Links 05/16/26

Grand Strategy, Sci-Fi, WonderSwan

Illustration: Craig Mullins

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There is No Such Thing as Grand Strategy

“Grand Strategy is also quite popular in the gaming space, particularly in titles from Paradox Studios and Sega.13 Paradox has made the incredibly popular Hearts of Iron series, as well as a bunch of other spinoffs, including Imperator Rome, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, and Victoria. Sega is responsible for the Total War games, which, over a 20-year period, have released titles covering everything from ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt to the Napoleonic era. It is even releasing a game set in the Warhammer 40K universe (which I must confess I am excited about). Players assume the role of a kind of all-seeing state manager, responsible for simultaneously directing diplomacy, economic development, military force, technological progress, and internal politics over long spans of time. They are expected to balance resources, plan campaigns years or decades in advance, and align short-term decisions with long-term objectives to pursue national success or survival. In other words, these games invite players to do precisely what grand strategy promises in theory: to impose coherence, intentionality, and rational design on the life of a state, free from the frictions of domestic politics, bureaucratic rivalry, and “friction” that make such coherence so elusive in the real world.”

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What will be scarce?

“Their key insight is that demand is nonhomothetic: as people get richer, they don’t just buy proportionally more of everything. They shift their spending toward sectors with higher income elasticity, goods whose demand grows faster than income. Agriculture has low income elasticity (you can only eat so much); services have high income elasticity (there’s always a better restaurant, a more engaging experience, a more attentive doctor).”

What Makes Art Great?

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