolutely do not want anyone else taking over. They've already cultivated close ties to that autocratic leader. If someone were to replace that autocratic leader, it is very likely that they will no longer be part of that inner circle. Any leader that would replace Kim, would likely replace Kim's old 'inner circle' (for reasons too long to fully explain here). So the inner circle of Kim all works together, to keep their leader in power, while simultaneously making sure that any threats to their autocratic leader's presence are squashed. In return, the autocratic leader keeps everyone in his inner circle very highly rewarded for their service (aka: those military leaders you are talking about, are rich beyond reason, compared those on the outside of Kim's inner circle).

The only time that military coups happen, is when the autocratic leader runs out of resources with which to buy the loyalty of their inner circle (or is a moron, and just neglects to do so). Kim is part of a dynasty, and has been well trained in this regard, I'd bet.

The book also covers how leaders at the end of their lives make sure that their power structures do not fall into disrepair. You'll note that before Kim Jung Un became the Supreme Leader, he was a "4-Star General" (with zero actual military experience). He was nominated to that post, by his father Kim Jung-Il. Why? Because Jung-Il, in failing health, wanted to make it absolutely crystal clear to his inner circle, that his rule would be continued by his son, and that they could count on his son to continue paying for their loyalty. (There's a good reason that family based dynasties work so well - because they make the inner circles of autocracies (which are essential to the operation of the state, and where the autocratic leader's power really comes from) confident that each member's position in the inner circle will be continued, despite the death of the leading figure of the regime.

If you're willing to devote some serious time, Man, Economy and State is the most complete explanation that exists of the economics behind ancap ideas. It's also like 1100 pages or something so it might be more of a commitment than you're willing to make just for opposition research.

If you want to get into the philosophy behind the ideas, The Ethics of Liberty is probably the best thing you'll find. It attempts to give a step-by-step logical "proof" of libertarian philosophy.

The Problem of Political Authority is also an excellent book that takes nearly universally accepted moral premises and uses them to come to ancap conclusions in a thoroughly logical manner. I'd say if you're actually at all open to having your mind changed, it's the one most likely to do it.

If you just want a brief taste, The Law is extremely short (you can read it in an hour or two) and contains many of the important fundamental ideas. It was written like 200 years ago so doesn't really qualify as ancap, but it has the advantage of being easily digestible and also being (and I can't stress this enough) beautifully written. It's an absolute joy to read. You can also easily find it online with a simple Google search.

I know you asked for one book and I gave you four, but the four serve different purposes so pick one according to what it is you're specifically looking for.

Yes, good threads. Was away taking son to a pre collage event, and only had a chance to respond now.

Agree with you that there are perhaps degrees of socialism. Some favor strict definitions in which the government owns or controls the means of production. I like a more operative definition in which need is the basis for reward. A society for which from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs largely holds is intrinsically Marxist. So say we have Sweden with a 70% tax rate, in which your government controls a greater share of your earnings than you do, and has program after program that falls under from ability to needs, that society would be more Socialist/Marxist than capitalist. A society in which you, the individual, control the bulk of what you earn is capitalist. Progressive taxation throws a huge monkey wrench into the mix, because it applies a Marxist standard to the rich, and a capitalist standard to the poor.

You rightfully point to the intrinsic difficulty in testing out approaches, when you question how relevant is comparing the US to Germany. One can see trends, and study those trends over many societies over time, and my personal experience is the trend of socialism is to impoverish nations.

The answer to the Scandinavian people question is to contrast prosperity prior to socialism to that after, and I think we do see a decline in standard of living, which indicates for that population set the people are worse off. What socialists like to do is highlight the central abuses prior to socialism and gloss over the comparison of before and after. The essays I have read on this topic have convinced me that things got worse. This NR piece, and the book that goes into greater depth on the subject considers how socialism impacted Scandinavians. I heard the author on the radio going into this at length and it was well documented.

I found two books, one is basically a book for everyone, https://www.amazon.ca/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511082631&sr=1-1&keywords=the+dictator%27s+handbook and the second is the book that proves the logic of the first with a rather long table of statistics and formal math and even more historical examples, https://www.amazon.ca/Logic-Political-Survival-Bruce-Mesquita/dp/0262524406/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511082675&sr=1-1&keywords=the+logic+of+political+survival.

The logic is sound and consistent. It also importantly for anarchists, affects also other hierarchies like corporations, and even can go into a lot of the discussion on racism, sexism, and similar.

I also like the book for some of the suggestions it offers. It clearly explains that the more liberty, the better, with nearly no limits on how much better the world is when more people contribute, a strong counterargument to claims of say a strong and central state is needed to consolidate something. It also talks about corporations and private institutions, and while he doesn't directly call them co-ops, he does say that democratic companies where the profits are distributed based on a formula or on a public basis improve the world and their own internal governance. And it explains why the more democratic something is, the harder it is to overwhelm it via a coup.

It also gives some ideas on how to fix the whole kaboodle, such as social networking making the profits of executives limited if the average puny shareholder has a platform to discuss and directly vote, escrow account lending and foreign aid, higher education in authoritarian countries, cell phones, and amnesties to those who cede power.

Thoughts?

You have to have the right attitude to watch the show. If you're a little child and someone tells you Santa doesn't exist it's depressing. However, there's eventually a satisfaction to growing up.

HoC is just a show but it is (IMO) a more sophisticated type of media than just a Disney movie with cartoonishly obvious good and bad. Hopefully it grows your palette as a consumer of media and if nothing else expands the healthy scepticism you hold towards politicians and authority figures in our society.

My view of politicians is that they are all manipulative little Underwoods, whether they are on your side or the oppositions. Underwoods are always the ones that rise to high office. The reason why the free countries like the US are lucky is that their system does a reasonable job of aligning the interests of the people with those of the selfish, monstrous leaders. I recommend this book if you want to read more. There's no important difference between US leaders and Saddam or Gaddafi. It's the system and society that surrounds them that leads to such different societies.

There's a a DK book titled "The Politics Book". It briefly goes over a vast array of political figures and their key "political idea", so to speak. Its not particularly detailed/comprehensive about the ideas it covers, but it does give a solid introduction to the key concepts of said ideas. For example, there are sections on Confucius, Karl Marx, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Sun Tzu, Vladimir Lenin, Rosa Luxembourg, Gabrielle d'Annunzio, Friedrich Nietzsche, James Madison, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Eduard Bernstein, etc. It covers many different political thinkers over 2500 years of human history. Its a great place to start if you're interested in figuring out your political identity.

Wikipedia is also a great place to read, as well. There are thousands of pages on different political ideologies, figures, and parties.

​

Edit: Its a little expensive, but worth the price of admission. https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Book-Ideas-Simply-Explained/dp/1465402144

> a vendetta against us [rural voters] because of Trump

Given the electoral college system and the lopsided weighting of small rural states against larger populous ones, you have to admit there are legitimate grounds for many people to be (at the very least) irked.

If we interpret Trumpism as a "fuck you" from rural America toward the leaders who forgot about them, then I think it will backfire. It's become more clear that Trump is not really looking to maximize public good and broaden the inclusiveness of our economy. That is to say, it's unlikely he's going to address the deeper concerns facing rural America, certainly not as much as he's going to enrich himself and his winning coalition. Selectorate theory is predicated on the concept of a "winning coalition". And Trump's winning coalition was smaller than most--given his tenuous relationships with party leaders, penchant for insularity and nepotism, political hamfistedness, antagonism with the intelligence community, and possible intrigue with unsavory figures like Manafort and Russian oligarchs. From the aforementioned Wikipedia entry:

> When the winning coalition is small, as in autocracies, the leader will tend to use private goods to satisfy the coalition. When the winning coalition is large, as in democracies, the leader will tend to use public goods to satisfy the coalition.

Trump, if he's to remain in power, is going to have to make sure his "essentials" are satisfied/enriched. You can look through his appointments, budget, and policy proposals to read between the lines there. You think naming the CEO of Exxon as the Sec. of State was designed to help you? Probably not. Likewise, cutting or gutting the agriculture department, the EPA, forest service, department of the interior, department of education, etc are all very unlikely to improve rural life or bring jobs back. Climate change denialism seems a pretty bad policy too for rural Americans. Who do you think is going to be hurt the most when water is scarce, fertile areas become deserts, food becomes more expensive, and society destabilizes? You'd be better off supporting taxes on robots, universal basic income and anything but fossil fuels.

Anyway... I'm not even sure the premise of this whole comment is correct (that Trump is a "fuck you" from rural America). A hard shift to the right against globalism seems to be happening across the world. We'll see what happens. I'm certainly not optimistic either way.

In the mean time--since I referenced Selectorate Theory--you may enjoy The Dictator's Handbook as a framework from which to understand political survival in uncertain times. Don't let the title fool you, it talks a lot about democracies and draws many parallels to corporate dynamics as well. It's a very thought provoking set of concepts that I wish more people knew about.

Cheers.

To anti-Trumpgeniuses I would like to point something out:

Start with the blog http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/rules-for-rulers

The look up the book: https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics-ebook/dp/B005GPSLHI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1477309620&sr=1-1&keywords=the+dictator%27s+handbook&linkCode=sl1&tag=greyblog-20&linkId=f8e4272303a83475186b4ed632168f9c

Note that it was published in 2011.

Now let's read the description:

> For eighteen years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been part of a team revolutionizing the study of politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don't care about the “national interest”—or even their subjects—unless they have to.
> This clever and accessible book shows that the difference between tyrants and democrats is just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters, or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is not pretty. But it just may be the truth, which is a good starting point for anyone seeking to improve human governance.

If you make the conclusion: let's keep government as small as humanly possible - yay! Good for you.

If you conclusion is: red team sucks, blue team rocks, then OMFG!

I can't even! How? How do you not see or smell the fucking rotting sperm whale in the room?

You know, red team, at least in name is the government opposition party. Blue team is all for more government. It is not even symmetric ...

The Southern states got lucky - they don't have natural resources. Everyone thinks that having natural resources means you'll get wealthy but it's the exact opposite. It is the surest way for a poor region to stay poor.

