What sort of character changes history? What and how do we learn from history? Why is it so hard to learn the 'unrecognised simplicities' of high performance? How did he approach problems we face?
I have been waiting expectantly for your Bismarck analysis and it doesn’t disappoint. I know you get a shed load of abuse via social media etc. I wanted to say thank you for introducing me and my son to a wider education that I never received previously. If you are ever near north East Lincolnshire and fancy rattling a couple of decent claret bottles let me know. With every best wish to you and your family.
Would a Bismarck approach to US-China relations be:
Rather than defend Taiwan like Britain defended Belgium in 1914, or following the US containment strategy during the Cold War, we’re instead going to renounce any promised commitment to defend Taiwan and work to build new institutions that respond to the rapid growth of science and technology such as AI and genome editing safety organisations, and an international moon base to distract humanity from its primitive instincts for conflict.
Reading this older piece made me think two things. First, China’s situation is clearly deteriorating. Not that Xi couldn’t change course but the gestapo tactics towards the tech sector and foreign companies don’t seem to building a lot of confidence there. It also makes me furious that the US is giving Xi the Russian lifeline. Ukrainians are the sheep stealers here and I think we just set them up to get killed and have their country wrecked and they are going to lose anyway. But we also gave China a source of oil, gas, food, and support. So stupid.
Britain has no conceivable, effective means to stop China doing as it wishes in the South China Sea.Nor does it have any legitimate national interest in doing so in the 21st Century.The arrogance, unwarranted self regard and hubris of so many British (and assorted Neocon/EU/Davos ) bureaucrats/commentators/politicians/overlords is entirely detached from realities.We can only hope that the pilots of the global south will have more sense and human goodness than the anglosphere ruling class had for 2 centuries.
You could use Obsidian to host the wiki of Bismarck and operate it as a shared vault to enable users to edit, or just host it online as a view only. As Obsidian is just Markdown with a fancy-looking UI, you can use GPT embeddings to semantically search through your notes. https://reasonabledeviations.com/2023/02/05/gpt-for-second-brain/ <- outlines how to set this system up. This system is almost a year old; there is probably something better now: https://twitter.com/erhartford/status/1735227826490786037. It depends on how much computing you have, I suppose.
Dec 14, 2023·edited Dec 15, 2023Liked by Dominic Cummings
From your examples, and others I can think of, the main "unrecognised simplicity" in successful enterprises is to have a single goal, or limited set. But, as I sketch below, this condition is necessary but not sufficient:
* General Groves - Design and manufacture a working atomic fission bomb
* Apollo project - Land men on the Moon, and get them back to Earth safely
* Otto Bismarck - Unify Germany, under Prussian (?) control
* Alexander the Great - Conquer the territory of Persia, and beyond as the opportunity arises
* William the Conqueror - Conquer England, as soon as Edward the Confessor pops his clogs
* Maggie Thatcher - Eliminate state monopolies by privatisation, thus breaking union power
and so it goes on (I could give literally dozens of examples) ...
The problem is that politicians have a host of competing and sometimes contradictory goals (not all of which are generally agreed to be desirable, often quite the reverse), and meta goals, which they must juggle with finite resources i.e. tax revenue and manpower.
Another problem is that even if the boss or bosses have a single clear goal, in a large organisation their minions may have other primary goals, generally of a nest feathering variety in various forms. These may not contribute to and could even detract from the main goal. Some, such as civil servants, may even be actively trying to scupper a primary goal of which they disapprove.
Yet another problem is changing priorities. From Robert Townsend's book "Up the Organization", Knopf, (1970):
"I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."
(Some rogue, most likely Townsend himself although no one knows for sure, claimed this was a quote by a Roman author called Petronius Arbiter, who lived around the time of Emperor Nero and whose most well known work was a "novel" called The Satyricon. This misattribution has spread round the Internet like a virus!)
So it seems to me it is futile in a true democracy, especially in the complex and internationally entangled societies of today, to expect the leadership to be effective in every area and please everyone. They must concentrate on their main priorities, and stick at it, just as Maggie Thatcher and Keith Joseph for example had a principle aim of bringing the unions to heel by depriving them of monopolies with which to hold the country to ransom.
So in summary a recipe for success is:
- Have limited goals, preferably only one main one. Don't try and spread your net too widely!
