The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future

For my grandchildren,

Nathan, Clara, Abraham, Hannah,

and those who may be yet to come.

They will be fine caretakers

of the future.

Contents

Introduction

1. What Will It Take to Put You in This Car Today?

2. Game Theory 101

3. Game Theory 102

4. Bombs Away

5. Napkins for Peace: Defining the Question

6. Engineering the Future

7. Fast-Forward the Present

8. How to Predict the Unpredictable

9. Fun with the Past

10. Dare to Be Embarrassed!

11. The Big Sweep: The History of Worms, or Bali High, Bali Low

Acknowledgments

Appendices

Afterword

Appendix to the Revised Edition

Notes

Introduction

KING LEOPOLD II, remembered today as Belgium’s Builder King, reigned from 1865 to 1909.¹ A constitutional monarch who, like many of his contemporaries, longed for the bygone days of absolute power, he was nonetheless an unusually influential and activist king who helped make Belgians free, prosperous, and secure.

Belgium’s good works during Leopold’s reign are almost uncountable. He oversaw the expansion of political freedom with the adoption of universal adult male suffrage in competitive elections, putting his country on a firm footing to become a modern democracy. On the economic front, he encouraged free-trade policies that guided Belgium to remarkable growth. In little Belgium, coal production, the engine of industry in nineteenth-century Europe, rose to such heights that it almost equaled that of France. Social policy too moved briskly ahead. Primary education became compulsory, and with the 1881 School Law, girls were assured access to secondary education.² Moreover, Leopold’s policies provided greater protection for women and children than was then the norm in most of Europe. Thanks to legislation passed in 1889, children under twelve could not be put to work, and after they turned twelve their workdays were limited to twelve hours, a radical departure from prevailing policy of the time.

When the Belgian economy was racked by a major economic crisis in 1873, Leopold helped improve the lot of the poor with pro-labor reforms, including granting workers the right to strike, a right that was still hotly resisted in the United States half a century later. He promoted truly ambitious public works projects, including massive road and railway construction designed to reduce unemployment, promote urbanization, and increase business opportunities. He was way ahead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama in recognizing how to stimulate employment and economic prosperity by building up infrastructure.

Leopold was a great reformer at home, a founder of Belgium’s long years of peace and plenty.

But then there was the Congo.

Though he never set foot in Africa, Leopold also ruled over the Congo Free State for nearly a quarter of a century (1885-1908). He built his personal wealth in the Congo first by extracting high-priced ivory from the region and then by exploiting the even more lucrative rubber trade that developed there. Unlike in Belgium, there was no chef de cabinet (roughly, prime minister), and no voters among the Congo’s approximately 30 million people to limit what he could do. Because it was his personal property, Leopold was free to exert the absolute rule he could not have at home. His “police,” the Force Publique, became the key to governing the Congo. Their job was to extract wealth for him (and for themselves) by ensuring the vast exportation of rubber to meet world demand. This band of butchers was led by a small number of Europeans who kidnapped and enslaved Congolese as soldiers who were in turn responsible for making sure that rubber quotas were met. Slave labor was the Force Publique’s preferred mode of production, so its soldiers set about enslaving Congolese men, women, and children.