Here's how it works in a place like Jhakhand. The rights for the minerals are sold to the lowest bidder with the highest bribes. The politicians in power depend entirely on these bribes. Once they're in power, they only need to keep the businessmen happy. They don't need to invest in schooling, healthcare or anything else that improves the lives of their people because the money from the minerals continues to flow into their pockets. In fact, investing in schooling in such a state is bad idea for the politicians because once folks is educated they will realise the scam that the politicians are perpetrating and disrupt the flow of money. Since no one is educated and the state is run by the mineral mafia, no businesses will invest because they have no one to employ and don't want to be extorted by the mafia.

Whereas in a state like TN that is blessed with a lack of natural resources, the politicians need to up their game to stay in power. This means freebies, but also measurable improvements in literally every sphere of life - secondary education, higher education, healthcare. Police has to be less corrupt because otherwise businesses won't invest. TN was bending over backwards to attract manufacturing and IT before it was cool in Gujarat. This is a virtuous cycle that leads to more benefits - because everyone was already educated, most women were already having fewer children decades ago.. Fewer children meant more resources poured into those children, making them more likely to succeed. Educated productive citizens working in IT and manufacturing generate more income for the state government than unskilled labourers. In TN, that income is used to develop the state. In Bihar, it's used on fodder scams.

But it's so simple then! We can fix Bihar and Jharkhand! We just need to elect a politician who won't take bribes, will use the money generated from the natural resources to educate the population, on healthcare, on roads, on electricity etc. Yeah ... that's not happening. Because a person who starts this shit in Bihar will have their legs broken by the people who like the status quo and want it to continue. The goondas who break your legs have their salaries paid for by the bribes you hate so much. Gtfo if you like having two functional legs.

Don't listen to hogwash that "south indian culture" is somehow superior. I'm south Indian and I've lived in all parts of India. It's not true, and it's just racist BS. To blame people in Bihar and Jharkhand for not being educated because of "culture" is basically victim blaming.

If you'd like to learn more about why natural resources are a curse, please read The Dicatator's Handbook or watch this 20 minute trailer - Rules for Rulers. If nothing else, it'll cure you of the thinking that you could do a better job if you were in power.

I think it comes down to the human condition. Human’s aren’t exactly rational. They generally emotional, impulsive, and ready to accept whatever they’re told by authority figures. Humans are believers, not thinkers. On top of that, virtually nobody knows about meritocracy as a political system, so it’s simply not part of the public consciousness in the same way capitalism and communism are. Speaking of which, I think you’re spot on in your analysis of those ideologies. Capitalism is a system of unequal opportunity and unequal outcomes. Communism is a system of equal opportunity and equal outcomes. Meritocracy is a system of equal opportunity and unequal outcomes – the best of both worlds.

Reading this and some of your other posts makes me think you’d be very interested in this book, and others by the same author(s). It examines meritocracy as a stand-alone political system, a modern version of Plato’s republic:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Meritocracy-Political-Book-ebook/dp/B018W0ULVM/ref=la_B004LXBBUA_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1550695005&sr=1-13

If you like it be sure to check out the god series by Mike Hockney. It constitutes a rationalist theory of everything, it examines and refutes all other ideologies, religions etc.

> force the rest of the world at gunpoint to trade favorably with us?

I dont think you understand that we buy more of the worlds goods than they buy from us, if a trade war erupts, we have the technological skill, the labour, and the land full of resources to turtle it out, the EU is about 30 years off from being able to defend themselves equally, and the rest of the world is a clusterfuck of loose alliances that at best would hold out for a decade of cold war.

Not only that, but the world is dependent on us for food production, military innovation, and technological goods and services. I would love to see the world try to compete, because competition breeds excellence, we would probably win a technological race.

> All it takes is the other major players deciding otherwise for the jenga pieces to start teetering.

Even worst case, there is no way that Eurasia would be able to extend their influence into our hemisphere, let alone invade, the US has some of the most ideal geography on the planet for defense.

I highly recommend this book in the subject: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1455583685/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

> Empires don't collapse overnight.

They also sometimes look like they are about to collapse and then go through a second renaissance keeping on for 200-400 years longer.

So, the first thing I'd suggest is starting to look past what "conservatism" means, or even considering this new Trump-Bannon-Right as "conservative."

I've been shilling this particular article since it was published in May, and it appears to be coming true.

Along with recommending Zeihan's book: The Accidental Superpower, I believe Trump and those advising him are trying to:

1. Disentangle the US from the rest of the world, period, in a GLHF sort of way. We would for example no longer guarantee the free flow of commerce with our Navy, etc. We'd have our inner circle of besties but basically abandon NATO, the IMF, the WTO the UN, the Partnership for Peace, most bilateral trade treaties etc. This will be the most painful part.
   
   
2. Rearrange the American economy into one of almost entirely domestic production and consumption, and lock in partners to provide what we cannot, like rare earths. Again this is going to be excruciating for a while.
   
   
3. Provide top-down, big-government heavy subsidies to the working class - which is anathema to 20th century GOP orthodoxy.
   
   
4. Move the GOP past the culture wars, period.
   
   
5. Promote the yes, I'll say it - supremacy of American culture. Whether this is racial or not is up in the air, but I've seen an example of something like this first-hand in moving from CA to TX. Texans distrust people who move here that want to change it, or don't acclimate to the culture. Start slipping in some y'alls in your speech patterns, eat at Whataburger, buy some Texas Flag stuff or a truck, and get interested in guns and you are "in" regardless of what you look like (and I am pretty gd Asian brown). Whether civic nationalism wins over ethnic nationalism is legit my only fear now. Thank God for the 2nd Amendment.
   
   5a) They cannot stand 'multicultural globalism' with a passion, please see that bit in the politico article about where the Dems are going, i.e., a supranational, multicultural, technocratic elite. Bye bye unions, UberSchool for all!

The Dictators Handbook: It definitely made me more cynical but realistic about politics. CGP Grey did a video based on the book so check it out if you’re curious.

The thesis of the book is basically all rulers/politicians can only survive by being selfish and paying off those who support them. In dictatorships, these are generals, businessmen and bureaucrats. In a democracy those are the constituents who elect you. Those who do not vote do not matter which is why in the US politicians cater to the whims of the Boomers rather than Millennials. Boomers vote, Millennials don’t. Doing something for millennials is something not done for boomers (aka the people who put you in power) and makes it more likely that boomers will elect someone who has their interests at heart. If you want a better explanation check out that video! It’s fantastic and I’ve watched it countless times.

Also Millenials, please go vote! If you’re dissatisfied with politics this is the only way to change things!

Yes, I do actually, because compromise would be forced as the norm and obstruction would be incredibly difficult. It also breaks up the power within congressional districts, because fewer powerful entities directly affect the voting populace.

It's about restricting the ability of congressional leaders to consolidate power within their districts, and having it come down to money.

Look at it this way, each congressperson current represents about 700,000 people (if i remember correctly). For what is considered a "local representative", that's not very "local". It makes it too easy for monied interests to convince the populace at-large of how this effective stranger thinks about xyz issues.

Break this number down to 150-200k each, and it seems a little more reasonable that community groups could have a real chance at having their voices heard. A union representing 1000 people is suddenly 1% of the vote, if 50% of people vote. That same union is a fraction of a % in a 700k district.

This results in a) more level headed politicians who can actually get to know the entirety of their district and not just rely on the big money havers, and b) better democratic representation.

TL;DR: Increasing the number of reps actually dilutes the power of an individual rep, such that they become more beholden to their voters.

edit: credit where credit is due - this book is amazing and explains in detail why a system that increases the number of reps leads to better representation. But to keep it simple - the first thing dictators do is consolidate power by getting rid of as many "key people" as possible, and when a representative represents 1 million people, the "key people" are people with the money to run ads, not community representatives.

this article:
http://www.globalwitness.org/campaigns/corruption/oil-gas-and-mining/cambodia

Mentions KR as active in logging and the start of that but their role in that ended pretty much in '98. Goes on to talk about Vietnam and its role in the resources of Cambodia.

In that article is also a link: http://www.globalwitness.org/rubberbarons/

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's work as a general framing for small-coalition governance and why it's good foreign policy for countries to support autocrats, in layman's terms and a quick read version: http://www.amazon.com/The-Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Politics/dp/1610391845 . It has a few mentions specifically of cambodia and also a short discussion of western bilateral and multilateral foreign aid in the country.

Can't find a primary source right now for the bit about the political system because i have to go to a meeting shortly. But basically every major political position is appointed rather than directly elected. This means power flows down from the party rather than up from the people, and accountability of positions is upwards into the party. Every position has to be paid for by the appointee, mainly by 'donations' to the Cambodian Red Cross (owned and run by Hun Sen's wife). Which also means the appointees have to recoup the cost, and I think there is also an annual quota they have to pass up. Essentially similar to the old Roman tax farming system. Gotta run, can elaborate more if you have further questions.

Can anyone read the article?

North and South don't care about the prize. Boon said we don't need a gold star we want peace. Give the gold star to trump.

Ugh. This comment section reads like:

hur dur dur dur. Trump is great and helped.

Trump did shit all nothing except a twitter war.
If you have any clue about politics and the times lines and events that happened under kim you would understand better.
Here watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
or you could read the dictators hand book. You can buy it here: https://www.amazon.ca/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

Read up on some of what has happened under Kim.

Kim was western educated.

He comes into power after his fathers death.

He has to then solidify his power or he will be disposed of, plain and simple. He has a brother you know.

This means he has to play the game. Continue with the old way forward.

But he has a plan. Kill brother. Kill Generals that would stop him. Continue with nukes to make sure no one can stop him and save face. Spout off rhetoric just like his father.

I can almost guarantee he wants to move NK to be more like China. There is huge GDP to the south and huge GDP to the west. He wants in on it. This will make him more rich and his loyal generals. Not only that it will pull the nation out of poverty and starvation.

NK is literally one really bad growing season away from millions dying, this is bad for any regime. The only thing that NK really has for export is rare earth elements and everyone needs those. Those require huge investment and know how to acquire.

Going forward after the deal is signed, you will see China coming in and helping build infrastructure to help with transportation and moving goods around faster to build up faster. The reason why China would be the one to do this; for several reasons. They don't want to become a democracy. They don't want those ideals. Also China has always been worried about the fall of NK, millions of people coming into China would be a disaster for them. The south will help with financing.

