12 Wednesday Aug 2026
Posted in Self-Promotion
Honestly, it’s not about the money; the funding goal is quite modest and I’m going to publish the edition whether or not it funds. It’s mostly about learning whether there are enough people interested in learning more about our history and heritage, and whether I’m able to find these people, for me to do more annotated editions like this.
But in any event, off we go!
11 Tuesday Aug 2026
That was the most fun I’ve had in months.
My annotated edition of the Benjamin Franklin pamphlet, “A Modest Enquiry Into The Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency,” is largely complete. I just need to do a final pass for completeness and format it for publication. The Kickstarter project should be approved any day now.
Man, now all I want to do all day is do more annotated editions! Bad Oren, must finish existing projects!
02 Sunday Aug 2026
Posted in Better Fantasy, Economics, History, Politics for Worldbuilders, Writing
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Having recently finished writing a 15k-word novella,* I am now returning to the draft of Book 2 in my worldbuilding guidebook series, the book focused on commerce and political economy. It looks like I’ll be adding a new chapter about class barriers and inequality, which will squeeze in a discussion of Peter Turchin’s theory of political conflict due to elite overproduction. (Much as I do with the work of James C. Scott, I’ll take any opportunity to bring it up!)
Fortuitously, I just found my copy of Fernand Braudel’s The Wheels of Commerce where it had been buried on my shelf behind a double layer of books for about a decade (!), and I have the sinking feeling that I’ll be adding even more material to the draft even though it’s already about 60k words long, which is about as long as you’d want a guidebook like this to be.
Just reading the first chapter, it seems clear to me that Jane Jacobs was inspired by Braudel (or perhaps by the same sources he cites such as von Thünen) in her discussion of “supply regions,” vast rural zones that are economically transformed by the needs of large cities. Braudel discusses how as metropolises such as London and Paris grew, town fairs across their countries became more and more specialized so that they predominantly offered a single good, becoming a predictable supplier to the merchants who would send their wares off to the insatiable cities:
“Cheeses came from Meaux; butter from Gournay, near Dieppe, or from Isigny; beasts for slaughter from the markets of Poissy, Sceaux and further afield from Neubourg; good bread from Gonesse; pulses from Caudebec in Normandy, where a market was held every Saturday . . . . Any region affected by London tended to specialize, to change and become more commercially-minded, in limited sectors as yet it is true, for between the modernized regions there still lay expanses of the old rural régime with its traditional farms and crops. Kent for instance. . . saw orchards and hops cover its fields to supply the capital, but Kent still maintained its identity, with its peasant-farmers. . .”
By about 1600, “[o]f the 800 market towns in England and Wales, at least 300 confined themselves to single trades: 133 to the grain trade; 26 to malt; 6 to fruit; 92 to cattle markets; 32 to sheep; 13 to horses; 14 to swine; 30 to fish; 21 to wildfowl and poultry; 12 to butter and cheese; over 30 to wool or yarn; 27 or more to woolen cloth; 11 to leather; 8 to linen; at least 4 to hemp—not to mention some very precise and idiosyncratic specialties: Wymondham dealt exclusively in ‘wooden spoons, taps and handles.'” (Long excursus into the informational problems of matching buyers and sellers omitted.)
Braudel also cites interesting statistics about markets and towns (sourced mostly from medieval England) that will be of use to the worldbuilder. With a handful of exceptions, villages did not have regular markets; but most towns did, and they tended to serve about 6000 or 7000 people total despite their typical population of 1000 (all these numbers subject to variation by period and locality, of course). In other words, villagers from the surrounding settlements (as well as itinerant peddlers and merchants) would converge on their local town every few days or every week. Each market tended to serve a radius of about six or seven miles, depending on the type of good and its mode of transportation. “In about 1600, grain transported overland did not travel more than 10 miles [ed: recall that a team of oxen traveling more than about 200km would eat more grain than they could carry], and 5 was more usual; cattle could be driven about 11 miles, sheep 40 to 70 miles; wool and woolen cloth would travel between 20 and 40 miles.”
