The 48 Laws of Power | Hacker News Reader

The 48 Laws of Power

www2.tech.purdue.edu

53 pointsknown41 comments

Call me shallow, but I just can't take seriously anything that reminds me of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition

(Yes, Ferengi rules were recently mentioned in Jeff Atwood's blog, http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001225.html)

Granted some of them are silly, but a fair amout of the Ferengi Rules make sense.

Surprised everyone here seemed to miss the point. Like "The Prince" this is descriptive, not instructive. That is, "Here is how powerful people will attempt to control you..."

Well, this would mean that being powerful assumes lack of integrity. Disagreeing with this does not necessarily mean missing the point. I've been guilty of committing to some of these laws, consciously or not. So, another use of that list would be as a checkpoint of one's integrity. Kind of.

Learn to Keep People Dependent on You

To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.

This one is like death to the IT guy. At first, it seems like job security until you realize that the neophytes have clustered on your hull like so many barnacles. Being indispensable is great but it doesn't take many 2 AM "email emergencies" from the management types to make you want to become a goat herder.

Yeah, it actually seems like the more people need you, the less freedom you have, as long as you have any sense of responsibility toward them at all.

49: In the long term, and for smarter audiences, doing good work beats these tricks.

I found this book far more insightful than a bag of tricks.

Clearly, anyone who practices these rules religiously will end up living a very lonely, paranoid life.

However, as a nerd that doesn't understand social dynamics very well, I've found this book to be of immense defensive value -- I started seeing how people utilized these rules (either consciously or subconsciously) around me, and have been able to avoid being influenced / controlled by them.

I think thats an unfair assessment of a good book.

I was probably seventeen when I read the book, and have all but forgotten most of those laws, but I remembered many of the stories. Greene in the book carefully puts together an array of interesting stories of famous leaders, generals, businessman that makes the book enjoyable to read whether or not one agrees with his laws.

My favourite chapter was "Enter action with boldness" which had in it a story of a poor Korean man named Huh Saeng. http://wisdomportal.com/Enlightenment/Huh-Saeng.html

And I would add that "doing good work" gives you the confidence to "enter action with boldness".

The story of Huh Saeng is really good...! :)

It wasn't an assessment of a book, but of the link it was a comment on.

No offense, but I thought that story was messed up. What kind of man forces his wife to live in poverty to take care of him for 7 years so he can be free to read his books? I understand that wasn't the point of the story, but it was hard to ignore.

According to John Maynard Keynes, in the long term, we're all dead.

If John Maynard Keynes said it, then I believe it.

I just checked. John Maynard Keynes has no child. So perhaps by leaving debt to other people's children is the best solution to cleaning up mess that we created for the moment....

Beside from a point of view based on evolution. The creator of the mess will not leave bad genetic material that creates the problem. And by creating the big problem, he helps descendants of survivors pass the selection and become more robust to the problem! How unselfish is it!

"Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike"

Self-describing article?

It may be open-ended, and sphinxlike may be a matter of judgment, but for what it is, that is not a vague article.

And it is not banal.

These guys should publish something like "The 12 Laws of Marketing Books." But then they would be giving away all of their secrets.

> If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

Such as by following these other 47 laws!

I find much of these rules terrible, at first I believed it was a joke, no wonder we live in a society in which people feel so miserable !

it has nothing to do with hacking & hackers, it's very oldschool.

however: " As much as they respect brains in Silicon Valley, the message the Valley sends is: you should be more powerful."

I know a guy that plays by these rules. No one likes him.

Then it sounds like he's not following the rules very well.

Don't forget "The 50th Law", a book he co-authored with 50-cent, available at a fine bookseller near you. Why bother with Machiavelli when you can get it with a hip-hop twist.

Machiavelli is way better than his reputation suggests.

Oh my god. I thought you were joking.

http://www.amazon.com/50th-Law-50-Cent/dp/006177460X

I always notice people seem to read this book and assume that it's an instructional manual on how to live. It's just making points about the fundamentals of power.

After reading these "laws", it made me think of JK Rowling and how she used some of these with the Tom Riddle (Lord Voldemort) character in the Harry Potter books.

I'm thinking of Ayn Rand's Ellsworth Toohey.

Come on now guys. This book was written by a pop psychologist. He may have interesting theories, but he isn't exactly Genghis Khan.

This is one step too close to Opera's book club.

48 Laws and 33 Strategies are excellent. Greene himself is in no way comparable to those he quotes in his books, but he synthesized an excellent compilation of knowledge nonetheless.

Do not outshine the master? Yeah, hiding your talent is a sure way to get people to recognize your talent, and thereby attain success. I stopped reading at #1.

There is an obvious contradiction in these "laws". How can someone look stupid without damaging of reputation? If you read too much into them I think you'll find quite many contradictions. Not that I actually take them seriously or I would bother to read too much into them.

Interesting. I'd just get rid of the "The".

Art of war is pretty good too.

http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html

What's that they say again? Ultimate power ultimately corrupts.

"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?"

Generally it's "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

I bought this book a few years ago (5 IIRC). I started skimming it and got pretty sad about the things one supposedly had to do to make it. Then I lost the book a few days later when I left it on a flight.

I took it as a sign; I didn't bother going to go to lost and found or buy another copy. I wonder if I did the right thing. :)

Greene's books are interesting because they are Machiavellian: a mixture of amoral observation of what is, satirical recommendations and, vice versa, inexplicit instruction on what to watch out for other people doing to you.

And in A and C they are extremely valuable, and all worth owning and reading. And the advice does sometimes make sense -- it's written in the extreme to provoke, but sometimes life is so contradictory that doing "bad" things tempered with a good intention works out to positive in the final balance.

That is a guide book for a politican or businessman in developing countries.

In Russia, for example, it could be a bestseller. It is the-way-how-it-works here.

Unfortunately, people in Russia do not read books anymore.

This would be why I'm not that interested in power.

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