If anyone deserves a nobel peace prize it would be Dennis Rodman.

I've had a lot of fun with Diplomacy, though it's definitely not for the faint of heart.

If you're interesting in more realpolitik, CGP Grey's video "Rules for Rulers" (which you may well have already seen) and the book that inspired it, The Dictator's Handbook both view politics from the perspective of power. They're very useful for both understanding real world power politics and developing a setting driven by poewr politics.

I'm not sure what level of intro you're wanting, but this might be be good for comparative politics (some of the chapters are a bit dense though): https://www.amazon.com/Comparative-Politics-Rationality-Structure-Cambridge/dp/0521712343. Also this is often assigned or required those going into CP and is an easier read (it's just interviews of how some of the big names in CP feel about their research, the discipline, etc): https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Craft-Method-Comparative-Politics/dp/0801884640. You can probably find bits of these books around publicly so you don't have to pay for the whole texts if you just want to check them out first. Good luck!

"You can’t nudge history forward in the way a child would when wishing to make a flower grow more quickly: by tugging at it. … We must patiently plant the seeds and water the ground well, and give the plants exactly the amount of time they need to mature.
— President Václav Havel of the Czech Republic

I love this quote because we tend to have unreasonable expectations on how quickly countries will democratize. I devoted an entire chapter to this question in [my book] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019062602X/). Havel makes it clear that the reality doesn't meet our soaring expectations and we need to give these transitioning democracies time to mature.

+ozan_varol:

"You can’t nudge history forward in the way a child would when wishing to make a flower grow more quickly: by tugging at it. … We must patiently plant the seeds and water the ground well, and give the plants exactly the amount of time they need to mature.
— President Václav Havel of the Czech Republic

I love this quote because we tend to have unreasonable expectations on how quickly countries will democratize. I devoted an entire chapter to this question in [my book] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019062602X/). Havel makes it clear that the reality doesn't meet our soaring expectations and we need to give these transitioning democracies time to mature.

I could go through this line by line with responses, but I don't really have the energy, and it's not really why I posted the video anyway--his treatment of horseshoe theory is less important than the concept's illustration (even though I think your particular treatment isn't completely fair-handed). I'll just throw in a couple of reactions, with the caveat that you can probably ignore them and take, "He uses shortcuts for concepts he's built up elsewhere that make sense in context" as my point and leave it there.

The first point to throw out is that Coffin himself uses "thought leader" as a particular shortcut for "person who exists to popularize concepts in trade for social currency", and continually recognizes the hypocrisy of also being someone who is popularizing concepts in trade for social currency (just not in this video). We do all exist in capitalism, after all, so pointing this out is just as (in-)valid as calling out someone who hates the free market for buying food at a grocery store.

Specifically at: "Millions of people died in communist revolutions and communist regimes." If you paid attention to those, they... really weren't movements of the left. You certainly have a point that movements spawned from ideas from the left can be co-opted by fascists, but that doesn't make those fascists leftists, it just means co-option is easy.

This is why violent revolution is contraindicated, by the way, at least, if you're trying to achieve a democratic result. I recommend a treatment of the topic here by CGP Grey (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs), which is itself a distillation of this book by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845), but the major point is that if you want to bypass Democracy while co-opting a populist idea, backing your movement with the military is a great way to do it (as in, the precise tactic of pretty much any government with the Communist label that has achieved majority power to date).

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics By Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith

1. 
   
   For eighteen years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been part of a team revolutionizing the study of politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don't care about the “national interest”—or even their subjects—unless they have to.
   
   This clever and accessible book shows that the difference between tyrants and democrats is just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters, or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with, and the quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is not pretty. But it just may be the truth, which is a good starting point for anyone seeking to improve human governance.
   
   This is essentially any public choice economics class you'll ever take. It's a great break down on the real incentives of rulers and how that influences their rule, even more so it goes into detail how these incentives shape economies, policies, wars, business, and much more.
   
   2.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845
   
   
   *3.
   
   Nonfiction- Political Science/Public Choice theory
   
   

Sacado del libro The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

> 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 at providing, such as national defense and large infrastructure projects. Taking relatively little in taxes therefore encourages the people to lead more productive lives, creating a bigger pie. Democrats are closer to this good governance ideal than autocrats, but they too overtax. The centerpiece of Reaganomics, the economic plan of US president Ronald Reagan (1981–1989), was that US taxes were actually higher than this revenue maximizing level. By reducing taxes, he argued, people would do so much extra work that government revenue would actually go up. That is, a smaller share of a bigger pie would be larger than the bigger share of a smaller pie. Such a win-win policy proved popular, which is why similar appeals are again in vogue. Of course, it did not quite work out this way in fact.

> To a certain extent, Reagan was right: lower taxes encouraged people to work and so the pie grew. However, crucially, in democracies it is the coalition’s willingness to bear taxes that is the true constraint on the tax level. Since taxes had not been so high as to squash entrepreneurial zeal in the first place, there wasn’t much appreciable change as a result of Reagan’s tax cuts. The pie grew a little, but not by so much that revenues went up.

> Are we to say they can be wrong, but not fallible? How reasonable, or more importantly unreasonable can our reinterpretations be? Can we say, for example, anathemas were only being sarcastic?

We can say that the Council Fathers are wrong and that they are fallible. Only the text they produce and approve, as a body, is infallible (and also not wrong). (This goes double for popes.) Anything else goes beyond the guarantees of Pastor Aeternus and Lumen Gentium. And that's good, because anything else would lead -- fairly quickly -- to madness.

As for rules of construction, I think we might be able to draw a parallel to a classic example in American law: the Second Amendment. Now, the Second Amendment guarantees the "right to bear arms." But it does not define the word "arms." There are a number of reasonable constructions one can place on the word. Some of those different constructions were already available and relevant at the time, and simply weren't spelled out (instead were left to the People and the courts to figure out); for example, was a cannon considered to be "arms"? The Constitution itself does not say; people can reasonably differ. Some of those different constructions were not available at the time; is a nuclear bomb protected by the right to bear arms? Is a handgun? Is a machine gun? None of these things existed at the time of the Founders, so they could not possibly have been thinking "let's guarantee a right to handguns" when they signed (and 13 state legislatures independently ratified) the Second Amendment.

A very small minority of legal thinkers -- mostly sarcastic faux-originalists -- think that our legal analysis should stop there. The original intent of the Founders could only have encompassed guns that actually existed at the time; therefore Americans have a right to bear breech-loading muskets and bow/arrow, but not .22 rifles.

But pretty much everyone agrees that this position is stupid. As I said, most of the people who hold it only hold it sarcastically. The school I follow, textualism, says, "Look at the text. Look at the meanings of the words as they were defined at the time. Determine the different ways those definitions (there are often several different definitions) would be applied to modern arms. Determine which of these interpretations is most reasonable. Evaluate consistency with modern understandings as a factor. Issue a ruling." Under this system, it's obvious that handguns are indeed "arms", by virtually any definition of "arms" you can imagine (from 1789 or 2015), and therefore they are protected by the Second Amendment. The other cases are largely debatable.

Okay, neat story, BCSWowbagger, now tie it back to what we were talking about.

In the 1500s, there were several understandings of "man" floating around, most of them incomplete. Man as biological member of the species. Man as separated substance. Man as hylomorphic person. Man as thinking animal. Trent wrote the word down and didn't define it for us, leaving that for others -- other Councils, if necessary, but reasonable discourse if possible. Now we, in 2015, are looking backwards at this text and aren't sure how to interpret the word "man." But we can look at those different available interpretations and quickly see that some are more reasonable than others: Canon 1 is nonsense if we pick "man as separated substance," since Adam was not a separated substance, and (the passage goes on to say) could not be until after the Fall. So even the Council Fathers would have said that's obviously not how to understand it. Taking it to mean man as biological entity is plausible in the Tridentine context, but creates enormous problems given our more advanced understanding of the development of human life. So, unless we discover some very good reason to adopt it, let's not. It seems most favorable to understand this in terms of the first homo sapiens who was ensouled.

Of course, this is all too pat. Judicial construction does not provide pat answers. Scalia, whom I earlier disparaged, actually wrote a pretty good book, IMO, about the rules of construction. Though his work has been criticized from a number of directions, by people who have slightly different ideas about legal construction. You can spend a lifetime working out the exact boundaries of "how far" you can go before your interpretation becomes unreasonable.

But it doesn't take a lifetime to be able to see that interpreting Canon 1 to mean "ensouled man" is a reasonable understanding of the passage according to the plain meaning of the text, while interpreting Canon 1 as sarcastic is not.


>By saying Adam was so fundamentally different from his parents, that he required a vastly different soul, and a vastly different form, so much so that he was immortal no less and could walk through walls etc., necessitates that we call him a different species from his parent.

Actually, if he were still biologically capable of reproducing with his biological parents -- and we have no reason to believe he would not be (indeed, the fact that we all exist may be attributable to this interbreeding!) -- he would still be a member of the same biological species. Ontologically, something truly extraordinary happens when man is "uplifted". This difference must be reflected biologically, but there's no need to believe that the changes are terribly extraordinary -- indeed, good reason to believe they aren't. I mean, Jesus, after being raised from the dead, was still basically a human being. Just a human being with powers beyond physical (and therefore beyond biological) explanation.

Sure, it says that man did not merely evolve, but that God directly and miraculously intervened at a certain point in the process of evolution. However, the Church has always taught this to be the case, and science has never taught against it -- only the most hard-bitten secular ideologues, acting with no actual basis in science, insist that "science" says belief in miraculous interventions are incompatible with belief in the generally well-supported processes of evolution.

>Furthermore if Man was a plan, are we to affirm that evolution is not based on random mutations, that life spent billions of years with intention, using insignificant mutations to the fulfillment of Adam's parents

That's pretty basic theistic evolution, yeah. Before you raise the classic objections from the evidence, note that we affirm that evolution is not purely random, but providentially directed. We need not affirm (as the Intelligent Design school does) that the providential direction of evolution is detectable by human means.

>Are we to affirm that we as a species have not evolved genetically since Adam. and are not continuing to do so?

