Hi all, I found an interesting political video on the basic "rules" for how rulers, kings, dictators, presidents, etc. remain in power for as long as possible. It is based on the book The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. Predictably, its premises are quite Machiavellian.
The video has a section on dictatorships and one on democracies, although it can apply to business, churches, civil society leadership bodies, and basically any organization that has power of some kind. What I found interesting is that the basic rules don't change fundamentally, which were described as:
1. Keep your key supporters happy
2. Look after the treasure and keep the wealth flowing
3. Minimize the number of key supporters necessary to stay in power
Reading between the lines of the video with a ponerogenic lens, I couldn't ignore that most governments by default seem to soften from their ideological extremes and degenerate into de facto oligarchies. I also found it interesting that the most "stable" governments tend to be either extremely dictatorial or extremely "democratic", which countries in the middle most susceptible to coups and revolutions. I don't think it describes ALL off the phenomena seen in politics obviously, and reading Ponerology definitely adds a dimension to the video.
https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs
The video has a section on dictatorships and one on democracies, although it can apply to business, churches, civil society leadership bodies, and basically any organization that has power of some kind. What I found interesting is that the basic rules don't change fundamentally, which were described as:
1. Keep your key supporters happy
2. Look after the treasure and keep the wealth flowing
3. Minimize the number of key supporters necessary to stay in power
Reading between the lines of the video with a ponerogenic lens, I couldn't ignore that most governments by default seem to soften from their ideological extremes and degenerate into de facto oligarchies. I also found it interesting that the most "stable" governments tend to be either extremely dictatorial or extremely "democratic", which countries in the middle most susceptible to coups and revolutions. I don't think it describes ALL off the phenomena seen in politics obviously, and reading Ponerology definitely adds a dimension to the video.
https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs
