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Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World?
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>Over time the government may have been able to take control of the countryside and win over the rural people.
How? There's no real evidence this is how it works. If anything we started losing support from the rural regions over time.
>I’m sure all the soldiers you talked too are experts in nation building
I wonder why they didn't put an "expert in nation building" I'm charge of Afghanistan. Seems like they would know what to do.
There's this book that gives a pretty clear framework for nation building. Written by a respected academic and former World Bank official who has experience in government. Hey why does that name look familiar? 🤔
You see Afghanistan isn't failing.
HOW COULD IT. It was lead by this author.
You just don't understand the complexities going on right now.
Ironically, that cowardly Afghan president literally wrote a book on fixing failed states.
>Ghani
go check out his books, "Fixing broken States" It laughable https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Failed-States-Framework-Rebuilding/dp/0195398610?dchild=1
Internally, a prediction market is zero-sum. But externally, a prediction market can have plenty of positive effects, like helping us diagnosis the Replication Crisis (What's Wrong with Social Science and How to Fix It: Reflections After Reading 2578 Papers). You don't have to be a participant in the market to learn a lot from what the participants think - it's analysis with analysts that are paid for being right instead of simply having the job.
That's arguably part of why the US was so incompetent in Afghanistan - the US spent near-literal boatloads of money filling the country top to bottom with experts, including the president Ashraf Ghani (PhD in Anthropolgy, co-author of <em>Fixing Failed States</em>). But their expertise was never actually put to the test, except at the very end - where they failed, and turned out to be just in it for the paycheck. But up until that point they had gotten away with it because they had convincing sounding degrees, and who could argue with them when they say things like "Don't worry, we're fulfilling the citizens’ aspiration for inclusion and development by designing creative responses to the challenges of modern state building."? How would you even begin to judge that until it was too late?
By contrast, a prediction market is very clear: some people gain money, some people lose money, you can see who's losing money, and most importantly, the people who are losing money will withdraw on their own over time instead of sticking around forever to collect a paycheck. In that regard, the zero-sum nature thing is a feature, not a bug: less is more when it comes to filtering out who knows their stuff from who doesn't. In President Ghani's case this could have been done through things like elections or parliamentary Votes of No Confidence, but for smaller things you can just use a prediction market.
TL;DR: It's zero sum within, but has positive externalities without, as another user pointed out. One of those positive externalities is winnowing out false expertise, one lost bet at a time.
Yes, this was the idea behind Machiavelli's The Prince, that a wise prince should learn from history. That was a job application letter though, to a Borgia prince. His real sentiments were more in evidence in Discourses, where he writes about Livy's history of the early Roman republic - by "republic" he means the power being in the hands of many, rather than one - and takes from it lessons for his own time, around the year 1500. I'd note that we're closer in time to Machiavelli than he was to the Romans.
He gave us many lessons about wars. For example, the last President of Afghanistan was an exile from his country who had quite literally written a book on rebuilding failed states, and who told the Americans he could fix the place up.
>CHAPTER XXXI.—Of the Danger of trusting banished Men
>
>The danger of trusting those who are in exile from their own country, being one to which the rulers of States are often exposed, may, I think, be fitly considered in these Discourses; and I notice it the more willingly, because I am able to illustrate it by a memorable instance which Titus Livius, though with another purpose, relates in his history.
>
>When Alexander the Great passed with his army into Asia, his brother-in-law and uncle, Alexander of Epirus, came with another army into Italy, being invited thither by the banished Lucanians, who gave him to believe that, with their aid, he might get possession of the whole of that country. But when, confiding in the promises of these exiles, and fed by the hopes they held out to him, he came into Italy, they put him to death, their fellow-citizens having offered to restore them to their country upon this condition.
>
>It behoves us, therefore, to remember how empty are the promises, and how doubtful the faith, of men in banishment from their native land. For as to their faith, it may be assumed that whenever they can effect their return by other means than yours, notwithstanding any covenants they may have made with you, they will throw you over, and take part with their countrymen. And as for the empty promises and delusive hopes which they set before you, so extreme is their desire to return home that they naturally believe many things which are untrue, and designedly misrepresent many others; so that between their beliefs and what they say they believe, they fill you with false impressions, on which if you build, your labour is in vain, and you are led to engage in enterprises from which nothing but ruin can result.
If the US commanders had read their Machiavelli, they might have rethought putting Ghani in there, or indeed trying to conquer Afghanistan at all.
Relevant to Victoria,
>CHAPTER XXXIV.—That the authority of the Dictator did good and not harm to the Roman Republic: and that it is not those Powers which are given by the free suffrages of the People, but those which ambitious Citizens usurp for themselves, that are pernicious to a State.
and we may ask whether the powers the government has been using have been granted by the free suffrages of the people, or are they powers which they have arrogated to themselves?
Discourses is freely-available to read on Project Gutenberg. It is one of the 6 books I would recommend to anyone to understand political affairs.
If only we had put some expert in charge, someone that's is experienced in failed states, maybe an academic that went to Harvard, was highly decorated and worked around the world in other poor states.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashraf_Ghani
He almost succeeded Annnan as Secretary General of UN in 2006!
https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Failed-States-Framework-Rebuilding/dp/0195398610
Running out the back door with your pocket full of treasure is hardly "relinquishing" power...never forget this joker wrote a book about this whole situation. Too bad he did not read it.
https://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Failed-States-Framework-Rebuilding/dp/0195398610
Can't wait to read the updated volume
Maybe he should've studied better. There is a book out there about fixing failed states written by ...oops... Ghani himself.
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