According to LessWrong, the 1937 Paris World's Fair reveals a lesson about "reward hacking" — optimizing for the wrong metric. The Nazis and Soviets viewed the fair as a prestige competition. They poured resources into massive, architecturally ambitious pavilions designed to project raw power. The Soviets built a modernist steel temple with a colossal statue of workers; the Nazis countered with a classical Roman structure adorned with sculptures of idealized athletes. They even sent spies to steal Soviet blueprints to ensure theirs would be taller. Meanwhile, Britain and America barely competed. The British pavilion was a plain white cube — a cost-cutting measure shared with Canada — featuring murals of English citizens and pottery. The American contribution was so marginal that French editors dismissed it in polite silence. The British press erupted: How could their nation face totalitarian rivals with such a pathetic display? Yet the outcome is clear. Nearly 90 years later, both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union are history. Liberal democracies dominate the world — prosperous, stable, and institutionally resilient. The author argues that totalitarian regimes confused the proxy, impressive propaganda, with the actual objective: building productive economies and functional states. This reward hacking appears everywhere in authoritarian histories: Nazi wonder weapons that looked impressive but achieved little, Soviet industries that optimized for weight instead of utility, and hierarchies at every level gaming metrics rather than solving problems. Liberal democracies resist this trap through institutions like elections, free markets, separation of powers, and the freedom to dissent. Sometimes the shrewdest move in a prestige contest is simply to refuse to play.

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