You got that a thrust of the reply to FF was to take gentle exception to equating leadership with sociopathy, right? There's a grain of truth in the formulation, but it's reductive, with counterfactuals in plain sight.
About the centrality of incentives I heartily agree. Local interests are not necessarily those of the who…
You got that a thrust of the reply to FF was to take gentle exception to equating leadership with sociopathy, right? There's a grain of truth in the formulation, but it's reductive, with counterfactuals in plain sight.
About the centrality of incentives I heartily agree. Local interests are not necessarily those of the whole. A simple example: war is calamitous—but it's good news for certain sectors of the economy. So of course those sectors fund think tanks and lobby policymakers to advocate for it. Who would refuse to beat swords into ploughshares or, in a contemporary vein, support the elusive peace dividend of the '90s?They would! There you have the essence of elite dynamics.
It's why theories that posit "national interest" struggle to explain seemingly unrealistic, counterproductive, and irrational policies like, say, the current U.S. stance toward Israel. They miss the boat because national interest, in the sense of a more or less dispassionate analysis of the greatest good for the greatest number, isn't the engine or rudder of ships of state. Competition among parochial interests is. For good or ill, that's about incentives. Without addressing them, good luck turning such leviathans around.
Shorter: "What's good for General Motors is good for America." Except when it isn't.
The man himself!
You got that a thrust of the reply to FF was to take gentle exception to equating leadership with sociopathy, right? There's a grain of truth in the formulation, but it's reductive, with counterfactuals in plain sight.
About the centrality of incentives I heartily agree. Local interests are not necessarily those of the whole. A simple example: war is calamitous—but it's good news for certain sectors of the economy. So of course those sectors fund think tanks and lobby policymakers to advocate for it. Who would refuse to beat swords into ploughshares or, in a contemporary vein, support the elusive peace dividend of the '90s?They would! There you have the essence of elite dynamics.
It's why theories that posit "national interest" struggle to explain seemingly unrealistic, counterproductive, and irrational policies like, say, the current U.S. stance toward Israel. They miss the boat because national interest, in the sense of a more or less dispassionate analysis of the greatest good for the greatest number, isn't the engine or rudder of ships of state. Competition among parochial interests is. For good or ill, that's about incentives. Without addressing them, good luck turning such leviathans around.
Shorter: "What's good for General Motors is good for America." Except when it isn't.