- Stick to them, as far as possible (e.g. don't be swayed or diverted by temporary media storms)
- Ensure everyone in the organisation is working towards them, and none are hampering them
I agree and I think effective organisations manage to push these principles right down to the lowest levels and get (most , not all) individuals to buy in . and good government should do the same . Having a Government with a separate process driven Civil Service will never get us there because the higher Civil Service is not concerned with doing and delivering . In fact the current Ministers and Perm Secs seem to change so fast no-one can be sure who is in charge
(except we do know that the Perm Sec at DHSC was a) clueless about the covid pandemic b)
exceptionally well trained at avoiding any responsibility for being clueless to the extent that he gave the impression that having no plan was actually a good plan as we could have the covid equivalent of chicken pox parties c) he was joined in this stupidity by the woman who was charged in the Cabinet Office with responsibility for civil contingency planning saying that there was no plan yet complaining post hoc that there should have been uncle tom cobbley and all (including HR nightmare input) involved in dealing with the crisis as it was causing havoc in the country .
Took me a while to get round to reading this, but it is very interesting indeed. Two comments:
1) Part of the problem for the nineteenth century is just that there is so much stuff in so many different archives that it presents extreme difficulties of scope and scale. That is true even if you limit it to the things that seems obviously important. Only a thin sliver of this material has been published and a lot of it is poorly catalogued and understood. LLMs might one day be able to help in the way you suggest, but prior to that you'd need a huge amount more material to have been calendared and (at least) transcribed. A lot of the German stuff will be in a script that even specialists often struggle with (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurrent).
The kind of fundamental work with sources you are describing in this post is not all that highly valued in the modern academy - partly for reasons of fashion, but largely because (relatively recent - post 1990) research funding policies, especially in the UK, systematically disincentivise it. In some ways, it is more surprising that anyone bothers to do it at all than that more of it isn't done. It has survived somewhat better in some (earlier) periods of history than it has for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
2) You refer to an author called 'Zerber' in both this essay and the chronology - I think you mean (Terence) Zuber (as once in the chronology, p. 342). I am not a subject expert, but I know his work is highly regarded by some specialists, if thought a bit combative and overstated at points. He has had a warmer reception in the Anglophone world than Germany (partly because his targets are usually German scholars). His book on the Schlieffen Plan was pretty controversial, but current consensus seems to be that he was more right than wrong about there being no plan per se. I don't think anyone has seriously challenged the main argument of the 'Moltke Myth' book (at least when it comes to Von Moltke), but as far as I can tell that was less outside the specialist consensus. It is not controversial that both 1866 and 1870 were closer run things than the lopsided results would suggest. Ironically, one factor in those victories as against 1914 may have been that by the latter date the General Staff actually had tighter control over what attacking formations actually did (with deleterious effects).
Pushed for time, but here is an addendum to Dominic’s masterpiece. I have not read the near 400 pager on the work and study of Bismark up to 1867, will leave digesting to LLM.
From what I can deduce this is an unbelievably thorough (almost overwhelmingly so) incisive, unique and hugely impressive analysis. Likely go down in history. The million-euro question that arises - how relevant is all of this in today’s world? A short answer is, yes to an extent as Dominic says, in as much power politics is still part of the game, achieving great policy outcomes still alludes and only very occasionally do exceptional people get drawn to politics (IMO Mandala, Roosevelt came at the right times).
But that is not the right question. The trillion-dollar one is - what about tomorrow’s world? Sounds an oxymoron but we need to take the power out of politics. Otherwise, I’m fearful we could be doomed.
Rather than the focus being on political history as is Dominic’s bent, I prefer radical thinking about the systemic shortcomings of the system of politics that is being operated. Many workers in the field and a significant portion of the people think our current blend of democratic politics isn’t working well, going as far as condemning it as being “rotten and broken”.
Like many great political leaders Bismark was first and foremost a pragmatist, it was a job to be done. He was aided by the fact he was able to operate a quasi-autocratic form of governance - convenient him being fearful over mob-rule. Except for those losing their lives in his war games “the people” weren’t significantly involved. His very considerable insights and study of the real motives, competence levels and personalities of other European leaders greatly facilitated him in deciding his own maneuvers.
But he was based in a time and circumstances which in many respects do not resonate with the modern era. For sure one wants the very best minds and personalities available to govern a nation. Its also a given that we need to devise and execute imaginative policy that is acceptable and best serves the people and the nation, with our country playing a role on the world stage in helping to promote peace and environmental conservation.
