Card 1 of 8: The Prince: Power as It Actually Works
Machiavelli wrote the book that made his own name an insult, in 1513: rulers should study how power is actually kept, not how moralists wish it were kept. Effectiveness, not virtue, is the real test.
Stigler's 1971 paper demolished the comfortable assumption that regulators protect the public. His claim: regulation is usually captured by the very industry it's meant to police.
Hobbes wrote Leviathan during the English Civil War and asked: why would free people ever agree to be ruled? Because the alternative — everyone enforcing their own contract — is war.
Bueno de Mesquita opened The Dictator's Handbook with a cold rule: no leader ever ruled alone — every ruler's first job is to keep the few who can actually remove him paid and loyal.
Montesquieu wrote in 1748 that any person with power is apt to abuse it. The American founders took that warning and built three branches that can each block the other two.
Michels, studying the German Social Democratic Party in 1911, coined a grim law: who says organization, says oligarchy.
Nye coined 'soft power' in 1990 watching American culture do what carrier groups could not: get others to want what you want without issuing an order.
Overton, a vice president at the Mackinac Center, noticed in the 1990s that politicians rarely move public opinion; they move within the window public opinion already allows.