Once upon a time, there was only one way to be rich: Be powerful. If you were powerful, you could take from others. Through force, you could take from others the fruits of their labor. And even if you got rich by luck or skill, such as through a bumper crop or skilled animal breeding or finding gold, you would lose it to someone more powerful. Once upon a time, you had to be powerful to be rich. When you’re taking from others or trying to stop someone from taking from you, yo

For most of baseball history, major league scouts were looking for “Five-Tool Players.” To be a Five-Tool Player, you need to be better than most other players in five different categories: Batting average, hitting for power (extra bases), speed, throwing, and fielding. Which is hard. It’s hard to be better than most other major-league players in one of those categories, much less five. Five-Tool Players are some of the best players in baseball history: Hank Aaron, Alex Rodri

Everybody likes a good Zero-Sum Game. Whether you’re watching or playing a sport, you like the tension. You like the effort it takes to win. You like a performance that beats a rival. If the Zero-Sum Game is a war, you like defeating an enemy. A big part of what makes Zero-Sum Games interesting is the risk of losing. Without the risk of losing, the Zero-Sum Game loses its tension. There’s less effort. Performances rarely reach greatness. But we also like Positive-Sum Games. W

In the Spy's Guide books, Positive-Sum Games and Zero-Sum Games are a simple way to develop effective strategies. Author Chris Illuminati (his real name) asked me how those games apply to strategies in office politics. The result was this article. Here's how it starts: Working in an office is oddly the same as working in the field of espionage. There are allies, enemies, allies who could become enemies and vice versa. There’s also intense negotiation to get more money, a more

In a jokey New York Times article, John Schwartz writes about starting a “trade war” against Whole Foods. He consults with two economists: “Trade deals are about setting the ground rules so other people can get what they want,” Mr. Goolsbee said. When you stop them all from getting what they want, he said, you’ve “got the game wrong.” I had to admit that the two economists had a point. I may feel that Whole Foods has, in fact, gotten “cute” by charging so much for wild-caught

If you’re a reader, you’ve probably read a book by Malcolm Gladwell. Either his bestsellers The Tipping Point, Outliers or his more recent book David And Goliath. Now, he’s teaching a “masterclass” on writing. One tip he gives away for free in the advertisement for the class (beginning at the :59 mark): Gladwell: “One of the mistakes I think writers make is they spend a lot of time thinking about how to start their stories. And not a lot of time thinking about how to end them

Investor Naval Ravikant is considered a sage in Silicon Valley. Dilbert creator and tech investor Scott Adams calls him one of the smartest people he knows. Naval (he prefers the single name brand) recently did a Periscope where he took questions from viewers. The whole discussion is interesting, but readers of the Spy’s Guide series will find his discussion of Positive-Sum and Zero-Sum Games fascinating. He takes those concepts beyond the thinking and strategic points in A S

The framework in A Spy’s Guide To Strategy is a powerful tool. It’s useful for simplifying complex strategic situations. So you can make decisions. So you can take action. It can even simplify one of the more complex situations in the modern world: Politics. Especially, Left-Center-Right politics. First, we look forward. All the way to the Endgame. There are three possible Endgames of Left-Center-Right politics: The Left takes the leadership role. The Center takes the leaders