Dominic’s analysis open minds as to the execution of policy required to deliver outstanding outcomes. But even devising best policy in today’s world is a formidable task. Many things are on the move eg political ideologies, technological impact, international power games, environmental degradation. Our flawed democratic system doesn’t help, with its protocols originating from bygone times: elections – now media-manipulated, frivolous, unrepresentative - divisive campaigns and ideology-driven power-crazed political parties at the helm. The governing process is also diminished by excessive media intrusion.
There is an alternative. I have tried to build a new model for democratic government that fits the 21st century. Very briefly - we can now bring democracy into the modern era with governance by “Majority-Agreement” as opposed to the absurd majority-rule we currently endure, and with professionalism and integrity at the core of all government operation.
A big ask – how do we get there? A new government department “Of the People” is established that ensures a high level of interest and engagement by the people in deciding how they live together. A fundamental human right, no less. This includes access to a “Peoples’ Platform” where informed deliberation on policy and ethos takes place, with AI seeking and honing the broad areas of agreement. These act as prompts for the development of innovative holistic policy proposals by dedicated Select Committees in Parliament. These are then passed to the HoC where all MPs deliberate and super-majority vote into legislation. Policy roll-out is via specialist teams.
MPs are cleverly selected and serve for a single term, incentivized and resourced to focus on policy and undistracted by hierarchical power games, which so adversely impact all of politics.
Absolutely compatible with Dominic’s vision for high-performance government with competency and ethics driving the delivery of long-term policy - and critically, supported by a good majority of people, allowing pragmatism rather than superficiality to reign supreme.
You mention LLMs for Bismarck material, and previously for Covid Inquiry material. But it's not clear what you expect the model to actually... do. Could you expand on the output you envisage please?
For example, what is your preferred end product?
- Model(s) that can answer questions about Bismarck/the inquiry
- Fresh insights about the subject matter
- Something that can impersonate Bismarck/Covid participants
As a young person currently studying Politics at Oxford University and being incredibly frustrated by almost all of it, it sounds like I am directly in your target audience for this piece. I haven’t started on the PDF or anything yet but there are a few major and minor points I’d probably want to raise in response to this, both relating this this piece and in general.
Minor first - number one is include a set of contents to the document. As it stands it’s a wall of text that is incredibly difficult to navigate - adding in the page numbers of sections and years would be incredibly useful. Similarly, it may just be me but there is something about the font and formatting that makes me glaze over when I look at it. Assuming others feel the same, it may be worth redoing the font etc to make it more readable - your actual blog itself for example is much easier to read than the PDF you’ve put up.
On a more major note, while I am fully interested and engaged in your questions and broad pitch of determining what goes wrong in government and how to correct for it etc, and appreciate the time you’ve put into creating this, I must admit that your proposed solution (trawling through ~2000 pages of Early Modern German History) is not one that appeals to me in the slightest. While I can respect those that are, I am no historian - I stopped taking it after GCSE, opting for STEM subjects at A-Level instead. As such, I have no real knowledge at all about this period, meaning I would largely be starting from scratch. I also have relatively little personal interest in said history (nothing against it, it just fails to get me at all excited), a problem since because of my ADHD, I find it almost impossible to engage with anything for which I neither have any interest in, nor can see the purpose of doing so (this has been a major issue for my course).
This would not necessarily be a problem if I could see value in fully engaging with your work on Bismarck etc, but while I mean no disrespect for your work in saying this, nor am I saying that it will be useless for everyone, I do not feel that this will be an efficient use of my time (I am of course open to changing my mind on this). It is clear from what you said that it is possible to look at Bismarck’s life and determine from it answers to the various questions you put forward at the end of this piece. What is unclear to me however is why you are not capable of simply including these conclusions themselves, along with perhaps a degree of context for them. You clearly feel it is possible to distill from his life various insights, so why it is that you are not choosing to share these directly and instead seemingly want it to be ‘organically discerned from it’ seems odd to me. The net effect of this is that you are essentially proposing I spend several weeks (or given my own limitations and likely ADHD-related lack of engagement, several months) to learn something that you could likely summarise in less than one tenth of the time. This is time I simply do not have.
This is not to say that such an approach is necessarily bad for everyone - I can already think of one or two historian friends who I feel would greatly appreciate and benefit from this. I may also be misunderstanding or misreading your points - such a summary may be included in the document (hence the need for a contents page), may feature in future blog posts, or may have already been given in your previous posts (I am a relatively new subscriber so have not had a chance to go through your backlog). Like I said earlier I am also open to discussion on this and would definitely be willing to change my mind. However, as it stands, given the seeming possibility of you being able to abstract away all the unnecessary information about Bismarck and German history to reach the actual insights, I fail to see how me attempting to do this myself would be an effective use of my time.