Eh? I don't understand where this idea even came from. No, we do not need to affirm that. Why would we? Do you think that man's ontological nature is defined by his genetic code? It's not.

>This first thinking animal definition. How do we define thinking?

There is a complicated argument that perhaps deserves a different week. There are several valid Catholic perspectives on this, and -- on top of that -- modern anthropology has not uncovered enough evidence about the past for us to draw clear conclusions from any of them. Personally, I follow philosopher Walker Percy's thinking that the essential characteristic of man is triadic, symbolic language (as opposed to the mere dyadic, instinctual/Pavlovian communication common to many mammals). But when did that appear? I don't know. Is Percy's definition right? I'm not sure. The Church has not settled the question yet -- and won't, until there's a lot more data available.

>Are we going to say that Adam at 200,000 years ago could understand and communicate with God, acknowledge his threats and transgress his commands?

This is a good Scriptural reason for adopting Percy's definition. Because, yeah, whenever Adam was uplifted ("ensouled" is really a misnomer, since all things have souls; Adam's was just special), he must have been capable of understanding and communicating with God in order to commit his sin -- which Trent tells us was prevarication, a fairly advanced linguistic concept.

If you want a little preview for next week, I tend to think that Adam probably showed up at the start of (and kicked off!) the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, around 50kya. But I've heard at least plausible arguments ranging anywhere from as early as 2.5mya to as recently as 4kya (though, frankly, I get real skeptical of anything more recent than 15kya). I really enjoyed Dr. Ken Kemp's take on the question here, though it is inevitably caught up in questions of monogenesis you're here straining to avoid.

I like theories that are more recent, because the idea of millions of years of unrecorded human history where the poor sods didn't even have the Law of Moses bugs me, but that's just a bias I have, not something based in fact.

>Ugh. I'm good thanks. I've had more than enough cringe watching his humans need not apply video

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

Read that instead then - Also great you judge people on one piece of their work - he has done many other videos on many other subjects - but ok.

>Why do you think the liberals hate scientists themselves though?

Tacit Consent.

They pull funding from STEM fields and in-turn people like the OP are finding it harder to find work in Aus - we have a major brain drain with people leaving Australia to find work in their field.

So while individually they might not even care about scientists one way or the other - by their actions or inactions they consent to a permeating culture of scientific regression in Australia from the Liberal party and its supporters.

Here are some books I found on Amazon that might be decent:

[Henrik Meinander: A History of Finland] (https://www.amazon.com/History-Finland-Henrik-Meinander/dp/0199327211/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?keywords=finnish+history&qid=1573978622&sprefix=Finnish+his&sr=8-7)

[Anu Partanen: The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life] (https://www.amazon.com/Nordic-Theory-Everything-Search-Better/dp/0062316559/ref=mp_s_a_1_13?keywords=finnish+history&qid=1573978622&sprefix=Finnish+his&sr=8-13)

Katja Pantzar:
The Finnish Way: Finding Courage, Wellness, and Happiness Through the Power of Sisu

Aino Havukainen: This is Finland

I think a model that takes a few variables into account could perform pretty well over time and space. Central in this model would be history of being occupied. Also important is harshness of environment encouraging cooperation. Another aspect would be whether or not a Dictator's Handbook scenario is in effect. Often this takes the form of a local leader allowing a foreign power to provide skilled labor and capital equipment to help the country extract resources. In this scenario, the local government's primary job is to use payoffs and/or threats to prevent the local population from interfering or demanding a cut.

Both direct occupation and DH quasi-occupation would create a conflict between the best interests of the citizenry and the best interest of its rulers. Any increase in power of the government could result in decreases of leverage of the population. In this scenario, paying taxes, cooperating with onerous regulations, and providing information to the government could be legitimately seen as a betrayal. This would explain Seoul's unusually high anti-social punishment rate (Japanese Occupation).

I would be very curious how 1760 Boston would have scored on this test. The Boston Tea Party sometimes confuses children because it is a stark example of authorities praising anti-social punishment. Also note Greece's 20th century hardships and Omman's precarious sovereignty given Iran and SA's machinations in the area.

From wikipedia on the ongoing Qatar diplomatic crisis:

> Trump's public support for Saudi Arabia emboldened the kingdom and sent a chill through other Gulf states, including Oman and Kuwait, that fear that any country that defies the Saudis or the United Arab Emirates could face ostracism as Qatar has.

The Dictator's Handbook is a fantastic political science book. Not just about the politics of dictatorships, but the politics of democracies, small municipalities, and businesses as well. Super cynical, but provides tonnes of really great examples and case studies.

On of my favourite books period.

https://www.amazon.ca/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

Yes, I'm Swedish.

Their are 8 major parties competing for power. Two blocks and one outsider.


There is the "red-green" block consisting of the Social democrats, The green party and the Left party (formerly the communist party) These currently hold power with a minority of the vote, supported by the "opposition".

Then there is the "Alliance" made out of the Liberal party, The Moderates, The Center party and the Christian Democrats.

Then there is the third option, the Swedish Democrats, whom have been isolated due to being labled a "nazi alt-right" party by the state controlled media (they want to limited immigration and have fiscal responsibility) Currently polling at 20-30% of the vote, depending on who ordered the poll.


I'm guessing that the Swedish Democrats will be the biggest party after the 2018 election, with about 30% of the vote. This will breakup the "alliance" and create a new left-center block consisting of the:
Social Democrats, Green party and Center party. Basically paving the way to hell with good intentions.

The future looks bleak.


If you're interested in modern Swedish political history I recommend reading this book:
Debunking Utopia: Exposing the Myth of Nordic Socialism

> Ord har betydelser.

Lyft näsan från ordboken nu.

> Om ord tillskrivs vilken betydelse som helst av vem som helst blir konversation, meningsutbyte och utveckling i det närmaste omöjligt.

Reductio ad absurdum, sluta larva dig

> Jag vet att du inte vet vad planekonomin innebar eller att planekonomi och den långa raden av politiska utrensningar som skakade hela det ryska samhället inte är samma sak men än en gång, ord betyder saker. Planekonomin handlade i första hand om produktionsmål för tackjärn, järnmalm och kol, kritiskt viktiga resurser för industrialisering och sedermera kriget mot Tyskland. För det ändamålet var planekonomin effektiv.

Är du på riktigt?

Det är trivialt: Planekonomin i sig var slaveri, repression och massmord. Du kan inte stoppa dom sakerna i olika små fack och låtsas som att dom inte hör ihop även om det står på olika ställen i ordboken.

Det är skillnad på vad ordboken säger och vad utfallet blev.

Saxat rakt från wikipedia sidan om din fina femårsplan:

> the collectivization created a large-scale famine in the Soviet Union in which many millions died.

Vi pratar alltså om miljoner människor som helt enkelt dog som en del av planekonomin.

Men visst, "planekonomi" är ett ord som du kan rabbla fram. Grattis.

Här har du alltså egentligen diskvalificerat dig ur en seriös diskussion eftersom du inte har koll på grundläggande fakta i det du skriver och dessutom förringar du folkmord.

Nu är vi dock lustigt nog tillbaka till mitt ursprungliga inlägg där du har bevisat mig rätt på fler än ett sätt:

Det är precis samma mekanism bakom svälten i Ukraina 1932/1933, miljoner döda som försäkringskassans slöseri med skattepengar i dagens Sverige:

Folk tar helt enkelt dåliga beslut i kollektivistiska system. Dessutom leder det troligtvis till passiv och självgod dumhet ...

Sen vill du ha en separat diskussion huruvida den svenska utjämningspolitiken har skapat ekonomisk tillväxt. Det är nog en diskussion som är lite för komplex för dig med tanke på att du spyr ur dig kommunistisk propaganda från 1930-talet.

> jag kanske har en bakgrund inom ekonomisk historia?

Argument from authority, mera trams från självgode dig

Det är ju extra lustigt eftersom du dels inte kan din historia ordentligt och dels inte förstår grundläggande koncept som korrelation/kausalitet eller statistisk analys eftersom du skriver:

> Det jag däremot hittar är att de stater i USA som har högst andel människor med skandinaviskt ursprung är lite mer välbeställda än genomsnittet, dock har de fortfarande en genomsnittligt lägre hushållsinkomst än den i Sverige.

Jag pratade om en grupp (svenska invandrare i USA), då kan du inte börja jämföra hela stater.

Det här är ju pinsamt eftersom det var en av få konkreta saker som du har sagt men dessutom har du fel i sak eftersom enbart delstaten Minnesota (där flest svenskättlingar finns enligt denna karta) har en högre BNP/capita än Sverige. Dom andra relevanta staterna har ännu högre BNP/capita (North Dakota, Delaware, osv) ....

Här är en annan ganska bra artikel som också jämför just inkomster mellan Sverige och olika amerikanska stater som visar samma sak.

Hur var det med faktan nu? ; )

Det här är faktiskt ganska grundläggande saker ...

Jag orkar inte lista alla fel som du rabblar upp ...

> [Citation needed] - Jag tror du hittade på det här rakt av

Återigen bevisar du mitt första inlägg om tillit i samhället: "En tjuv tror att alla andra är tjuvar. En lögnare tror att alla andra är lögnare. Och agerar därefter."

För en djupare analys av just svensk tillväxt i relation till ekonomisk utjämning kan du läsa en bok (inte en ordbok alltså utan en bok som faktiskt har med ämnet att göra).

(Jag hittade också en förenklad online resurs här)
[https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Sweden%20Paper.pdf]

[Citat]:(https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Sweden%20Paper.pdf)

> If Americans with Swedish ancestry were to form their own country, their per capita GDP would be $56,900, more than $10,000 above the income of the average American. This is also far above Swedish GDP per capita, at $36,600. Swedes living in the USA are thus approximately 53 per cent more wealthy than Swedes (excluding immigrants) in their native country (OECD, 2009; US Census database).

[Citat]:(https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Sweden%20Paper.pdf)

> Rather than being the cause of Sweden’s social strengths, the high-tax welfare state might instead have been made possible by the hard-won Swedish stock of social capital. It was well before the welfare state, when hard work paid off, that a culture with a strong work ethic and strong trust and social cohesion developed. As discussed above, the modern system has eroded some of these norms.