At any rate, it seems that I will once again have to work harder to keep material out of my book than to put it in. But that’s the fun of it, I suppose!
*Currently trying to shop it around for publication, but I’ll probably lose patience and self-publish it before long. Here’s a very early scene that survived to the current draft with few changes.
26 Sunday Jul 2026
Posted in Writing
Some time ago, I wrote a post on Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in which I noted some features of the plot and writing technique that seem out of fashion today—chiefly that the second half of the book lacks a conflict, strictly speaking, yet remains interesting to the reader because it uses two intertwined mysteries to drive the action. Last night, I saw for the first time the 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the classic movie with Gene Wilder in the title role. Interestingly, several of the creative changes made by the movie were directly responsive to the features I noted in my prior post.
[Spoilers ahead!]
First, the moviemakers clearly picked up on the Wonka-as-devil-figure aspect and leaned into it. According to director Mel Stuart, Gene Wilder was cast partly because “[h]e had the sardonic, demonic edge we were looking for.” The one song that was lifted almost verbatim from the book, the “There’s no knowing where we’re going” sequence in the boat, was accompanied by psychedelic imagery that grew more disturbing as the song went on, with new verses added: “Are the fires of Hell a-glowing? / Is the grisly reaper mowing?”
Additionally, a new temptation theme is introduced into the movie, in the form of the apparent plot to steal the Everlasting Gobstoppers, which turns out to be a scheme by Wonka himself (and just how does “Mr. Slugworth” manage to show up immediately at various points around the world, as if by magic?). Relatedly, Wonka has the children sign a contract with illegible small print, about which more later, and he is quick to invoke the contract to effectively cheat the children out of their promised chocolate. And, of course, Wonka’s seeming indifference to the fate of the children is emphasized in Wilder’s inimitable style (to the point of producing several internet memes). So yes, Willy Wonka as a potential stand-in for the Devil is very much in play.
Second, the scriptwriters decided to change the plot fundamentally, by having Grandpa Joe and Charlie sneak some of the Fizzy Lifting Drink against Wonka’s express instructions. It was probably this and its consequences that led Roald Dahl to sever ties with the movie, because it deeply damaged the central morality play of the book: Charlie was the good boy who sacrificed for others, followed the rules, and deserved the happy ending, as compared to the other children who demonstrate their character flaws by taking what they are not allowed to take. With the script’s change, nothing fundamentally separates Charlie from the others, until his redemptive act in the climax.
Why make this change? I think they were trying to do two things here. First is to reintroduce conventional plot conflict for the movie, by having Charlie break the contract and putting Charlie’s prize in jeopardy. Second, they wanted to make Charlie a more active character in his story. In the book, he displays his virtue in the initial stages of the plot, but then is reduced to a bystander during the factory tour. The scriptwriters, it seemed, felt that Charlie needed a moment of supreme virtue at the climax—his decision to give back the Gobstopper despite every possible reason not to—so that he deserves his happy ending more directly.
Was this a good change? I have my doubts. The plot device of the contract makes Wonka a much more spiteful character than in the book. And Charlie’s decision to return the Gobstopper and doom his family to grinding poverty, just after Wonka betrays him, strains credulity.
So what else could the movie have done? The more recent Tim Burton version decided to hew more closely to the original plot, right up to the point where Wonka demands that Charlie leave his family behind in exchange for the factory. I do not see this as an improvement overall (and the Dahl estate apparently had serious qualms as well), but it has the merit of preserving Charlie’s virtuous character. Off the top of my head, one could also introduce Wonka’s need for a successor earlier in the movie, with various bad options on the table until Charlie is anointed instead, perhaps because of some display of aptitude that he makes during the tour.
Other quibbles could be made about the movie; most of the songs were forgettable or actively inept (Candy Man and Veruca’s showstopper being exceptions). I do think that removing Mr. Bucket was a reasonable change, given that Charlie was forced into more responsibility as a breadwinner (literally). And the movie did cast Gene Wilder; and therefore, much is forgiven!