Finally, on a wider note, one phrase that stuck out to me is your claim that “the <1% who are interested have an interesting knack of finding each other and working on things.” I am not going to try to claim that I am in the 0.0whatever% you often seem to refer to or anything, however I have found that I appear to think and behave differently to my peers in a way that I have thus far only seen replicated here. However, contrary to your claim, I have found it immensely difficult to meet anyone whom I feel I share this with, and in general have found connecting with my peers difficult. Similarly I have also been struggling with engaging with the course, which has thus far seemed almost entirely useless and would certainly lend credence to your claims that most politicians are utterly clueless. Given your history both in terms of education, career and attitudes you seem as though you would have a better insight than most into my situation. With that in mind I would greatly appreciate any help you would be able to offer?
1 this is a try to get a new approach to setting out a more accurate historical record - important in itself for the whole subject . 2 as learning material not giving answers but rather
indicating a whole series of indicators of interest for a wide range of further research is good .
3 yes it's very dense but pick and choose and dip in - DC has been on this for 30 years - you're not alone , most of the people on this site , from all over the world , are trying to pick up insights which help to explain the difficulties we face and then DO something about them - see the Maths circle stuff and ideas for creating cells working under the radar .
One of the difficulties in public service is the lack of shared lexicon to discuss and understand such issues. Unlike in the private sector where success is obvious, many of the best public servants retire with only a handful who know of their name and accomplishments, quietly having arranged for efficient road repairs in their town for 20 years, or what have you. Nobody would know to read their memoirs if they wrote them. I appreciate your efforts to help open up conversations about these issues.
"I also learned that odd people in politics are interested in these things and the <1% who are interested have an interesting knack of finding each other and working on things."
I am trying to build an antipodean network of such people, aimed at public sector reform. Hopefully you won't mind me encouraging your readers to reach out, assuming they find my own writings on these subjects compelling.
I'd say 'Yes, absolutely!', but I note you're based in the UK? Lots to think about and discuss in the realm of ideas (I'm grateful to DC for helping break open the conversation), but less scope for on-the-ground work I imagine? I'd be interested, for example, if you had any feedback/critique of any of my recent posts on these subjects.
I would be really interested to read your thoughts on how brexit would have played out in an ideal world.
You’ve talked before about how you hoped it would be such a shock that the civil service/SW1 would be forced to confront the insider delusions that you describe here.
But you’ve also written regularly about how large bureaucracies kill off high performance (ARPA, Bell Labs) and continue on muddling through as the civil service/SW1 has done post-brexit.
Is some kind of Bismarckian prime mover needed or could the system have improved itself?
I saw the Times article today. I can’t say I am surprised Sunak reached out to you, he’s smart enough to know that you’ve got the secret to success.
The world is becoming a more dangerously place by the day (almost by the hour), how on earth can anyone look at the abysmal situation at the MOD (not including the two humiliating defeats of Iraq and Afghanistan) and assume the current SNAFU is acceptable?
Why does Sunak continue with this charade? I would personally resign and go to California if I was in his shoes. Surely Dom, he knows that he’s on political death row and will receive an epic political defeat in 2024? Why doesn’t he roll the dice and actually change things?
Thank you for your service to our country Dom, but your country still needs you to smash the establishment once again!
Dominic Cummings always says to NEVER use digital versions of books, because the publishing companies can't be trusted not to edit things after the fact. So I took his advice
For those scared of clicking a link, or those without intersection observer on their browsers, I have made a physical copy of DC's Bismarck book. I believe it's the only one in existence. But it's missing one thing.
How do I get the author to come up and sign it himself? There is a blank space at the front for one to do so.
I have been waiting expectantly for your Bismarck analysis and it doesn’t disappoint. I know you get a shed load of abuse via social media etc. I wanted to say thank you for introducing me and my son to a wider education that I never received previously. If you are ever near north East Lincolnshire and fancy rattling a couple of decent claret bottles let me know. With every best wish to you and your family.
An impeccable piece of writing. Superior in many ways to anything you have shared prior.