Jag tänker inte ta upp upp allt här men i princip hela boken går ut på att bevisa att ditt påstående är kategoriskt felaktigt:

> Traditionellt har vår ekonomiska utjämningspolitik varit den enskilt största faktorn till Sveriges ekonomiska styrka.

Nej, det är helt enkelt inte sant.

Citat igen:

> Another popular notion is that Sweden´s phenomenal growth rate is closely tied to a period dominated by Social Democratic party rule and high taxes. In fact, between 1870 and 1936, the start of the social democratic era, Sweden had the highest growth rate in the industrialised world. Between 1936 and 2008, however, the growth rate was only ranked 18th out of 28 industrialised nations (Maddison, 2010).

Citat:

> The rapid growth of the state in the late 1960s and 1970s led to a large decline in Sweden’s relative economic performance. In 1975, Sweden was the 4th richest industrialised country in terms of GDP per head. By 1993, it had fallen to 14th.

Citat:

> Sweden developed state welfare provision during the first half of the 20th century, but the welfare institutions were financed by relatively low taxes. As noted previously, tax revenues were still only around 21 per cent of GDP in 1950 (Ekonomifakta, n. d.). Interestingly enough, the impressive social outcomes of Swedish society were evident already during this period. For example, in 1950, long before the high-tax welfare state, Swedes lived 2.6 years longer than Americans. Today the difference is 2.7 years (SCB database; US Department of Health and Human Services, 2009). It is also interesting that the relatively even income distribution in Sweden pre-dates the expansion of the welfare state.

Citat:

> A comparison of historical rates of income inequality in Sweden, the USA, Canada, France and Netherlands shows interesting results. Already by 1920, well before the existence of a welfare state, Sweden had amongst the lowest levels of inequality within this group of countries. Roine and Waldenström (2008)

Du försöker förenkla saker genom att säga:

> När socialismen rotade sig på allvar i Sverige (dvs senare hälften av 1800-talet [...]

Du kan inte bara rabbla saker ur ordboken om när arbetarepartiet grundades (1881) utan du måste jämföra deras faktiska politik (staten/skatterna/"utjämningen" växte rejält först efter WW2 och var som störst på 1970-talet) med vad utfallet blev vid det tillfället, dvs. det gick gradvis åt helvete ekonomiskt ju mer staten växte, såpass att sossarna runt 1980-1990 själva började montera ned stora delar. I början (1800-talet) var sossarna ute efter andra saker som allmän rösträtt och kunde inte påverka ekonomin i stort. Dessutom påvisar jag tillväxt innan partiet ens grundades!

Till och med socialdemokraterna övergav själva sin egen socialistiska ideologi (dvs. dom gav slutligen upp sin lilla dröm om att äga produktionsmedlen) på 1980-talet( Kanslihushögern) eftersom statens svällande storlek med höga skatter och omfördelningspolitik dämpade just ekonomisk tillväxt. Så hur kan det vara den största faktorn till "ekonomisk styrka"? Trams!

Svensk kultur och hårt arbete byggde Sverige! Folkhemmet var en acceptabel kostnad (fram tills nu när andra ska åka snålskjuts).

När man nu ska förstöra den svenska demografin och kulturen som gjorde Sverige framgångsrikt så kommer det gå som det går helt enkelt.

Dom andra sakerna som du tar upp (bostadsmarkad, "klyftor", osv) är småpotatis jämfört med det. Precis som tackjärn är småpotatis i relation till folkmord.

Till skillnad från postmoderna historieförfalskare så förstod socialdemokraterna själva precis vad det handlade om:

Citat, Tage Erlander i Valfrihetens samhälle (Tiden 1962), s. 82

> Därför kan vi angripa arbetslöshetsproblemen på ett helt annat sätt, i medvetande om att det vi gör är en sak som i varje fall inte influeras av skiljaktigheter i hudfärg eller religion utan att våra insatser får sin motivering uteslutande med tanke på arbetslöshetsfrågan själv. Därför bör vi måhända vara litet mera ödmjuka när vi nalkas det här problemet än vad vi många gånger kanske är.

Ödmjukhet ... kanske vore något för självgode dig som silar mygg och sväljer kameler?

Ridå.

Hi there Genecio -

Normally we would discourage this type of post as the moderator team has placed links to many solid sources of information in both the sidebar and the Wiki. However, it seems that many people do not know about this so:

1. Here's a list of Think Tanks
   
   
   
2. Here's a list of News and Informative websites
   
   
   
3. Here's a list of scholarly journals
   
   
   
4. And lastly, here are some links to past AMAs that we've hosted
   
   
   As to the video you linked, that's Peter Zeihan. He's a pretty popular and influential American author. His most famous book is called The Accidental Superpower and if you liked that talk he gives in the video, you'd probably like the book. It's less dry than many other books on the subject, which I appreciate.

> How do you square that description with his support for Trump policies that clearly clashed with his principles?

That's easy to answer, it's rule 4 of the excellent Dictator's Handbook, which is Pay your key supporters just enough to keep them loyal. The Republican Party depends heavily on the financial donations of 3 ultra-rich families to run elections and stay in power. These families despise Trump's personality, but love his policies (for the obvious reason these policies enrich them). It's not even a stretch to say that Ryan was told by the GOP leadership to support Trump to ensure the financial donations continued. I think resigning is probably the only principled action Ryan has ever taken.

I'm reading a book, The Dictator's Handbook, which does an excellent job answering exactly that question. Basically, all the people who were in a position to kill him were benefiting from keeping him in power. They knew it, and Shaka knew it. They wouldn't turn on him unless the rewards*%success of supporting someone else made for a more attractive offer.

Really a fascinating piece of work. Doesn't simply divide up history into "democracies" and "dictatorships", but argues that it's all a question of how many people's support are necessary for a ruler to stay in power. With democracies, obviously you need a lot of voters, though just how many can vary wildly from 51% down to just a few percent. With autocrats like this, it's usually little more than a couple military leaders and control over a few financial instruments. The population in general can go hang itself for all they care. Indeed, for modern autocracies whose money comes mostly from selling off natural resources to foreign corporations, the people actually populating the ruler's own country are often totally dispensable and little more than an occasional source of trouble.

I recommend The Dictators Handbook

For something to take the twinkle out of your eye when it comes to local government. I don't disagree with your sentiment, but I'm just tempering your sparkle for local government.

Another example would be China, where the "Federal" government is much more highly trusted then the local branches which have corruption leaking from every angle and no recourse from the locals except to make a trip to Beijing and implore the Party to come to their aid.

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics.

There's a solid summary on the internet provided by CGP Grey, The Rules for Rulers

I think I would also direct them to this video, made in the 1940s that ISM cartoon I'm sure people are quick to point out that communism is strongly implied in that video; but really, any authoritarian regime has these problems. Freedom and liberty should be of highest importance in this country. As a country, we've absolutely forgotten that.

> Scandinavian countries is pretty socialist

Absolutely not.

>but we are still doing pretty good.

I recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Debunking-Utopia-Exposing-Nordic-Socialism/dp/1944229396/

and listening to this podcast:

http://tomwoods.com/ep-717-debunking-utopia-exposing-the-myth-of-nordic-socialism/

Two things popped into my head right off the bat:

• The Dictator's Handbook - it doesn't specifically cover the process of decay and decline, but it's an excellent study on realpolitik, and its look into the behavior of people with power would probably be very helpful for constructing a failing government.
  
  
• The other one I thought of was Dan Carlin's Death Throes of the Republic. It's an audio book, and probably not as detailed as Gibbon's, but it's still excellent, especially if you want something in a different format.

> It's a view defended by Princeton political scientists

It is not.

/u/LouDorchen should listen to this too because I'll cover both of your points.

"US is an oligarchy, not a democracy" is the title given to it by the BBC blog section, "Echo Chambers" (subtitled, "Blogging global opinion, clearly"). The actual title of the study is "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens", and "oligarchy" is only mentioned three times in the entire text, and only as a comparison made by Jeffrey Winters in his book, Oligarchy:

> Most recently, Jeffrey Winters has posited a comparative theory of “Oligarchy,” in which the wealthiest citizens—even in a “civil oligarchy” like the United States—dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth and income protection.^1

As I replied here, a bad system is not an "oligarchy", and calling it an "oligarchy", as in, "we're screwed because the rich rule" is what's being edgy.

Source:

Cambridge link cited by the BBC article

Full study text

"Oligarchy" by Jeffrey Winters on Amazon

People such as Noam Chomsky have described the modern politician as essentially a middle manager. That is the interests of the majority actually has no influence on decisions made. Using the U.S as example:

" The report, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (PDF), used extensive policy data collected between 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the U.S. political system.

After sifting through nearly 1,800 U.S. policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile), and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the U.S. is dominated by its economic elite. " The same study found that the majority had 0 impact on political decisions.

Here from that bastion of left wing'ism /s Business insider:http://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4

Another important point, democracies are not necessarily different that autocracies in how leadership maintains power: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1098&v=rStL7niR7gs

20 min video. Enlightening , based on this book: https://www.amazon.ca/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

One paragraph is nowhere near enough but here's a few quick ones off the top of my head. The list is, I'm pretty sure, literally endless:

Instant and secure worldwide monetary system with minimal barrier to entry (need computer / device + internet) for account creation.


Trustless international identification system, backed by reputation and vouchers by any individual and or institution.


Crowdocracy style governance over economic, government, and civic projects va DAO contracts. Obviously trustless and secure voting mechanisms for any of these will be in place as well.


Endpoint to enpoint total supply chain transparency.


Total reorganization of financial sector--I have no idea what this will look like, but I imagine myriad new financial, insurance, underwriting, investing, and banking tools for anyone and everyone with lowest possible interest rates and no middlemen.


Total reorganization of judicial systems. I'm no lawyer so I have no clue, but juror contracts? Code of Law contracts where prosecution, defense and judge (or other third party) decide if case specifics satisfies the arguments for or against.


