71: Taking and Keeping Power: The Dictator's Handbook

“Democracies are not lucky. They do not attract civic-minded leaders by chance. Rather, they attract survival-oriented leaders who understand that, given their dependence on many essentials, they can only come to and stay in power if they figure out the right basket of public goods to provide.”

In this episode of Made You Think, Nat and Neil are joined by Adil Majid to discuss their key takeaways from The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. The Dictator's Handbook delivers five rules for staying in power and succeeding within the political system.

In this episode of Made You Think, we cover a wide range of topics including:

• How dictators get in power and stay in power
• The Selectorate theory
• Taxation and why leaders are so fond of taxes
• FIFA, Olympics, and giving bribes for more power
• Decentralized finance as an alternative to the current financial system

And much more. Please enjoy, and make sure to follow Nat, Neil, and Adil on Twitter and share your thoughts on the episode.

Links from the Episode

Mentioned in the Show

• Episode 7: A Crash Course in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cryptocurrency (0:43)
• Episode 33: An Animal of No Significance: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari – Part I (1:25)
• Episode 34: Money, Power, and God: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari – Part II (1:40)
• Selectorate theory (4:57)
• Assets of the Federal Reserve (22:00)
• Ba'ath Party; Saddam Hussein (29:05)
• Caliphate (54:11)
• Arab Spring (1:11:10)
• Democracy Index 2017 (1:12:28)
• ConstitutionDAO (1:16:01)
• Corruption in FIFA (1:15:43)
• Bribing in Olympics (1:15:43)
• Marijuana episode (1:24:27)
• A Tale of Two Talebs (1:33:19)
• Ledger (1:59:31)

Books Mentioned

• The 48 Laws of Power (2:09) (Nat’s Book Notes)
• The Sovereign Individual (4:36) (Book Episode) (Nat's Book Notes)
• Seeing Like a State (4:37) (Nat's Book Notes)
• Antifragile (1:31:38