Sarah Paine

Do not dismiss their ability to stay in power.

They're surfing quite a wave wherever they live.

of people who butcher each other with great regularity, I would suspect that most, and this is suspect, because how would I have the evidence, that many of these long-term dictators have EQs that are off the charts.

When you come in the room, they just gut feeling know whether they're going to cap you or not.

And if they get a few extra people, so what?

Right.

Just so they get rid of all the people who are going to cause them problems and incredible abilities.

Also, what Stalin does, I think Saddam Hussein imitated him, but I could be wrong about that one, is you have multiple security agencies working.

with overlapping jurisdictions, and so no one quite knows who's running the show and who's in power, but they're all funneling information to Stalin, so he has better information than anybody else.

So you can use one one day, another another day, which explains how you can... All the heads of whatever... It's the equivalent of the KGB.

It comes and goes.

Most of the early heads of that wind up getting shot by their successors.

You'd think they'd notice a pattern, but...

So they're very good at staying in power.

They're really good at managing that problem.

It does not bring prosperity.

That comes from the world of maritime trade, of following by international law instead of capping your trade partner.

You're not going to get a second trade deal if you do that.

It's just so much more wealth-creating, this alternate universe, but that's not where these continentalists are.

But you can do this in retrospect and go crazy move because no one realized that the U.S.