FYI the Buffett quote is wrong, in a way which makes a fair difference to the quote, he says "integrity" not "character"
As an aside, this may be of interest: https://x.com/powerfultakes/status/1734925453113045103?s=20 Important milestone: Drones are now consistently destroying a majority of both Russian and Ukrainian military hardware.
Would a Bismarck approach to US-China relations be:
Rather than defend Taiwan like Britain defended Belgium in 1914, or following the US containment strategy during the Cold War, we’re instead going to renounce any promised commitment to defend Taiwan and work to build new institutions that respond to the rapid growth of science and technology such as AI and genome editing safety organisations, and an international moon base to distract humanity from its primitive instincts for conflict.
https://dominiccummings.com/2017/09/29/review-of-allisons-book-on-uschina-nuclear-destruction-and-some-connected-thoughts-on-technology-the-eu-and-space/
Reading this older piece made me think two things. First, China’s situation is clearly deteriorating. Not that Xi couldn’t change course but the gestapo tactics towards the tech sector and foreign companies don’t seem to building a lot of confidence there. It also makes me furious that the US is giving Xi the Russian lifeline. Ukrainians are the sheep stealers here and I think we just set them up to get killed and have their country wrecked and they are going to lose anyway. But we also gave China a source of oil, gas, food, and support. So stupid.
Britain has no conceivable, effective means to stop China doing as it wishes in the South China Sea.Nor does it have any legitimate national interest in doing so in the 21st Century.The arrogance, unwarranted self regard and hubris of so many British (and assorted Neocon/EU/Davos ) bureaucrats/commentators/politicians/overlords is entirely detached from realities.We can only hope that the pilots of the global south will have more sense and human goodness than the anglosphere ruling class had for 2 centuries.
You could use Obsidian to host the wiki of Bismarck and operate it as a shared vault to enable users to edit, or just host it online as a view only. As Obsidian is just Markdown with a fancy-looking UI, you can use GPT embeddings to semantically search through your notes. https://reasonabledeviations.com/2023/02/05/gpt-for-second-brain/ <- outlines how to set this system up. This system is almost a year old; there is probably something better now: https://twitter.com/erhartford/status/1735227826490786037. It depends on how much computing you have, I suppose.
From your examples, and others I can think of, the main "unrecognised simplicity" in successful enterprises is to have a single goal, or limited set. But, as I sketch below, this condition is necessary but not sufficient:
* General Groves - Design and manufacture a working atomic fission bomb
* Apollo project - Land men on the Moon, and get them back to Earth safely
* Otto Bismarck - Unify Germany, under Prussian (?) control
* Alexander the Great - Conquer the territory of Persia, and beyond as the opportunity arises
* William the Conqueror - Conquer England, as soon as Edward the Confessor pops his clogs
* Maggie Thatcher - Eliminate state monopolies by privatisation, thus breaking union power
and so it goes on (I could give literally dozens of examples) ...
The problem is that politicians have a host of competing and sometimes contradictory goals (not all of which are generally agreed to be desirable, often quite the reverse), and meta goals, which they must juggle with finite resources i.e. tax revenue and manpower.
Another problem is that even if the boss or bosses have a single clear goal, in a large organisation their minions may have other primary goals, generally of a nest feathering variety in various forms. These may not contribute to and could even detract from the main goal. Some, such as civil servants, may even be actively trying to scupper a primary goal of which they disapprove.
Yet another problem is changing priorities. From Robert Townsend's book "Up the Organization", Knopf, (1970):
"I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."
(Some rogue, most likely Townsend himself although no one knows for sure, claimed this was a quote by a Roman author called Petronius Arbiter, who lived around the time of Emperor Nero and whose most well known work was a "novel" called The Satyricon. This misattribution has spread round the Internet like a virus!)
So it seems to me it is futile in a true democracy, especially in the complex and internationally entangled societies of today, to expect the leadership to be effective in every area and please everyone. They must concentrate on their main priorities, and stick at it, just as Maggie Thatcher and Keith Joseph for example had a principle aim of bringing the unions to heel by depriving them of monopolies with which to hold the country to ransom.
So in summary a recipe for success is:
- Have limited goals, preferably only one main one. Don't try and spread your net too widely!
