Not that making people well off is inherently bad for leaders; it isn’t. It’s just that promoting corruption and misery is better. (Location 80)
therefore face organized political competition. It also so happens that they are routinely thrown out after only a short time in office. (Location 84)
Why, in contrast, do those leaders who make their subjects’ lives miserable typically die in their sleep or live out their retirement years lounging on a luxurious beach after being in office twenty, thirty, or forty or more years? (Location 91)
The difference between doing a good job and doing a lousy job is driven by how many people a leader has to keep happy. (Location 97)
really depend only on a very small number of generals, senior civil servants, and their own families for support. (Location 100)
When rulers need the support of many—as was Leopold’s situation in Belgium—the best way to rule is by creating good policies. When leaders rely only on a few to stay in control—as was the case for Leopold in the Congo—their best bet is to make the few fat and happy, even if that means making everyone else miserable. (Location 114)
I believe the answer to all of those questions is yes, which brings me to the very purpose of my work and to the principal claim of this book: that it is possible for us to anticipate actions, to predict the future, and, by looking for ways to change incentives, to engineer the future across a stunning range of considerations that involve human decision making. (Location 125)
Anyone who really truly wants to see The Sound of Music (or fill in whatever first-run movie might grab your fancy) gets a value of 100, and anyone really committed to seeing A Clockwork Orange (another great old film) gets (Location 1136)
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One thing they want is a decision that is as close as possible to the choice they advocate. The second thing they want is glory—the ego satisfaction that comes from the recognition by others that they played an important part in putting a deal together. (Location 1184)
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what they say they want, how much they care, and how influential they can be. (Location 1192)
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It is like a map of mountainous terrain, with the positions garnering the most powerful support forming high, prominent peaks, and the positions with little support amounting to not much more than molehills. (Location 1211)
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that stakeholders prefer positions closer to their own to positions farther away, our first first-cut prediction is “Eliminate Nuclear Programs / U.S. Concessions.” (Location 1219)
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So we see we really must think through not only the international aspects of the issue but also the domestic dynamics in North Korea. (Location 1227)
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Let’s multiply the influence of each player (calling influence I) by his or her salience (S) and multiply that result by the numerical value of the position each player advocates (P), then add those totals up for all of the players and divide that total by the sum of the influence times salience for each of the players (sum of I x S x P)/(sum of I x S). (Location 1234)
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begins by asking why that country’s leaders would want to develop nuclear weapons in the first place. We can think of that as asking, “What are they really demanding in the international arena?” (Location 1272)
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They are usually astonished—fortunately, pleasantly so—to realize that they have not thought systematically enough about their own problem to know what it is they need to know or do. (Location 1370)
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Therein lies the key. Questions need to be about actual choices confronting decision makers rather than about abstract ideas like winning or getting ahead. (Location 1373)
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Business mergers are still more complex most of the time. Unlike litigation, mergers rarely hinge just on the price to be paid for putting companies together. (Location 1390)
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approximately seven different issues for each possible combination of firms for a total of more than seventy individual issues, each representing a decision that could make or break a multibillion-dollar deal. (Location 1400)
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To explore how this view informs the predictioneering process, in this chapter we’ll turn to a group that lives and feeds on human conflict: lawyers. Lawyers share with diplomats, academics, and business leaders a conviction that country names matter, but—let’s give them some credit—they believe this for better reasons. (Location 1695)
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When diplomacy is successful, wars are fought with words, the combatants sitting around a table, drinking Perrier until a resolution is reached and celebrated with fine wine. (Location 1703)
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First, the money is buying preparation to improve the prospects of victory. That is, of course, the lawyers’ job. Second, the money is spent to signal the other side that they are up against deep pockets that can endure high costs to fight the good fight. (Location 1715)
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the war of attrition.1 It’s great for lawyers, and awful for everyone else. (Location 1718)
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Rarely do they really think through the motivations and incentives of their opponents, the people they represent, and themselves. (Location 1728)
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The merits of the case don’t matter very much once negotiations begin—the merits are inherent in the impasse. (Location 1737)
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He/she had seen the model, as he/she put it, “work its magic” before, so this attorney had no problem agreeing to act out the part as written by the model. (Location 1871)
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for or against an approach to a problem except based on results that can be pointed to directly in the model’s output. (Location 1899)
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No one should blindly follow a model. It is, after all, just a bundle of equations. (Location 1907)
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To repeat myself, the model’s greatest value is that it provides clients with a different way of thinking about their problems. (Location 1909)
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assessments. Models fail for three main reasons: the logic fails to capture what actually goes on in people’s heads when they make choices; the information going into the model is wrong—garbage in, garbage out; or something outside the frame of reference of the model occurs to alter the situation, throwing it off course. (Location 2331)