21 Wednesday Jan 2026
Posted in Writing
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I just finished the latest installment of Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files” series, Twelve Months. I won’t comment on the book as a whole, other than to say that it was enjoyable. But I do find myself mildly irritated by a bit character that Butcher introduced.
Without spoilers, I can say that despite the grab-bag of Lovecraftian, Celtic fae, and other supernatural bits all thrown in, important aspects of the “Dresden Files” setting are Catholic in flavor. There was a single secular Jewish character up to this point, who ends up taking on a, ahem, religiously incongruous job as the series progresses. But in this book, Butcher chose to introduce a religious Jewish character, Rabbi Aaronson, as an ally to the local Catholic groups fighting the nasties. I am not sure why Butcher did so. Aaronson appears in only two brief scenes, has no plot function and only a few paragraphs of “screen time,” and his only activities are to blow the shofar and be crotchety.
Perhaps Butcher is setting Aaronson up to be a more important character later, which would be consistent with some previous character introductions. If so, Butcher is going to have to step up his game. His thin characterization of Aaronson leans very hard on the stock Hollywood trope of the alte kacker, the old fart, beloved by secular Jewish scriptwriters working out their daddy issues on screen. Butcher also leans on two pieces of religious paraphernalia and depicts questionable things about both.
When Harry asks if Aaronson is carrying a “real shofar,” Aaronson says yes, and that he had forgotten how hard a shofar is to blow. This is unlikely. A shofar is not a rarely-used bit of ancient history. Especially if he is in the habit of using a shofar as a supernatural weapon, it is probable that Aaronson would be one of the men blowing the shofar each year, nearly every day during the month leading up to the High Holidays. (I am also skeptical about Aaronson carrying his shofar around in a baldric, which I have never seen anyone do in real life, but I suppose it’s not impossible.)
Additionally, Aaronson is described as wearing a “shawl.” Presumably, this is an imprecise reference to a tallit or tallis, often called a “prayer shawl” in English. Though a tallis is generally only worn during prayer, its appearance here is in keeping with Hollywood’s lazy stock depiction of rabbis always wearing a tallis under any circumstances, presumably as a reliable visual shorthand that “This Guy Over Here is a Rabbi” for audiences who might not pick up on less blatant indications. (Off the top of my head, this bit of costuming shows up in Babylon 5, Cabaret, and The Simpsons.)
While in ancient times some Jews would indeed wear a tallis during mundane activities, nowadays I can think of only one reason a real-life Jew might wear a tallis outside of prayer or when walking to synagogue—certain mystical practices are best done wearing a tallis. Ironically, that might even be a decent explanation in-universe, given the context. However, Butcher does not seem to be aware of this, given that nothing else in Aaronson’s presentation suggests (yet?) that he is a mystic.
Obviously, it’s Butcher’s story and he is under no obligation to write his characters with verisimilitude. But as long as he feels like putting in a Jewish character, why not make the character more interesting? Why rely on stock tropes, especially when they are low-quality tropes?
I don’t think Butcher has committed any great sin here. He certainly didn’t do anything as obnoxious as Orson Scott Card’s book Enchantment (which made the main character Jewish yet had his Jewishness play exactly zero role in his character or the plot—other than an in-passing ultimatum that he convert to Christianity, immediately acceded to without any drama or plot significance). But I am interested to see if Aaronson will be playing a greater role in the future, and whether Butcher will write him as a more interesting character in the process.
This does, I think, illustrate some of the pitfalls of writing characters from different cultures. I emphatically do not say that no one should do this, or that this is insensitive or cultural appropriation, or that you need to spend valuable page time genuflecting to whatever historical tragedies might apply. But chances are, you don’t know what you don’t know. And to be a good writer, you should do your research.
Butcher notes that he relies on a group of beta readers to review his drafts; knowing that he was introducing a religious Jew, he would have been well served to find an observant Jewish beta reader, at least for those few paragraphs. You really can find us, even in fandom.