- Stick to them, as far as possible (e.g. don't be swayed or diverted by temporary media storms)
- Ensure everyone in the organisation is working towards them, and none are hampering them
I agree and I think effective organisations manage to push these principles right down to the lowest levels and get (most , not all) individuals to buy in . and good government should do the same . Having a Government with a separate process driven Civil Service will never get us there because the higher Civil Service is not concerned with doing and delivering . In fact the current Ministers and Perm Secs seem to change so fast no-one can be sure who is in charge
(except we do know that the Perm Sec at DHSC was a) clueless about the covid pandemic b)
exceptionally well trained at avoiding any responsibility for being clueless to the extent that he gave the impression that having no plan was actually a good plan as we could have the covid equivalent of chicken pox parties c) he was joined in this stupidity by the woman who was charged in the Cabinet Office with responsibility for civil contingency planning saying that there was no plan yet complaining post hoc that there should have been uncle tom cobbley and all (including HR nightmare input) involved in dealing with the crisis as it was causing havoc in the country .
In other words selection and maintenance of the aim combined concentration and economy of force.
Took me a while to get round to reading this, but it is very interesting indeed. Two comments:
1) Part of the problem for the nineteenth century is just that there is so much stuff in so many different archives that it presents extreme difficulties of scope and scale. That is true even if you limit it to the things that seems obviously important. Only a thin sliver of this material has been published and a lot of it is poorly catalogued and understood. LLMs might one day be able to help in the way you suggest, but prior to that you'd need a huge amount more material to have been calendared and (at least) transcribed. A lot of the German stuff will be in a script that even specialists often struggle with (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurrent).
The kind of fundamental work with sources you are describing in this post is not all that highly valued in the modern academy - partly for reasons of fashion, but largely because (relatively recent - post 1990) research funding policies, especially in the UK, systematically disincentivise it. In some ways, it is more surprising that anyone bothers to do it at all than that more of it isn't done. It has survived somewhat better in some (earlier) periods of history than it has for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
2) You refer to an author called 'Zerber' in both this essay and the chronology - I think you mean (Terence) Zuber (as once in the chronology, p. 342). I am not a subject expert, but I know his work is highly regarded by some specialists, if thought a bit combative and overstated at points. He has had a warmer reception in the Anglophone world than Germany (partly because his targets are usually German scholars). His book on the Schlieffen Plan was pretty controversial, but current consensus seems to be that he was more right than wrong about there being no plan per se. I don't think anyone has seriously challenged the main argument of the 'Moltke Myth' book (at least when it comes to Von Moltke), but as far as I can tell that was less outside the specialist consensus. It is not controversial that both 1866 and 1870 were closer run things than the lopsided results would suggest. Ironically, one factor in those victories as against 1914 may have been that by the latter date the General Staff actually had tighter control over what attacking formations actually did (with deleterious effects).
Yeah Zuber!
Interesting comment thanks.
I'm going to go through all these shortly after a spell of ignoring Bismarck!
This is the first time since college that I've seen that "The Rising Sea" quote - I did not expect it to be here of all places.
There's a great AG textbook with the same title, incidentally.
Here is a great book about the creation of the German Empire.
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-and-Iron/dp/0750996226
Pushed for time, but here is an addendum to Dominic’s masterpiece. I have not read the near 400 pager on the work and study of Bismark up to 1867, will leave digesting to LLM.
From what I can deduce this is an unbelievably thorough (almost overwhelmingly so) incisive, unique and hugely impressive analysis. Likely go down in history. The million-euro question that arises - how relevant is all of this in today’s world? A short answer is, yes to an extent as Dominic says, in as much power politics is still part of the game, achieving great policy outcomes still alludes and only very occasionally do exceptional people get drawn to politics (IMO Mandala, Roosevelt came at the right times).
But that is not the right question. The trillion-dollar one is - what about tomorrow’s world? Sounds an oxymoron but we need to take the power out of politics. Otherwise, I’m fearful we could be doomed.
Rather than the focus being on political history as is Dominic’s bent, I prefer radical thinking about the systemic shortcomings of the system of politics that is being operated. Many workers in the field and a significant portion of the people think our current blend of democratic politics isn’t working well, going as far as condemning it as being “rotten and broken”.
Like many great political leaders Bismark was first and foremost a pragmatist, it was a job to be done. He was aided by the fact he was able to operate a quasi-autocratic form of governance - convenient him being fearful over mob-rule. Except for those losing their lives in his war games “the people” weren’t significantly involved. His very considerable insights and study of the real motives, competence levels and personalities of other European leaders greatly facilitated him in deciding his own maneuvers.
