Andrej Karpathy's Review of The Dictator's Handbook

“This book examines positions of power (e.g. country leadership, mayors, CEOs, deans, etc.) by assuming entirely self-interested actors who seek to gain and retain power, and argues through examples that this relatively simple model gives the first order explanation of many world events. If you really grasp the message you'll adopt a much more cynical world view, but you'll also stop torturing yourself over stupid questions like what a country "ought" to do, what is "right", or why the people in power just can't see it. At the same time, spending some time in reality will reveal ways of remedying various suboptimal situations (e.g. the inefficacy of foreign aid) with solutions that recognize the root cause and manipulate incentive structures of those in power. The book supplements its thesis with various examples. For instance, resource-rich autocracies with small winning coalitions tend to oppress the population, which is irrelevant to the revenue needed to retain power. Conversely, th