05 Wednesday Nov 2025
Johnny Cash, aside from the power and pathos of his own songs, famously performed songs by others as well. Some were written for him, such as the haunting “Thirteen,” written by Glenn Danzig. Some songs he covered; he took one of his greatest songs, “Hurt,” from the band Nine Inch Nails; and listening to Cash’s performance, NIN frontman Trent Reznor immediately reacted, “That song isn’t mine anymore.”
A slightly less famous example is the song “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry,” originally written and performed by Loudon Wainwright III. When we compare the lyrics of the two renditions, we notice a number of very slight changes that Cash made from Wainwright’s original (don’t rely on the listed lyrics, both of them have occasional errors compared to the audio). And I think closely examining these changes can teach us a lot about Cash’s craft, and how we might think about adapting other works or even making our own compositions.
(We’ll neglect the changes in emphasis in Cash’s vocal performance, except for a couple of points to be noted later.)
In the first stanza, Wainwright sang:
As a child, he had cried as all children will
But at some point, his tear ducts ran dry.
He grew to be a man and the feces hit the fan…
By contrast, Cash’s version goes:
As a child he had cried as all children will
Then at some point his tear ducts all ran dry.
Grew to be a man, it all hit the fan
Changing “But” to “Then” can be read to emphasize the inevitability of this change, for the protagonist—how his new impassiveness was a natural response to growing up in a cruel world. Whether that was Cash’s intention or not, notice how subtle the change was, yet how powerful. Cash is certainly putting his own stamp on the song, but he’s changing as little as possible in the process.
Inserting “all,” cutting “He,” and to some degree replacing “and the feces” with “it all” are in part meant to hew more closely to the song’s meter than in the original—which has the effect of making the lyrics less obtrusive. In part, I think that “feces” is a smirky word choice, much improved by “it all”; Cash is more matter-of-fact, and also conveys that “all” of the protagonist’s life had hit the fan, not just some of it.
(One might imagine that in Wainwright’s live performances, he would actually use the word “s—” instead of “feces,” but I have no way to check this. It would certainly match the meter better. Compare with The Doors and their live performances of “This is the End.”)
Cash makes no more changes up until the protagonist has gone through his tribulations and is sent to “a place for the insensitive and the insane.” At this point, Wainwright sang:
He played lots of chess
And he made lots of friends
And in his vocal performance, he puts an overt, ironic twist on “friends.” One wonders whether this is a contemptuous commentary on the sorts of friends one finds in an asylum, or perhaps a clue that the man’s friends were imaginary, his chess games played against an absent opponent. In either case, Wainwright is again smirking at his subject.
Cash makes a striking change by simply inverting the order of the verses:
He made a lot of friends
and he played a lot of chess
And again, he sings the verses matter-of-factly. After so much suffering, Cash says, the protagonist finally found friendship and belonging in the most unlikely place imaginable. Where Wainwright is ironic, Cash imbues the song with a great deal of empathy. He feels for the protagonist in a way that I think Wainwright does not. And he conveyed that with a simple change in verse order.
Everything else stays the same, except for Cash changing “prison” to “jail house” in the final stanza—perhaps for reasons of meter, perhaps because he liked the word “jail” better than “prison.”
What can we say about all these changes? For one thing, Cash had a very light, but deft, touch. He gets great leverage from very small changes, knowing where to cut and where to edit. He preserves the bulk of the song as is, keeping what made it worthy of his attention in the first place—but where he does make changes, they deepen the song and make it more powerful.
Second, notice the mileage Cash gets from dispensing with Wainwright’s condescension. On the one hand, Cash understands that the lyrics are strong enough on their own, and don’t need excessive vocal ornamentation. On the other hand, he made the clear choice to feel for his protagonist instead of creating ironic distance, as Wainwright does. He thus allows a lifetime of pain and suffering to color the song, much as he did with “Hurt.”
So: careful attention to each word; not tweaking things for tweaking’s sake, but combining respect for the source material with willingness to make changes where necessary. Creating new meaning by changing emotional content; again, much as he did with “Hurt.”