But he was based in a time and circumstances which in many respects do not resonate with the modern era. For sure one wants the very best minds and personalities available to govern a nation. Its also a given that we need to devise and execute imaginative policy that is acceptable and best serves the people and the nation, with our country playing a role on the world stage in helping to promote peace and environmental conservation.
Dominic’s analysis open minds as to the execution of policy required to deliver outstanding outcomes. But even devising best policy in today’s world is a formidable task. Many things are on the move eg political ideologies, technological impact, international power games, environmental degradation. Our flawed democratic system doesn’t help, with its protocols originating from bygone times: elections – now media-manipulated, frivolous, unrepresentative - divisive campaigns and ideology-driven power-crazed political parties at the helm. The governing process is also diminished by excessive media intrusion.
There is an alternative. I have tried to build a new model for democratic government that fits the 21st century. Very briefly - we can now bring democracy into the modern era with governance by “Majority-Agreement” as opposed to the absurd majority-rule we currently endure, and with professionalism and integrity at the core of all government operation.
A big ask – how do we get there? A new government department “Of the People” is established that ensures a high level of interest and engagement by the people in deciding how they live together. A fundamental human right, no less. This includes access to a “Peoples’ Platform” where informed deliberation on policy and ethos takes place, with AI seeking and honing the broad areas of agreement. These act as prompts for the development of innovative holistic policy proposals by dedicated Select Committees in Parliament. These are then passed to the HoC where all MPs deliberate and super-majority vote into legislation. Policy roll-out is via specialist teams.
MPs are cleverly selected and serve for a single term, incentivized and resourced to focus on policy and undistracted by hierarchical power games, which so adversely impact all of politics.
Absolutely compatible with Dominic’s vision for high-performance government with competency and ethics driving the delivery of long-term policy - and critically, supported by a good majority of people, allowing pragmatism rather than superficiality to reign supreme.
You mention LLMs for Bismarck material, and previously for Covid Inquiry material. But it's not clear what you expect the model to actually... do. Could you expand on the output you envisage please?
For example, what is your preferred end product?
- Model(s) that can answer questions about Bismarck/the inquiry
- Fresh insights about the subject matter
- Something that can impersonate Bismarck/Covid participants
- Something completely different
As a young person currently studying Politics at Oxford University and being incredibly frustrated by almost all of it, it sounds like I am directly in your target audience for this piece. I haven’t started on the PDF or anything yet but there are a few major and minor points I’d probably want to raise in response to this, both relating this this piece and in general.
Minor first - number one is include a set of contents to the document. As it stands it’s a wall of text that is incredibly difficult to navigate - adding in the page numbers of sections and years would be incredibly useful. Similarly, it may just be me but there is something about the font and formatting that makes me glaze over when I look at it. Assuming others feel the same, it may be worth redoing the font etc to make it more readable - your actual blog itself for example is much easier to read than the PDF you’ve put up.
On a more major note, while I am fully interested and engaged in your questions and broad pitch of determining what goes wrong in government and how to correct for it etc, and appreciate the time you’ve put into creating this, I must admit that your proposed solution (trawling through ~2000 pages of Early Modern German History) is not one that appeals to me in the slightest. While I can respect those that are, I am no historian - I stopped taking it after GCSE, opting for STEM subjects at A-Level instead. As such, I have no real knowledge at all about this period, meaning I would largely be starting from scratch. I also have relatively little personal interest in said history (nothing against it, it just fails to get me at all excited), a problem since because of my ADHD, I find it almost impossible to engage with anything for which I neither have any interest in, nor can see the purpose of doing so (this has been a major issue for my course).
This would not necessarily be a problem if I could see value in fully engaging with your work on Bismarck etc, but while I mean no disrespect for your work in saying this, nor am I saying that it will be useless for everyone, I do not feel that this will be an efficient use of my time (I am of course open to changing my mind on this). It is clear from what you said that it is possible to look at Bismarck’s life and determine from it answers to the various questions you put forward at the end of this piece. What is unclear to me however is why you are not capable of simply including these conclusions themselves, along with perhaps a degree of context for them. You clearly feel it is possible to distill from his life various insights, so why it is that you are not choosing to share these directly and instead seemingly want it to be ‘organically discerned from it’ seems odd to me. The net effect of this is that you are essentially proposing I spend several weeks (or given my own limitations and likely ADHD-related lack of engagement, several months) to learn something that you could likely summarise in less than one tenth of the time. This is time I simply do not have.
