What a remarkable puzzle politics provides. I constantly ask my self. I listen to a lot of podcasts and watch a lot of documentaries and once noticed a very interesting trend across corporate leaders, Political leaders, and even royalty.

Do you occasionally wonder why these leaders seem to make decisions that don’t seem right to the simple ordinary mind and you say to yourself if only I had power for a day?

Why is the leadership of a corporation, on whose shoulders so much responsibility rests, decided by so few people? Why are failed CEOs retained and paid handsomely even as their company’s shareholders lose their shirts? In one form or another, these questions of political behavior pop up again and again. Each explanation, each story, treats the errant leader and his or her faulty decision making as a one-off or a one-of-a-kind situation. But there is nothing unique about political behavior.

The pundits of politics of news have left us ignorant of these rules. That’s why we are still asking the same old questions. We’re still surprised by the prevalence of drought-induced food shortages in Africa, 3,500 years after the pharaohs worked out how to store grain.

To improve the world, however, all of us must first suspend faith in conventional wisdom. Let logic and evidence be the guide and our eyes will be opened to the reasons why politics works the way it does. Knowing how and why things are as they are is a first, crucial step toward learning how to make them better.

I recommend anyone to read the Book “The Dictators Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita ”

For those who are as lazy as I find a summarized version of the contents of the book at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

In this book, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita provides a way to make sense of the miserable behavior that characterizes many — maybe most — leaders, whether in government or business. their aim is to explain both good and bad conduct. At its heart, this will entail untangling the reasoning and reasons behind how we are governed and how we organize. The picture they paint will not be pretty. It will not strengthen hope for humankind’s benevolence and altruism. But believe it will be the truth and it will point the way to a brighter future. After all, even if politics is nothing more than a game that leaders play, if only we learn the rules, it becomes a game we can win