Not all adaptations need to make radical changes. (Though sometimes such radically different versions are strong in their own right, such as Alien Ant Farm’s cover of “Smooth Criminal.”) Cash teaches us that subtlety, mastery of craft, and willingness to be forthright can go a long way.
12 Thursday Sep 2024
Posted in Self-Actualization, Writing
Over the years, both as I read and watch popular entertainment and as I put out calls for short stories as an editor, I have noticed a recurring bad habit in some writers: they have their characters speak nastily to each other, with no particular purpose, when they don’t know how to create real story conflict. Rudeness becomes a cheap substitute for drama.
Of late, I’ve started linking this tendency to a more serious one: popular entertainment depicts very few healthy relationships, especially not healthy marriages. Most marriage partners in print or on screen are either infidel, treacherous, unsatisfied, or unfulfilled. This is not to say that writers should instead show relationship partners as blissfully happy all the time; anyone in a successful marriage will say that it takes a lot of work. But little modern fiction shows that work, or successful marriages at all.
Marital conflict is a potent source of drama, to be sure. But fiction is also a source of role models, teaching us what a better life can be like. And at a time when a third of U.S. marriages end in divorce, and growing numbers of people never marry at all, I fear that our stories are only reinforcing this trend. Instead of holding up an ideal of healthy marriage to aspire to, they instead tell us that healthy relationships are rare or impossible. Instead, the audience unconsciously absorbs the idea that it is normal for people to treat each other horribly.
And if people don’t have role models in their own lives for what a healthy relationship looks like, they desperately need to find them in fiction.
Am I overreacting? If I am, then people shouldn’t be told to depict other ideals in fiction, such as racial equality, gender equality, representation of marginalized groups, and the like. If such depictions are so powerful and so needed that we have an entire industry of sensitivity readers to encourage them, then it should concern us when healthy relationships become a marginalized group in our fiction.
Perhaps part of the problem is that it is easier to write damaged relationships than healthy ones. If so, we as writers need to aspire to greater artistic heights—especially when we can teach real people how to be better to others in the process. It does take real effort and skill to make a relationship work. We shouldn’t abandon people to just figure it out by themselves.
(Maybe I need to put out another call for writers?)
08 Monday Jul 2024
Posted in Lagrange Books, Self-Promotion
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It has been over half a year since I last wrote on this blog, and you would be forgiven for wondering, “What gives?” The short answer is that I injured myself rather badly in December, and it took a while before I was up to doing much writing.
However, my digital pen has not been entirely idle. In fact, three writing projects kept me busy: revising my first worldbuilding book, completing the first draft of my second, and publishing Ron Farina’s new book Sacrifice.
My first worldbuilding book, Beyond Kings and Princesses: Governments for Worldbuilders, is one of the things I’m most proud to have written. But I published the book in June of 2020, during the worst days of Covid; and I was also in the middle of law school at the time! By the end of the writing process I was in the mood of “Just get the thing done already!” As a result, there were aspects of the text that I could have made stronger, given time and attention. Additionally, I am less adept a marketer than an author—so it sells a few copies now and again, but not more.
So when my friend Dave Swindle asked if his publishing venture God of the Desert could publish a revised edition, I ultimately said yes. The new edition fixes some infelicities of the prose, adds several more worldbuilding examples, and features a significant expansion of the chapter on selectorate theory. This is the book I should have written the first time around, and I’m very pleased with it. (No idea when it will be published, though! GotD is busy producing several great books, and my turn will come when it comes. Also, we’re changing the name, alas!)
Second, I managed to complete the first draft of my second worldbuilding book, working title “Commerce for Worldbuilders.” Where the first book focused on governments, this one focuses on conflicts in and over the economy (which a reader of this blog over the last couple of years might have guessed). As with my first book, the goal is to give you a small set of powerful tools so that you can build fictional settings with compelling depictions of commerce and the economy, and the struggles that they can inspire. (As usual, most of the work was in deciding what material to cut, and how to arrange the remaining material most effectively.)