For the foreseeable future the goverment would be on board by setting up tax smart contracts. Wanna file your taxes? Either gov or citizen pays gas of a tax contract that calculates all taxes based on pre-designated wallet account types i.e. what Ethereum account numbers you own are what type of legal entity: Account[0] is designated 401k, account[1] s set up as a checking(obsolete term) / savings account, account[2] is an LLC and so on. Click the agree button and your taxes are calculated or filed for any given year.

Highly recommend anyone interested in this read The Dictator's Handbook - the book goes into interesting detail about the politics of how foreign aid really works.

Basically it's more often than not about paying foreign dictators for favours then it is about providing genuine aid.

I love it! Been hardcore fan of BBdM & Smith for so long now, it's good to see someone do a video on their work!

For anyone else, read: The Dictator's Handbook

I'm reading a couple of great books. The Dictator's handbook (https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845) and Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark (very good book to read right now- sigh)

Except that we misunderstand 'strong'. 'Strong majority governments' get their own way - but also make a lot of mistakes. Governments that are less dominant in relation to Parliament are typically more effective over the longer term.

I'd recommend 'The Blunders of our Governments' and 'Patterns of Democracy' as good starting points.

>They treat parties like completely static entities.

That's really interesting criticism given CGP Grey doesn't discuss any aspects of any of the hypothetical animals running in the elections. These videos are about the voting mechanics of each system.

If you're interested in how or why politicians change their tune to reflect the electorate see Rules for Rulers which is a distillation of the book The Dictator's Handbook.

I'm still reading this book but it is an eye opener.


CGP Grey did this video based on the book

It pretty much lays out why we're never going to see changes for the better (until the people rise up)

A lot of people think this, but they don't actually understand how some of these current European systems operate and how they got their.

I encourage people to check out this book , it explains this myth that Europe's socialist tendencies have actually worked to benefit rather than hinder , the function of their economies

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1944229396/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500447244&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=the+myth+of+nordic&dpPl=1&dpID=51rxydIMNdL&ref=plSrch

	

	

	

> # The odds of a military coup in Venezuela are going up. But coups can sometimes lead to democracy
>
>
>
> Image
> A man holds the new 100,000-bolivar note, right, to demonstrate its resemblance to the 100 note, in Caracas on Nov. 9. The new bill is worth about $30 on the official market and $2 on the black market. (Federico Parra/AFP)
>
> The news that Venezuela has started defaulting on its debts raises an important question: Can the current regime survive the likely economic fallout? Over the past few years, Venezuela has effectively become an authoritarian country. During his term in office, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has cracked down on dissidents by force and run roughshod over the country’s democratic institutions. Maduro has handpicked cronies to head a constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution, disabled the opposition-controlled parliament, and made it prohibitively difficult to unseat him.
>
> In such circumstances, as I argue in my new book, “The Democratic Coup d’État”, the domestic military plays a key role in determining whether a country will move to real democracy. Where the military sides with the regime, as large factions of the military did in Syria in 2011, the dictatorship often reigns supreme. But where the military sides with the people, democracy becomes a real possibility. Here’s how that may work out in Venezuela.
>
> The Venezuelan opposition is hopelessly ineffective
>
> In a different world, the political opposition might be able to take advantage of Venezuela’s dire financial situation. Now that the government is actually defaulting, rather than just seeking to delay debt payments, it is going to have a very hard time borrowing more money on international markets. Venezuela has already had a hard time keeping the lights on. Over the near-to-medium term, things are likely to get significantly worse, generating opportunities for political dissenters.
>
> However, the political opposition in Venezuela has been unable to come together to work against the Maduro government. Opposition parties suffered an unexpected electoral loss in the regional elections earlier last month. They remain hopelessly divided, having spent more time and energy fighting each other rather than Maduro’s regime. These fractures within the opposition have provided momentum to Maduro.
>
> Now, the military is a key player
>
> With the opposition paralyzed, the most realistic threat to Maduro is his own military, which, until now, has remained loyal to him.
>
> Maduro is well-aware of the looming threat from his armed forces. Like his predecessor Hugo Chávez, Maduro has engaged in strategic engineering to ensure that his military stays loyal. He has appointed cronies to the military’s top brass (elevating 195 officers to the rank of general in a single day), showered them with substantial privileges, and appointed an “anti-coup” committee to purge officers with questionable allegiances.
>
> These strategies may have reduced the possibility of a military coup, but they have not eliminated it. The benefits doled out by Maduro have mostly gone to the military’s top brass. The mid-level officers and rank-and-file have been marginalized by Maduro and continue to languish along with the rest of Venezuela’s population.
>
> As a result, these soldiers have a significant incentive to reconsider their loyalties. Discontent has already been brewing among the ranks as growing numbers of officers join the uprising against Maduro. Aware of this dynamic, the opposition has been deliberately courting the sympathies of the domestic military, with Julio Borges, the head of the opposition-controlled parliament, asking the armed forces to “break their silence.”
>
> Still, don’t expect change right way
>
> At this point in time, a full-blown coup is unlikely because the current levels of discontent within the military’s ranks don’t appear to be strong enough. If a small cabal of isolated officers decided to go ahead with a haphazard coup attempt, it might even strengthen the regime. Maduro could emulate the tactics of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who utilized a foiled coup attempt against him in July 2016 as an excuse for intensifying his crackdown on the political opposition.
>
> Yet, as Maduro’s stranglehold continues to intensify, disenchantment with the regime could reach a tipping point where a critical mass of military officers decide to abandon ship. If ordered to escalate the use of force on civilian protesters, the armed forces may refuse regime orders and let the revolution take its course or even turn their arms against the very government they’ve been tasked to defend.
>
> Look at what happened in Serbia, Romania, and numerous other countries
>
> In Serbia, the dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević collapsed only after his military withdrew its support from his government following persistent street protests. Deprived of military backing, Milošević had no choice but to acknowledge defeat. In Romania, the revolution against the Ceauşescu dictatorship was made possible only by the withdrawal of the military forces tasked with suppressing the rebellion and protecting the regime. Although the military initially sided against the civilian protesters, they were eventually overwhelmed by the tide of discontent and quietly stepped aside to enable the overthrow of the regime in favor of democracy. As I demonstrate in my book, other countries as diverse as Portugal, Mali, Colombia, Burkina Faso, Britain, Guinea-Bissau, Guatemala, Peru and the United States have all undergone democratization after their military forces turned their arms against their authoritarian governments.
>
> A coup against Maduro could lead to a transition away from authoritarianism. However, it might also generate significant side effects. Other cases of transition suggest that Venezuela might struggle for a long time with the reverberations of the inevitable social and political turmoil that a coup would produce. The coup may also beget future coups, particularly in an already coup-prone country like Venezuela.
>
> Vladimir Lenin was no democrat. However, he got one thing right: “No revolution of the masses can triumph without the help of a portion of the armed forces that sustained the old regime.” The Venezuelan military is the levee that’s keeping the democratic movement at bay to protect the Maduro regime. Only if the military breaks can the river of democracy jump the banks.
>
> Ozan Varol is a rocket scientist turned law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School. His new book, “The Democratic Coup d’État,” was published by Oxford University Press. You can follow his writing on his website at https://ozanvarol.com.

• • • • • -
          
          Owner | Source Code | Stats

As Jeff Winters says in his book "Oligarchy" oligarchs are interested in the preservation of their wealth. One kind of threat to them is other oligarchs, another is masses of people, another is government that wants to take away their wealth.

As Bernie Sanders said, sitting behind Trump at the inauguration were billionaire after billionaire after billionaire. One most prominent is Sheldon Adelson who will be "directing" Trump's middle east policy. Rebecca Mercer and the Koch brothers are three behind-the-scenes oligarchs pulling the strings. Mercer is particularly involved in picking cabinet members. Look them up. And, yes, there were/are many oligarchs behind Hillary.

For a nuanced explanation analysis of oligarchy try Winters' book:

https://www.amazon.com/Oligarchy-Jeffrey-Winters/dp/0521182980

Or go to Cambridge Univ press, if you don't want to use Amazon.

Fascinating and relevant book on how people get into power and remain there.

The book argues that the difference between tyrants and democrats is just a convenient fiction. Governments do not differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters; or backs that need scratching. The size of this group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with; and the quality of life or misery under them. The picture the authors paint is not pretty. But it just may be the truth; which is a good starting point for anyone seeking to improve human governance.

You'll probably find a lot of things in online-newspaper-article comments that'll make you want to hang yourself too, but the rather large number of people who're pinching the bridge of their nose and wondering what the hell they ever thought they were doing voting for Tony aren't the ones commenting in those places. :-)

The whole astonishing-hatred-for-Gillard thing is, ONCE AGAIN, Australia being a pale shadow of the USA. Look at what US right-wingers say about Hillary Clinton, and bing, there you go, Julia-hatred before the carbon paper.

(Hillary's pretty god-damned horrible in objective terms, but utterly wonderful compared with more popular candidates there, at least until Elizabeth Warren and Al Franken are real presidential prospects.)

The Kevin thing was... well, OK, he really is a prissy perfectionist who's an absolute bastard to work with. That's not why he got kicked out, but it's why all of the people nearest him disliked him, and shit like that's what dooms your political career.

(The Dictator's Handbook has an interesting and highly defensible explanation of why people stay in power: http://www.amazon.com/The-Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Politics/dp/1610391845 . Boiled down, it's the duh-quote "only the people who do what is necessary to stay in power, stay in power", but there is of course more to it than that.)

No book will prepare you for law enforcement, it has to be touched, smelled, heard, and seen. If you're already a cop then the best thing you can do to be better is to be a well rounded human being and books can help with that.

Here's the recommended reading from some of the prior threads I was able to find in the sub.

1. On Killing
   
2. On Combat
   
3. Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement
   
4. Intro to Criminal Evidence
   
5. Blue Blood
   
6. 400 Things Cops Should Know
   
7. Cop: A True Story
   
8. [Verbal Judo] (https://www.amazon.com/Verbal-Judo-Gentle-Persuasion-Updated/dp/0062107704/)
   
9. [What Cops Know] (https://www.amazon.com/What-Cops-Know-Connie-Fletcher/dp/0671750402/)
   
10. [Into the Kill Zone] (https://www.amazon.com/Into-Kill-Zone-Deadly-Force/dp/0787986038/)
    
11. Training at the Speed of Life
    
12. Sharpening the Warrior's Edge
    
13. The Gift of Fear
    
14. Deadly Force Encounters
    
15. The Book of Five Rings
    
    I've read a good portion of the above listed. I highly recommend Emotional Survival and going to see one of Gilmartin's talks if he's in your area. Below are a few of my personal suggestions.
    