This is not to say that such an approach is necessarily bad for everyone - I can already think of one or two historian friends who I feel would greatly appreciate and benefit from this. I may also be misunderstanding or misreading your points - such a summary may be included in the document (hence the need for a contents page), may feature in future blog posts, or may have already been given in your previous posts (I am a relatively new subscriber so have not had a chance to go through your backlog). Like I said earlier I am also open to discussion on this and would definitely be willing to change my mind. However, as it stands, given the seeming possibility of you being able to abstract away all the unnecessary information about Bismarck and German history to reach the actual insights, I fail to see how me attempting to do this myself would be an effective use of my time.
Finally, on a wider note, one phrase that stuck out to me is your claim that “the <1% who are interested have an interesting knack of finding each other and working on things.” I am not going to try to claim that I am in the 0.0whatever% you often seem to refer to or anything, however I have found that I appear to think and behave differently to my peers in a way that I have thus far only seen replicated here. However, contrary to your claim, I have found it immensely difficult to meet anyone whom I feel I share this with, and in general have found connecting with my peers difficult. Similarly I have also been struggling with engaging with the course, which has thus far seemed almost entirely useless and would certainly lend credence to your claims that most politicians are utterly clueless. Given your history both in terms of education, career and attitudes you seem as though you would have a better insight than most into my situation. With that in mind I would greatly appreciate any help you would be able to offer?
Thanks again for another interesting post!
1 this is a try to get a new approach to setting out a more accurate historical record - important in itself for the whole subject . 2 as learning material not giving answers but rather
indicating a whole series of indicators of interest for a wide range of further research is good .
3 yes it's very dense but pick and choose and dip in - DC has been on this for 30 years - you're not alone , most of the people on this site , from all over the world , are trying to pick up insights which help to explain the difficulties we face and then DO something about them - see the Maths circle stuff and ideas for creating cells working under the radar .
https://www.polaris-fellowship.com/
Apply to this when it reopens. That’s how you can meet the <1%
One of the difficulties in public service is the lack of shared lexicon to discuss and understand such issues. Unlike in the private sector where success is obvious, many of the best public servants retire with only a handful who know of their name and accomplishments, quietly having arranged for efficient road repairs in their town for 20 years, or what have you. Nobody would know to read their memoirs if they wrote them. I appreciate your efforts to help open up conversations about these issues.
"I also learned that odd people in politics are interested in these things and the <1% who are interested have an interesting knack of finding each other and working on things."
I am trying to build an antipodean network of such people, aimed at public sector reform. Hopefully you won't mind me encouraging your readers to reach out, assuming they find my own writings on these subjects compelling.
Re network, anything useful someone *not* in public sector can help with? Reach out @SebSteele0 on X if so!
I'd say 'Yes, absolutely!', but I note you're based in the UK? Lots to think about and discuss in the realm of ideas (I'm grateful to DC for helping break open the conversation), but less scope for on-the-ground work I imagine? I'd be interested, for example, if you had any feedback/critique of any of my recent posts on these subjects.
Will check out
I would be really interested to read your thoughts on how brexit would have played out in an ideal world.
You’ve talked before about how you hoped it would be such a shock that the civil service/SW1 would be forced to confront the insider delusions that you describe here.
But you’ve also written regularly about how large bureaucracies kill off high performance (ARPA, Bell Labs) and continue on muddling through as the civil service/SW1 has done post-brexit.
Is some kind of Bismarckian prime mover needed or could the system have improved itself?
I saw the Times article today. I can’t say I am surprised Sunak reached out to you, he’s smart enough to know that you’ve got the secret to success.
The world is becoming a more dangerously place by the day (almost by the hour), how on earth can anyone look at the abysmal situation at the MOD (not including the two humiliating defeats of Iraq and Afghanistan) and assume the current SNAFU is acceptable?
Why does Sunak continue with this charade? I would personally resign and go to California if I was in his shoes. Surely Dom, he knows that he’s on political death row and will receive an epic political defeat in 2024? Why doesn’t he roll the dice and actually change things?
Thank you for your service to our country Dom, but your country still needs you to smash the establishment once again!
Dominic Cummings always says to NEVER use digital versions of books, because the publishing companies can't be trusted not to edit things after the fact. So I took his advice
https://imgur.com/a/bqfrk87
For those scared of clicking a link, or those without intersection observer on their browsers, I have made a physical copy of DC's Bismarck book. I believe it's the only one in existence. But it's missing one thing.
How do I get the author to come up and sign it himself? There is a blank space at the front for one to do so.