It is still just a first draft. There are definitely chapters that need beefing up, and large sections that need rewriting. Still, I think the structure of the book is sound: I managed to organize the material in a way that makes sense, where the later chapters build on the earlier ones and the reader is able to follow along. At least, I think I did! So, no particular timeline on when it will be finished, but the book is coming closer.
Finally, I got to wear my publisher hat. My imprint, Lagrange Books, published Ron Farina’s incredible book Sacrifice: The Final Chapter. Based on hundreds of hours of personal interviews with the families and friends of military servicemembers who were killed in action, it is a searing look at how these remarkable men and women grew up, decided to serve, and affected those around them with their life and death. I worked closely with Ron over many late nights to get the book ready for publication, and in my opinion it is the best book he has written. Don’t miss it!
At some point I’ll start blogging more regularly. (In fact, I think my contract with GotD says that I have to, once the revised edition is published!) Rest assured, I’m not going anywhere.
24 Friday Nov 2023
Posted in Writing
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Some months ago I read Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to my children. I had not read the book since primary school, and it was interesting reading in a number of senses. One of them is that it seems to violate modern advice on how to write a novel—and yet it is a beloved piece of children’s literature regardless. So is the advice wrong? Or incomplete? Or are modern audiences just different than they were decades ago?
Conventional wisdom for authors is that a strong plot is based on a strong conflict or interweaved conflicts—and that each scene needs to advance the conflict in some way. (Or perhaps every other scene, if you follow the Deborah Chester model of action-reflection-action-reflection.) Without conflict, it seems, audiences get bored and simply stop reading.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory seems to follow this model initially. We are introduced to the desperate poverty of the Bucket family, which is juxtaposed against the delectable decadence of a wondrous chocolate factory in the same town. The stakes are raised by the contest of the Golden Tickets, and one by one the tickets are claimed by other children who are truly horrid in their own ways. Charlie, meanwhile, shows his virtue by accepting his suffering without complaint, and doing what little he can to help the rest of the family.
But once Charlie finds the last ticket, the conflict as such seems to vanish. Charlie and Grandpa Joe go from one wonderful experience to the next, passive observers rather than active agents in the story. The other children suffer various unexpected fates, of course, but what exactly is the underlying conflict?
Moreover, the narrative gleefully brings itself to a halt several times, and invites the reader to enjoy such diversions as Square Candies that Look Round, which play zero role in the plot. Especially in such a short book, why does Dahl allow himself such self-indulgence?
Perhaps the more useful way to address the first issue is to reframe it. The story is not presenting a conflict—it is presenting the reader with two mysteries. The first mystery, created by the contrast between Charlie’s selflessness and the other children’s incredible vices, is whether Charlie will receive his just reward, and whether the other children will receive their just punishments. And the story goes on to answer that question in the affirmative, presenting a straightforward morality play as the other children receive punishments that fit the crime, so to speak. Charlie, being a good boy, does not overstep his bounds during the tour and seems to be in no danger.
Or is he? During my reread, I was struck by the depiction of Wonka himself. He seems indifferent to the danger that the other children are placed in, and even seems to relish the thought of Veruca Salt heading off to the incinerator, for example. As their parents understandably go into panic, Wonka blithely promises that “they all come out in the wash.” The net effect is quite sinister—and Dahl is a master of sinister, as you can see in his stories for adults such as “The Landlady.” (One might even be tempted to read Wonka as a devil-figure, with his goatee and his profession of tempting children with sweets. Dahl certainly had the literary chops to be thinking in that direction.)
So the other mystery is what are Wonka’s intentions, especially with Charlie? And this mystery is deepened as the story progresses, until we finally learn that Wonka was looking for a successor. In that one moment of eucatastrophe, both of the key mysteries of the story get resolved in a whoosh of joy.
But what of the Square Candies that Look Round, and other such flourishes? My read is that Dahl was trying to maintain a sense of wonder, even if it didn’t advance the plot per se. Rather than presenting conflict specifically, Dahl’s technique is to provoke interest in general. Conflict is only one tool to provoke interest; mystery and wonder are others.
