/townhall/ - Townhall

Monarchies only work if subject to strict personal ethical standards. So if the King is constantly having illict sex with his secretaries in the nearest closet, say, then he should be forced to adbicate due to his flagrant adultery. Other strict enforcement of moral rules to keep the ruler enlightened.

>>13468

It's clear MLP: FiM has affected your thinking. Unfortunately, it only works if the population is small and cohesive, even if the leader is benevolent - because as populations get larger and people live longer, their individual needs become more diverse. These cannot all possibly be addressed by even a benevolent ruler, I think, simply because they would lack the necessary knowledge. The knowledge problem will always be an issue, regardless of how much knowledge (or data) the ruler has. (See Marcus Aurelius and his limited ability to change things, despite trying to be a good ruler.)

So, democracy replaced absolute monarchy because of increased morality through Christianity, as well as increased knowledge for each individual. The collective insight resulted in a better government.

>>13468
I don't necessarily disagree. Though the issue is by large, at least with dictators, they only last the one generation.

Monarchies more generally can do a bit better. The big strength of them is that family honor is tied in. You can get some rotten souls, of course, which is a trouble. But honestly, I will agree, it's probably better than most democracies.

>>13471
I would posit that this is why the Great Houses of Battletech work.
The size and scale of the universe makes communication in both a timely and reasonably coherent manner impossible, when it comes to larger states.
So, nobility, simply vying for their territories' interests, came about in place of typical fares as democratic elections.

The Cameron dynasty is relied on for maintaining the Star League as a whole, and did so successfully for quite a significant chunk of time. Their role in large part was to balance the other houses, maintaining the League against the special interests, ideology, and ethnic conflict of each of these territories. Conversely, for each of them, they represented their people. And within their territories, they had planetary families, oft with ties to the Great Houses themselves, vying for the interests of their people.

Is the system perfect? No. Of course not.
No system is, however.
 But it does maintain a semblance of stability, for a reason.
Mind, I'm a Taurian. Fuck the innies, Kerensky was a war criminal.

>>13471
> So, democracy replaced absolute monarchy because of increased morality through Christianity, as well as increased knowledge for each individual
To be honest, the greatest death blow to monarchies also decided to lob off the heads of Church leaders.

>  because as populations get larger and people live longer, their individual needs become more diverse.
This is the challenge for current politics.
You can please some people some of the time, you can't please all people all of the time.
A "benevolent" dictator will still have to make choices and will have to make choices that will hurt a lot of people with none of the negative consequences.
Good for some parts of society, but that really sucks when you are the one to be executed for the common good.

Sic Semper Tyrannis.

The right to violate the rights of the people belongs to the people. An absolute monarchy, vanguard party, a benevolent dictatorship is mass negligence. Suddenly the failures of the people can be pushed onto one person, or even a small group.

In an ideal world absolute monarchies and benevolent dictatorships would always result in capable and enlightened rulers between whom power is always transferred peacefully according to merit.

But spoiler alert, we don't live in an ideal world. So after about three generations max, the absolute monarchy gets inherited by the incompetent manchild of his dad and his dad's sister and he either fucks everything up or gives too much influence to one or several of his advisors.

Or the benevolent dictatorship has a colossal civil war after its founder dies and Field Marshal Knucklehead wins because he has the biggest army and institutes radical anarcho-fascism and executes the half of the country that didn't already die in the civil war.

Or, even worse, absolute power corrupts absolutely and you don't get half a generation in before the leader starts breaking his own laws. I mean, what are they going to do, get rid of him? They can't, there are no checks and balances.

It's a cool idea, but it's also inherently temporary. People in power want to keep it, and people who keep too much power for too long inevitably stop listening to or empathising with people they don't have to. Corruption is inevitable.

>>13638
To be fair, monarchies do seem to have a better track record of it than such things as we have now.

The real trick to it comes in that democracy gives the people an 'out' that doesn't necessitate violence.
When the king does something you do not wish, your only option is to take up arms. Or at least threaten doing so.
When the president does something you do not wish, you simply vote for someone else next year.

Gives a pressure release valve of sorts.

>>13703
>>13703
>To be fair, monarchies do seem to have a better track record of it than such things as we have now.

To be fair, they also had absolutely authority over the contents of official history books

>>13716
Only within their own sphere of influence, and really, it's not like there were proper history books for many, so much as collections of letters, dealings, reports, and so on later folk compile.

>>13717
>Only within their own sphere of influence

Uh huh. And where do the majority of historical of sources about a specific monarchy tend to come from?

>and really, it's not like there were proper history books for many, so much as collections of letters, dealings, reports, and so on later folk compile.

And how much of that is both available and sufficient to draw any conclusions, and how do you account for the biases of those later folk in selecting what to preserve and compile?