This chapter asks and attempts to answer a set of questions we have not dealt with previously. More precisely, in all of our previous chapters (except for Chapter 9 on social learning), people had no choice as to what information they received before they made a decision. They just received advice. We now ask whether there are other types of information they might prefer. We have also never asked whether people have preferences over who gives them advice. Are there types of people that are perceived as good advisors and other types that are perceived as unreliable? If so, who are those “good advisors” and what characteristics do they share? The ... first question is important because it asks how important advice is to decision makers. If people consider advice only when they have no other source of information, then its influence will be diminished when they are given access to alternatives. However, if advice has an inordinate sway over people, if they seek it out, then we need to understand why advice is so desirable or persuasive. The second question is also important because, if certain types of people are considered good advisors, then this perception may confer rents on them which may or may not be warranted. To answer these questions, we set up a market for advice and advisors. In general, we find that subjects bid significantly more for data than they do for advice, i.e., they prefer information that they can use to make their own decision rather than having an advisor offer them advice. We also ... find some evidence for “perception rents” for economics majors, whose price is elevated in the market, and a certain amount of support for what we call the ”chauvinistic bias,” meaning that subjects tended to bid more for advice from people sharing the same major as themselves than for people of other majors.

This chapter focuses on the interactions of the Roman aristocracy – the members of the senatorial and equestrian orders – with the court, taking as its theme the interplay between routine and disruption. The scale of these interactions fluctuated over time, as did the methods by which emperors signalled their favour for particular aristocrats, thereby creating an (unstable) hierarchy of aristocrats at court. The amici principis (‘friends of the emperor’) formed their own subgroup, with an internal hierarchy; the emperor’s relationship with them was shaped by cultural expectations about amicitia. Some aristocrats were important advisers to the emperor, so the chapter examines advisers and the role of advisory councils (consilia). The chapter reflects on whether the relationship between the emperor and aristocratic courtiers should be characterized as one of ‘domestication’, arguing for an often-volatile situation in which attempts by emperors to control aristocrats (and vice versa) were ad hoc and short-lived.

Against weaker states and nonstate actors, powerful air forces working with competent proxy ground forces have been militarily effective in almost all cases, but their political effectiveness has varied by ambition and target. Air power was most likely to be politically effective in denial strategies against weak states but least effective when attempting to coerce nonstate actors by punishment. Air power was far more effective in breaking armies and toppling regimes than restoring political order in the aftermath of regime change. Some but not all of the strategies of the age of primacy will survive the transition to an age of great power rivalry. The persistence of small wars against nonstate actors will leave space for refinement of advisory models, close air support, and counter-network targeting. But missions that were feasible in an era of unchallenged air supremacy – CAS and persistent ISR – may become extinct against enemies possessing resilient IADS and long-range strike capabilities of their own.

Eight senior advisors were members of Trump’s Team specifically as it pertained to the pandemic. Each was in some way directly and heavily involved in how the president managed/mismanaged America’s worst public health crisis in over a century. Discussed in the chapter are senior advisor, Jared Kushner; chiefs of staff Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows; assistant to the president Peter Navarro; national security advisor Robert O’Brien and his deputy Matthew Pottinger; and counselors to the president Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks. During the coronavirus crisis, each of these advisors, like everyone else named in Part III of the book, prioritized the president’s political interest over the national interest.