The Problem With Monarchy and Democracy – By Francis Turner

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

The Problem With Monarchy and Democracy – By Francis Turner

Winston Churchill had, I think it is fair to say, mixed feelings about democracy. In addition to the quote above he also said that the best argument against democracy was a five minute chat with the average voter. This no doubt explains why he considered democracy to be the least bad as opposed to being actively good.

Anyway, I don’t recall a Churchill writing where he explained why democracy is least bad so I’m going to explain.

The fundamental positive of the democratic process is that it solves the succession problem

The fundamental positive of the democratic process is that it solves the succession problem. I should note that this is not a new thing thought up by me, it’s a moderately well known concept in political science and similar fields.

What is the succession problem?

The succession problem is the issue of how to transfer power from one leader to the next. It’s an issue that affects any organization from a local volunteer club to a vast nation state/empire but it is generally more important for the nation state. If a gardening club gets the wrong leader then typically it fails and some of the former members form a new one (making a note to absolutely NOT allow crazy to join). If a nation state tries the same thing that’s a civil war and those rarely end well.

Monarchies are well known for having good kings/queens and bad ones. Often a bad one is the son/grandson of one of the good ones. That’s because monarchies usually use direct primogeniture (oldest son is next king) as the way to ensure succession. This has the advantage of being easy to understand but it has the major disadvantage that not every oldest son is the most competent or wise. Hence the bad king. It also suffers from the failure mode of “no sons” which leads to various nephews, cousins and so on fighting it out. I.e. civil war. See also “king dies while heir is still a small boy” and the installation of a regent to rule until the child comes of age. Regents may be competent and loyal but history suggests they often aren’t.

Monarchies that try to avoid the single heir issue by splitting the kingdom between all heirs rapidly end up with dozens of pocket kingdoms that are ripe for takeover by a neighboring realm that has primogeniture and therefore is larger. No successful monarchies have extended the “split the kingdom” trick beyond a single generation. It can work fine as a once off (see William the Conqueror splitting his Norman and English lands, though that wasn’t a massive success) but never more.

Some monarchical traditions (see e.g. the Ottoman Empire) allowed someone such as the previous ruler or a council of elders to select the best son of the previous king. Sometimes they could even (in IIRC the Mongol tradition) pick nephews and other relatives who were not direct descendants of the previous ruler but were part of the royal family. This seems to solve the “oldest son is a moron” problem and potentially the “no sons” or “too young a son” problems, but it comes at a clear cost because there’s an obvious literal game of throne to be played in which potential future rulers have a strong incentive to kill off all their siblings. This is actually worse than the traditional primogeniture system. The “oldest son is a moron” issue gives you a chance of a bad king which is somewhat random. The “kill all your relatives before one kills you” issue pretty much guarantees the king will be a paranoid schemer because all the non-paranoid schemers will have been killed by their relatives. Paranoid scemers rarely make good monarchs.

Monarchies have one other problem. King goes ill/senile/mad but doesn’t die. At which point you are looking at the regent problem only often the “regent” is some combination of heir, queen and courtiers who spend much of their time fighting each other and/or other potential regents.

These problems are inherent in how monarchy is defined. A single ruler for life, followed by another such. There is rarely a system to replace the monarch and if there is one (see Japan and the various retired emperors) it generally results in monarchs being forcibly “retired” prematurely and a power struggle as they object to this.

People who don’t like kings and don’t like democracy may try other approaches but so far all the ones tried seem to suffer from the succession problem too.

Your standard issue dictatorship always hits the problem of who succeeds the glorious leader. It is actually worse than a monarchy because there is no particular expectation that the eldest son inherits so as soon as the glorious leader is unable to exercise authority the would be successors start fighting it out. Plus every glorious leader knows that competent underlings are likely to replace the glorious leader before the glorious leader is willing to step down so (see Putin) glorious leaders tend to arrange accidents for underlings who might make good successors. That means that the next generation is almost certainly less competent than the current glorious leader. A couple of generations of that and (see Africa) you have really stupid rulers.

