No matter how bright the rays of any sun-king,
No one leads alone.
A king cannot build roads alone, enforce laws alone,
cannot defend the nation or defend himself alone.
The power of the king is not to act, but to make others act in his place,
with the treasure in his chest.
A king needs an army and someone to lead it, a treasure and someone to collect it,
a law and someone to enforce it.
The individuals necessary to achieve these imperatives are, for the king, the keys to power.
All the reforms you want to introduce are just fantasy
if the keys do not follow your instructions.
In a dictatorship, where might makes right, the number of keys to power is limited,
maybe just a dozen generals, bureaucrats and local leaders.
Rally them to your cause, and you will gain the power to lead, but never forget:
if they are dissatisfied, they will replace you.
All countries fall on a spectrum, ranging from those where a leader needs only a few key supporters,
to those where the leader needs much more.
It is this origin of power that makes countries different,
but whether there are many keys, or just a few, the rules are the same.
First: rally key supporters to your cause.
With them, you have the power to act, you have everything.
Without them, you have nothing.
In order to keep these keys to power, you must
second, control the treasure.
You must ensure that your treasure is taken and redistributed to you, for your hard work,
and redistributed to the keys you need to maintain your position.
This constitutes your real job as a leader:
find the best way to collect and redistribute resources.
So that the house of cards on which your throne rests does not collapse.
But you, a budding benevolent dictator, may want to help your citizens,
but it is the control you have over the treasure that attracts rivals to you,
that's why you need to keep the keys loyal.
But the treasure in your chest is limited, the wealth your country can produce is limited,
so be careful: every coin of the treasury spent on the citizens will not cultivate the loyalty of the keys.
Thus, making a nice gesture by spending the wealth of the nation for the good of the citizens,
it's giving your rivals a tool to seize power.
The part of the treasure that is poured out for roads, universities, hospitals,
is part of the treasure that a rival can promise to key supporters, as long as they switch to his side.
Benevolent dictators can spend their own share on citizens.
but the keys must get their reward, for,
even if you have surrounded yourself with the most faithful and angelic collaborators,
They have the same problem as you, just one rung lower.
To be a key to power is to occupy a position of power.
They too must guard against rivals coming from below, or from above,
this is why they must spend the treasure they receive to maintain their position.
The faithful and the idiots will stay by your side no matter what,
but intelligent key supporters will always examine the balance of power,
ready to change allegiance at the slightest sign of weakness in this changing network of alliances.
In countries where there are few keys, the rewards are great
and when violence reigns, the most ruthless are attracted,
and angels who do good deeds will lose against demons who do nothing.
So buy yourself all the loyalty you can, because loyalty in everything
kind of dictatorial organizations, is fundamental.
For the leader, at least. This is dictatorship:
A king who needs his court to raise the treasury to maintain the loyalty of the court and to continue to increase the treasury.
This is the self-sufficient core of power. Everything outside is contingent.
A king who has too many key supporters has serious problems:
their expenses, but also their contradictory needs and their rivalries
are difficult to balance. The more complex the financial and social network between the keys,
the more likely it is that a rival will attract a sufficient number of collaborators.
On average, the more key supporters a leader has, the shorter his reign,
Which brings us to the third rule of leaders:
minimize the number of key supporters.
If a key in your yard becomes useless, its skills are no longer required,
you have to get rid of it. After a successful coup d'état,
the new dictator will purge those who helped him come to power,
while working with the minions of the previous dictator,
which may seem, from the outside, to be a very bad idea.
Why abandon your revolutionary comrades? Don't the supporters of the former dictator represent a danger?
But the keys necessary to take power are not the keys necessary to maintain it.
Continuing to employ someone who was important in the past, but who is useless now,
it is the same as spending money on citizens.
Treasure wasted unnecessarily.
And by definition, a dictator who succeeds in a coup d'état
promised more wealth to those who would come over to his side.
But the size of the chest hasn't changed, so the treasure must be shared by fewer people.
A dictator who influences the right keys, who takes control of the treasure,
reduces unnecessary expenses, kills unnecessary keys,
will have a long and successful career.
By seeing the structure in the open, you may feel motivated to get started,
and control a country for your benefit and that of your acolytes,
Or you may feel defeated, wanting to do good, but realizing the structural obstacles,
turn to democracy for your salvation.
Well then, let's talk about leaders as representatives.
You certainly still have superb dreams about the utopia you want to found,
but no one leads alone,
and this is never more true than in a democracy.
Presidents and prime ministers must negotiate with their senates and parliaments
and vice versa, and they each have their own key supporters to manage.
In a well-designed democracy, power is divided among many and is taken, not by force,
but by words, which means you must have thousands or millions of citizens
who support you on election day, or at least prefer you to your opponents.
With so many voters and such fractured power, it is impossible
to act like a dictator and follow these rules and buy loyalty.
But is it really impossible? Of course not.
Do not see citizens as individuals with their individual desires,
but rather divide them into blocks.
The elderly, homeowners, business owners, the poor...
You can reward blocks collectively.
Tax laws and codes in democracies are horribly complicated, not by accident,
but to reward the blocs which keep the representatives in power.
For example, agricultural subsidies have no relation to a nation's food needs,
but with the importance of the key which is the vote of the members of the farmers' bloc.
Countries where farmers' votes do not carry weight at the ballot box do not have agricultural subsidies.
If a bloc does not vote, like that of young people, there is no point in giving them a reward.
Even if they are numerous, they are useless for gaining power.
This is good news for you. This gives you one less block to influence
and the treasure that you redistribute to your key blocks must come from somewhere.
If you want to enjoy a long term, rule #3 is your friend, in a democracy
as well as in a dictatorship.
You can't eliminate those who don't vote for you,
but there are many other things you can do.
Once in power, make voting easier for your key blocs and more complicated for others,
develop voting systems that reduce the number of blocks needed to be elected
if you have more rivals. Very practical, isn't it?
Draw electoral boundaries to predetermine your results and those of your associates,
and establish primary elections with convoluted rules
to determine who the blocs can vote for.
Mix everything for even more effective power conservation.
When your popularity is at its lowest, but your chance of being re-elected is at its highest,
you will know that you have succeeded.
Let's stop thinking about citizens now.