THE VIDEO SHELF · political power and selectorate theory
Try to Rule Fairly and You'll Be Overthrown
CGP Grey's animated adaptation of The Dictator's Handbook, explaining how rulers stay in power by keeping a small group of key supporters happy rather than ruling fairly. It lays out selectorate theory and how resources shape regimes.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN treats it as the standard short summary of how power and political incentives work, applied to governments, companies and workplaces.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- CGP Grey
- Topic
- political power and selectorate theory
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 15
- HN mentions in dataset
- 20
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2016–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Our government has no incentive to retain them. Their main source of money is not small / medium / innovative business taxation - it's oil and other natural resources. And you don't need higher education and talent to extract oil. Actually, you don't need any …
VladimirGolovin on Hacker News · 2016-12
In Russia’s Creepy, Innovative Internet [video]Negative? It's how the world works. Those in resource-driven countries enjoy very little comfort, because you don't need very comfortable/educated people to extract resources. Our economies are more based on knowledge, so we get better lives. CGPGrey's rules for rulers is a very good outline …
abandonliberty on Hacker News · 2018-07
In A Drop of 4 Degrees Made a Big Difference for a Garment Maker's Bottom LineI feel like this comment thread needs a link to CGP Grey's excellent Rules for Rulers video, too: [VIDEO]
mtgx on Hacker News · 2018-09
In Former Columnist Jailed for Facebook Criticism of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.