Slavish focus on plot action was not always mandatory for authors. In earlier eras, authors often would digress into various topics just because they were interesting. (One could think of Victor Hugo’s multiple-chapter celebrations of, for example, the sewer system of Paris.) Today, that sort of thing seems to have fallen out of fashion—with some notable exceptions. Neal Stephenson sometimes gets grief for his unexpected monologues on the proper way to eat Captain Crunch cereal and the like.
I don’t believe that modern audiences are so very different than in former years. Yes, attention spans are shorter, and some readers are conditioned to expect more action. But if, regardless of these challenges, you think you can provoke reader interest with a sparkling piece of writing even if it doesn’t advance story conflict, I would say go for it.
09 Monday Oct 2023
Posted in Economics, Politics, Politics for Worldbuilders, Writing
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In the previous post, I discussed several basic functions of government—while inserting snide remarks about whether governments actually carry out these functions. Anyone who pays even the slightest attention to the news will understand why; governments often claim to pursue a given goal, but then enact policies that seem designed to a) be ineffective at achieving that goal or actually make the problem worse, and b) happen to benefit the ruling faction politically or monetarily.
Why? In the basic model of public-choice economics, it is because all government officials act in their own personal best interest, at all times, even if that involves neglecting or victimizing the populace. If there is any hope of good policy, says this model, it can only be when it is in the personal interest of the officials to deliver good policy. (This is why democracies tend to have better policies than autocracies, at least on average: politicians need to at least look like they are furthering the interests, or perceived interests, of at least half the voters.)
We needn’t accept the strong form of this model, at least not all the time. We can still recognize that some political figures and bureaucrats genuinely want to do a good job. But good policy is hard to pull off, even with the best of intentions, because governments don’t always have enough information to make good judgments about complex policy choices, and often don’t even understand the information they do have. This is related to the “knowledge problem” of Hayek—people are better at accurately perceiving their own personal surroundings and experiences than they are at interpreting imprecise representations of the wide world that have gone through several rounds of abstraction and reification.
In an environment of insufficient information, it is very easy for even a small faction of self-interested actors to put their thumb on the policy scale, so to speak, so that policies end up favoring them. It is also easy for well-intentioned ideologues to push policies that seem nice in the abstract, but prove hideously inappropriate for the real world.
For worldbuilding purposes, we can boil down the messy workings of policy formation into a triangle with three points. One point represents the “best” policy that could be arrived at, assuming that governments were perfectly benevolent and omniscient. (This assumes, of course, that you know what the “best” policy would be for your invented society; but hey, it’s your story.)
A second point represents the most likely policy to be arrived at assuming benevolent intentions but imperfect decisionmaking, given the limitations of available knowledge and skill among policymakers, their mental models, and the capabilities of existing government structures, among other bits of administrative friction. (You can throw in the workings of the political system as a further obstacle, if you want to be ambitious!)
A third point represents what policy would be set if government officials were strictly maximizing their own personal interests (or alternatively, the interests of the state as against the populace or rival states—or a combination of both!). This is trickier than it seems; as we discussed with regard to taxation, an actor’s evaluation of its best interest will depend on its values and time horizon, among other things. But as a rule of thumb, it still gives you something to hang your hat on.
This is not meant to be a rigorous exercise, but a quick and dirty way to think about policy choices in your invented setting. For any given society, or even for specific policy areas in the society, you can arbitrarily decide at what point (within the triangle) public policy is going to land—and then you get to imagine how it ended up that way!
*****
(This post is part of Politics for Worldbuilders, an occasional series. Many of the previous posts in this series eventually became grist for my handbook for authors and game designers, Beyond Kings and Princesses: Governments for Worldbuilders. The topic of this post belongs in the planned second book in this series, working title Wealth [Commerce?] for Worldbuilders. No idea when it will be finished, but it should be fun!)
Building Worlds 