    
16. Meditations
    
17. Blink - Not sure if I buy it, but interesting to think about.
    
18. [Armor] (https://www.amazon.com/Armor-John-Steakley/dp/0886773687/)
    
19. Iron John: A Book About Men
    
20. The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
    

So MS-13 is simply a FedEx of drugs? I doubt that assumption and what is taking place in the whole of Latin America goes beyond drugs. It's a cultural item that is deeply complex and I won't get into.

Being resistant to bribes is true but MS-13 and alike don't care at this point. The can access, move, transport with much ease once on US soil. I agree drawing attention isn't the best avenue but we're not dealing with like-minded people here.

The question is: What is their goal? I don't think it has a business plan on file with the SBA but I would think it is to spread for many base ideals. Continue recruitment and repeat. Unless someone has a solution handy, I don't think this stops until.... as I noted earlier by a few researcher publications. Cited below.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767923057/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1455583685/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

You can start here. Then move onto here to address what you just said. For fun you can then move onto here. Once you've got all that under your belt you can learn how politics really works by reading this.

Good luck! But I urge you not make comments like "Nazis were left wing" until you've combated your ignorance with those books! Don't do it for me, do it for yourself and your country!

Some in the Democratic Party call Nordic Countries socialism.. I am saying they are not socialist by definition.

So technically yes it is brainwashing to believe Nordic Countries are socialism and that is a tactic of the left today in the USA..

I DO believe socialism is inherently evil.. and we shouldn’t be making romance with the word and theory. shall I explain? The definition of socialism is: a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

So if you are implying that believing socialism is evil by definition is a brainwashing then I have to strongly disagree. Its morality.. I believe in morality..

This means theft in my opinion.. theft.. I think it’s evil to steal something from someone who didn’t produce it and give it to someone who didn’t produce it..

Steven Crowder presents the argument very well in the video below.

Please watch this video because I don’t have the time to type it all... thank you.

I can not recall one true successful true socialist state.. the Nordic countries gained their wealth thorough capitalism and some one else in this thread explained it also.. about Norway’s trillion dollar energy fund.. there’s also a great book on the topic too..

Let me state one more time...
Socialism by definition is evil

https://youtu.be/xF2lFGyADtM

https://www.amazon.com/Debunking-Utopia-Exposing-Nordic-Socialism/dp/1944229396

Seems like you're interested in legal policy and history more than the law itself, and you have a highly romanticized idea of what law school actually is. Very little of what you find interesting is taught in law school, and law school is more just mind numbing statutes and common law rules that are then applied to fake fact patterns.

This book might be up your alley. I haven't read it, but the reviews seem decent. Scalia is a very good writer, even if you don't subscribe to his worldview.

There won't be because the point of the money is to be a bribe to be stolen. If Trudeau just came out and said he was bribing such and such dictator people would react just like they do for the sales of weapon to Saudi Arabia. Instead he says he giving charitable help and looks away as it is stolen.

If you are interested in the details there's a great chapter about it in The dictator's handbook.

HuffPo even plugs his book, where he wants to import the political system from the greatest country on earth... New Zealand.

Maybe he should go back there instead of Canada or Britain like he's been "threatening"?

I'm trying to remember and I can't -- it has something to do with the way he restructured cabinet to create subcommittees, or perhaps with creating the "p & p" committee that effectively replaced cabinet as the core decision-making body. In any case, the key text that explains the whole history is Donald Savoie, Governing from the Centre, but I seem to recall some interesting stuff can be found in John English, Just Watch Me

the Law - Frédéric Bastiat

The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Santayana - Russell Kirk

The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay

Top poem, and one of the best short explanations of conservatism: The Gods of the Copybook Headings - Rudyard Kipling

Thanks for the response. For anyone reading, the books thenamestiki referenced (which both look worth a read):

• Oligarchy (Jeffrey Winters)
  
• The Enduring Debate (Canon, Coleman, Mayer)
  
  If you can explicitly identify the Princeton-or-Harvard study you mentioned, I'd also be interested in having a look at that.

Here's the link:
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics-ebook/dp/B005GPSLHI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Pretty good deal!

I've recently finished the The Dictator's Handbook. It argues that most corruption is all about maintaining power. You need to support the people that support you. In a democracy, this means helping your constituents. In a dictatorship (and even some little noticed areas of democracies like town governments) that means giving gifts to those under you who's support you need. Typically this is just free money but it could be tax breaks, cushy jobs, regulatory changes, or other positions of power.

Every form of government on this planet has to bend to the will and respond to the needs of the “Keys to Power.” If you haven’t read the book yet, you should. This CGP Grey video is quite well done and explains.

https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

Also you should remember that good leadership has existed and will exist again in this country. How about offering a fucking solution instead of regurgitating the same old speech?

I would propose we get somebody who promises to suck corporate cock, like Trump, but is secretly on the people’s side. Once they get elected they do a 180 and become the next trust buster. An education revolutionary. An energy revolutionary. Somebody to really give these fucks what-for and give the power back to the people.

The only time that happens is when the military allows the people to storm the established regime - almost always because the established regime didn't give the military leaders enough money. Typical people cannot, have not, and will never destroy a standing state army.

Relevant CGP Grey video for clarity, but honestly the book Dictator's Handbook is much more thorough.

NB: I recommend this video and this book. They're amazing.

The Book he based that off of is called The Dictator's Handbook. Its his primary source, and is fantastic.

Been listening to it on my way to work over the last 3 weeks.

Read it, or be like me and listen to it.

You both should read these awesome books:

Anatomy of the state

The Law

What government has done with our money

and finally:

The ethics of liberty

That's most of what politics is. The more good you do for the people, the less good you can do for those who control the people and in turn, the less power you have.

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

(Toi aussi t'as lu The Dictator's Handbook? Excellent bouquin que je recommande à tous ;) )

I was a fan of The Dictators Handbook.

Kissinger's On China was also very good.

Foreign Aid is such a complex topic.
I found that de Mesquita's tongue-in-cheek book "The Dictator's Handbook"
(https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845) has an interesting angle on that topic. When focus is on the motives of the aid givers, some seemingly absurd results and situations seem less absurd.

No, I'm saying that political leaders have similar incentives in most societies, and that this often leads to poor behaviour. This book is a good summary of why this happens.

No two individuals are the same, but we know that if we want a job done that offering money is a good way to get a whole variety of individuals to offer to work for us. That doesn't mean they are "all the same" though.

Here's another great Thomistic resource: http://www.amazon.com/Morality-Politics-Edition-Hackett-Classics/dp/0872206637

The dictator's handbook... is a great explanation.

The Dictator’s Handbook

This is a great book for understanding why governments do what they do.

Peter has talked about a lot of these things happening for awhile! He has a great way of putting things into simple terms.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MIdUSqsz0Io

The Accidental Superpower: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1455583685/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_C27syb4GWZTAA

Its not flawed. It's true. And the further we get from being an actual democracy, the truer it gets.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

From an actual power standpoint, lobbyists and major donors have way more influence than a vote does. Read more of the dynamics of why that is:

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

20 min video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
Summing up an excellent book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dictators-Handbook-Bruce-Bueno-Mesquita/dp/1610391845/

And here too. Not that facts actually matter to these economic illiterates. Nah, better pretend like prosperity came from the welfare state without actually learning the history.

I second this. Before I left the church, I never gave much thought to this since it seemed to be a given. One book that I have read after leaving the church has, in fact, transformed how I see the U.S.

https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Superpower-Generation-American-Preeminence/dp/1455583685

In short all of the advantages that have allowed the U.S. to be in the position that it is in is rooted in is unique geography that is not found anywhere in the world. I do not agree with all of the authors conclusions on the implications of those advantages but it is worth a read.

For an academic competition, I had to study the different political views throughout history and I read the coolest book. There is another covering the philosophy as well. They are called the politics book and the philosophy book, respectively. There is even an economics version. Here is the politics one. http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Book-Ideas-Simply-Explained/dp/1465402144

No, that's a very broad overview of the latest findings in the Political Sciences on how Dictatorships work. The Dictator's Handbook is a pretty informative book on the structure and ,holding of power. Power is rooted in voting blocs for Democracies and money for everything else. Any structure used to maintain or use power results in governance.

This governance structure is something deeply wired into humanity. This was the conclusion to another book I read called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. The premise of the book is that there has to be a reason why Homo Sapiens came to be the dominate Homo species on this planet. And it was the best guess of the author that it was Homo Sapiens ability to collectively believe in fictional structures that allowed them to unite in groups bigger than tribes. These fictional structures are what we today would know as laws, governments, states, nations, corporations, etc.

It was a long way around, but in short you can't separate government and power. One concept always induces another. Its a fundamental part of human nature.

Every party has its connections with data miners and manipulators. They can't afford not to. It's the new frontier. I'm not defending it, only acknowledging it. No party is going to want to concede an edge to their competitors.

That is where he's going with it though; limited government, direct democracy, technology based.

The irony being that Carswell is a huge fan but he's going to be excluded from the first DD party. The schadenfreude is going to be strong.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/End-Politics-Birth-iDemocracy-x/dp/1849544220

i am not a german and honestly look around you and ask yourself, was this first invented in the US?

and it was, 80% of the time. look at your calender on the wall for example, the coating, the production methods, the chemical refinery of the colors, the software it was made of, the software of the production machines, the printers, the cutting machines, the delivery systems, .. that just one fucking calender

from social progress to technology to arts to science - the US is leader in every single one of these areas. the EU is very close but it is not formally one country so no. you would bend over and let a dictatorship known for the production output of socks fuck you?

that is hilarious

i recommend you:

Ian Morris: Why the West Rules for Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnqS7G3LmMo

Peter Watson - Ideas: History of Humankind
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0753820897/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i17

Peter Zeihan Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feU7HT0x_qU
the book to it - https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Superpower-Generation-American-Preeminence/dp/1455583685

Andrew Moravcsik - What is a Superpower? What is Power? Why the EU is the 2nd Superpower of the 21st century.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPPyGyeh-o&t

Haven't read it myself, but I think this book would fit the bill.

Ok, j'avoue avoir un peu exagéré et simplifié sur cette expression.

Je suis pas d'accord par contre sur le fond. Oui bien sur la majorité des êtres humains sont capables d'empathie et l'utilise, on serait pas ou on en est aujourd'hui sans ça. Là où je suis pas d'accord c'est de dire que les positions de pouvoirs sont maintenu par des gens si différents de la personne lambda.
Par contre maintenir une position de pouvoir oblige un certain changement de comportement, c'est aussi ça qui est prédit par la théorie des jeux.

C'est vulgarisé ici : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Edit : tiré du bouquin : https://www.amazon.fr/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845 )

I HIGHLY recommend "The Dictators Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" as an introduction to my outlook on power structure. From my interpretation of the text, it shows how politics often boil down to incentive systems, and how they are manipulated by the actors within.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics-ebook/dp/B005GPSLHI

The reason for this is all very simple. The Bridge people did not sufficiently pay off the right people in Uganda's government. It is very common tactic in these autocratic countries to demand payment in exchange for allowing the organization to provide aid. The reason is that the dictator has to pay off key people under him. It happens in cases like this especially, where the aid is not a physical thing like money or food, etc., that can itself be easily siphoned off by those in control. In this case, the schools probably compete with other profitable ventures controlled by key people in the government, and the loss of revenues has to be made up somehow.

Zuckerberg and Gates refused to pay up, so now they are shut down. Whatever reasons the government has come up with for the shutdown are just cover for the real reason.

The Dictator's Handbook explains in more detail the dynamics of how this works. https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

You could look at something like the DK Politics Book for an overview of a lot of different concepts and problems within politics. It's in the style of an encyclopaedia, which means it's pretty neutral.

> But it would suck the least for the USA

Sounds a lot like what ...
The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder
Peter Zeihan says. I'm sure these are common ideas, but his 2 books really lays it out clearly with recent references.

All three of the above aspects in comparative politics are discussed in detail in the Comparative Politics textbook edited by Lichbach.

http://www.amazon.ca/Comparative-Politics-Rationality-Culture-Structure/dp/0521712343/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

If you're really interested in learning more, see if your University library carries this book, there's a whole chunk of the textbook about those three categories.

But the fact the it is a dictatorship turns it into a big disadvantage. At least for everyone that isn't part of the ruling class.

The source of the mysterious ozone-killing emissions is confirmed: China

Air quality worsening in China’s Yangtze River Delta in 2018, figures show


For all the faults democracy has, the simple fact that the ruler has to keep the majority of the population happy instead of just paying off a small number of key individuals to stay in power is an immeasurable advantage.

An excellent source that explain the rules that rule rulers.

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

Also good start into the matter:

The Rules for Rulers

If you're trying to be fancy about it you do it like this:
The Dictators Handbook


Put the words you want to be a link in between brackets [example] and then put the URL in parenthesis directly after [example](example url)

This goes on everywhere, throughout time. For anyone wanting to read more, I recommend The Dictator's Handbook . When I see these stories now, I recall passages from the book. For some quotes:
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/16555815-the-dictator-s-handbook-why-bad-behavior-is-almost-always-good-politics

https://www.amazon.ca/Debunking-Utopia-Exposing-Nordic-Socialism/dp/1944229396

I wish I had enough money to buy a copy for every Reddit user.

I am somewhat abhorred (and a little impressed) that you made it through such a long treatise on natural law without once mentioning the writing of St. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote a lot on the topic.

Here is a brief introduction to his writings

Here is the book my wife had for some of her pre-law classes on the topic that I picked up one daya nd enjoyed reading

Ok, then you have to read this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Law-Frederic-Bastiat/dp/1612930123/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375719601&sr=1-1&keywords=the+law+bastiat

Wunna set a date and have a discussion afterwards?

In fact, judging by the summaries of those two books I would recommend to you, Winner Take All Politics and Oligarchy

Sounds like you have a handbook - is it for dictators?

https://www.amazon.ca/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

I'll have to put it on my list. I would also recommend "The Dictator's Handbook" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.

https://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010 (mostly for an overview of how systems of society drive behavior for better or worse)

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

https://www.amazon.com/War-Society-Europe-Regime-1618-1787/dp/0750916036 (mostly for the understanding on how economics developed into political power in the context of taxation to pay soldiers)

https://www.amazon.com/Oil-Curse-Petroleum-Development-Nations-ebook/dp/B007AIXLIS

​

And given the context, probably Hobbes.

Money is a powerful incentive. I'm horrified and disgusted by it as well, but unfortunately it just shows that there is a price at which all morals are abandoned. This is what autocracies do and we let them because it's in our best interests to.

Edit: This may be a good reminder to look at CGPGrey's video on how leaders stay in power and track the similarities with recent conflicts in Venezuela and Syria. Also check out the book the video's based on.

https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1610391845/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497164331&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=dictators+handbook&dpPl=1&dpID=511siLPTlwL&ref=plSrch

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

(I hope that's how you post links in Reddit)

Anyways, really good book, similar to Machiavelli, but with enough contemporary examples, and explanations to feel unique. Can't recommend it enough.

Sure.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Battle-Bretton-Woods-University/dp/0691149097

And of course,
https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Superpower-Generation-American-Preeminence/dp/1455583685

This shit all reads like it's straight out of The Dictator's Handbook. They have all these rules and bylaws pretty much specifically set up to raise the barriers to participation in the association and thereby keep themselves in power (however local and limited that power may be).

You should read The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics to squash any remaining faith on the human race regarding politics.

Lol, read this book then get back to me.

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics https://www.amazon.com/dp/1610391845/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fYRJBb3ZY9RNV

Well you can start with Amazon

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

or

How to Rule the World: A Handbook for the Aspiring Dictator

Political Scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita provides some insight into this question in The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

His work uses game theory to look at who leaders depend on to stay in power, and how large those factions are relative to the general population amongst other things. I found it to be an interesting and accessible read.

Yea, this is what he recommended: https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

I'm sorry I missed it. Edward Luttwak's legendary Coup d'Etat, and de Mesquita and Smith's The Dictator's Handbook are also good sources if you didn't make it.

Machiavelli is, of course, the Baseline for the aspiring tyrant.

You're missing the forest for the trees.

Even if you suppose more real issue dimensions (which is another way in which FPTP restricts voter choice), the Democratic Party will move toward policy n-dimensional policy positions that appeal to greater densities of voters. Given how voters are distributed, there are more voters available by moving away from the Greens than moving toward them in this n-dimensional policy space.

Kiln Prototype

=
I recommend The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

You don’t properly understand what a Meritocracy is or would be.

Here’s a couple of books defining a Meritocratic system.

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Meritocracy-Political-Book-ebook/dp/B018W0ULVM/ref=nodl_
https://www.amazon.com/Meritocracy-Party-Political-Book-ebook/dp/B0045OUHP0/ref=nodl_

>I don't understand how his generals don't smell the weakness in him and stage a coup.

Video : here you go, Rules For Rulers.

Book Mentioned in the video Above : The Dictator's Handbook.

I read one of his books for my degree and plagiarised was influenced by much of its commentary, so I have a personal debt of gratitude to owe Anthony King.

I just finished reading "The Law" by Frederick Bastiat. It's a very good read, and takes you right along the progression from property rights to the invalidity of the state. It does, however, require thought on the reader's part to arrive at the conclusion that the state is force, and consequently illegitimate.

The book explains that everybody has a natural right ("from God") to lawful self-defense, that the law exists as a collective organization of this individual right, and that the proper purpose of law should be to serve justice. Consequently, the law cannot be used in circumstances where the individual could not use lawful force, and for the state to do so would sacrifice justice.

The author explains how law becomes perverted for the purposes of "lawful plunder," which he defines as taking what rightfully belongs to one citizen to give to another to whom it does not belong. Plunder benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself could not do without committing a crime.

The author explains that this lawful plunder has two roots, stupid greed, and false philanthopy. He says that justice has precise limits, but philanthopy is infinite, and when this becomes the state's job, the state has no limits. When the law is used for anything but justice, it subverts its own objective.

Some people will never reach the conclusion that the state's use of force is illegitimate. No matter how many preceding ideas they like and agree with, no matter how many times you explain the consequences of agreeing with the ideas you've explained, they will fight, and kick, and scream, and deny the logical conclusion of those ideas.

EDIT: Amazon has the book in audio form, among others.

I've been sort of recreationally fascinated by similar thoughts for a couple years now.

Some readings/topics I've stumbled across, not necessarily mathematical but aligned to your theme:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom

My view that the EU is bloated comes from this book.

I rate Anthony King highly.

Hi.

I shall be starting:

'Wanderings in South America' by Charles Waterton soon.

Followed by:

'The British Constitution' by Anthony King.

I think I've found a book for you to at least get you started on why oligarchies are really bad and why they exist.

Have you ever read Governing from the Centre, and if so, how relevant do you think it still is?

As a percentage of GDP only two central African nations make less off of trade with other nations. The American economy is Americans buying goods and services from other Americans.

Global trade could end tomorrow and the US economy would chug along. Everyone else would enter a dark age.

https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Superpower-Generation-American-Preeminence/dp/1455583685

http://www.amazon.com/The-Politics-Book-DK-Publishing/dp/1465402144/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376765200&sr=8-1&keywords=the+politics+book

Source: pages 118-119 of this book

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

You're probably referring to this CGP Grey video based on The Dictator's Handbook.

I just finished The Dictator's Handbook and it is one of the most insightful books on politics and power that I have ever come across.

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

It's all in the handbook.

https://smile.amazon.de/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=3T574P788Y3V1&keywords=dictators+handbook&qid=1567456728&s=gateway&sprefix=dictators+hand%2Caps%2C181&sr=8-1

​

habe es selbst noch nicht gelesen, wird aber sehr hoch gelobt.

https://www.amazon.de/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Politics/dp/1610391845

Here's an Amazon link

And on Audible