So people try ways to avoid the glorious leader dictatorship. Take, for example, communist countries where a politburo rules and the General Secretary (or President or…) is the leader. The General Secretary can, in theory, retire at any time and allow another member of the politburo to become the leader. There may even be rules that say that the General Secretaryship has to rotate or that it has a limit of some number of years. This is something that the post Mao communists of West Taiwan tried. It worked pretty well for the first two or three changes of leader and then Winnie the Flu engineered his rise to the top and, magically, the requirement to step aside for the next leader went away as did all the other checks and balances designed to stop someone becoming ruler for life.

About the only way that sort of works is the high priest model. But that only works well if the priesthood is somewhat democratic in how it selects the next high priest (see the Pope and College of Cardinals as an example) and it can often lead to a de facto monarchy as the high priest’s son becomes the expected next high priest.

Democracy Solves The Succession Issue

In a democracy representatives (and presidents / prime-ministers) serve for a limited time before having to be re-elected. Assuming that elections happen periodically and mostly honestly when the leader is too old he (insert your own “or she”s if desired) retires and a successor is elected. Moreover if the leader’s policies are unpopular he will lose the next election and power is transferred to a new leader who has different policies. Or maybe the same policies but is more charismatic and/or less corrupt.

A critical difference between democracy and monarchy is that democratic leaders expect to retire and live on in the country ruled by their successors. As a result the incentives for power transfer are quite different. A democratic ruler wants a trouble-free succession because he likely has several years if not decades of life ahead of him after he loses his position. That same factor of life afterwards, and often the possibility of a return to a leadership position after another election, means that he won’t want to prosecute his predecessors for wrong-doing either, unless the wrong-doing is so egregious that a majority of the electorate agrees that the predecessor needs to be punished.

With succession solved, and with regular elections to permit the option of change and provide feedback to the rulers by chucking the bastards out when needed, it would be hoped that democracy would be rather better than Churchill’s “least bad”, but it isn’t

Where Democracy Fails

Just because democracy appears to solve the succession issue doesn’t mean it is all sweetness and light. We can look at a certain swamp on the Potomac and see how democracies can fail at the successor problem to a degree. Lust for power and money has resulted in representatives that gerrymander districts to ensure their re-election and/or not retiring until death but so far – despite all the histrionics – changes of representative and president have happened without serious repercussions. Now we are right up against that line with the hate for OrangeManBad but so far the norms are holding and the US still has a form of representative democracy (yes I know “it’s a republic” – elections happen to choose rulers which is a basic bit of democracy, deal).

However, the US is not the only nation where democracy seems to be having issues. Not just the US but also the UK and much of Europe seems to be stuck in a situation where the faces at top may change but the policies don’t and where, if they look like they might change, the bureaucracy exerts itself to stop that. See Brexit, Trump, the AFD in Germany and so on. In the UK, Liz Truss was almost certainly set up for failure in large part by a civil service and related bureaucracy that feared what she wanted to do. In that regard, what she says in this video is absolutely fascinating (source)

About the only (minor) positive of the bureaucratic state is that probably also solves the succession problem too because bureaucrats like to retire. Unfortunately (see Fauci, A) some bureaucrats seem able to stay on in positions of power and influence when they should have retired and some allegedly retired bureaucrats (e.g. Brennan and numerous other past CIA heads) seem to wield considerable power despite lacking an official position.

So far the only solution appears to be the Milei one – fire the entire bureaucratic establishment and deal with the fall out. However in order to get someone like Milei elected with a clear enough mandate that he can remove most of the bureaucracy you need to be circling the drain in failed state territory. That’s not a place we want the country to be in.

157 thoughts on “The Problem With Monarchy and Democracy – By Francis Turner”

  1. }}} that gerrymander districts to ensure their re-election

    The real issue with gerrymandering is that it does not require rational boundaries. Districts should be limited to a fixed number of “segments”, say, 10, and they should be required to be either a straight line or a clear topographic feature, e.g., a street, a mountain ridge, or a river… These limits alone would be adequate to reduce this kind of chicanery to a needful minimum.

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    2. I’ve often thought Postal Zip Codes, as defined/described at the time of the prior (or, some prior Census) Census, and required to be contiguous, could be a reasonable starting place.

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      1. It could. Of course, that would mean that zip code boundaries would almost certainly be “adjusted” at the “request” of the representatives affected by them. Call it “gerrymandering once removed”.

        “Nothing to see here; move along.”

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      2. Looks at address and zip code for the house. We live less than a quarter mile from $TINY_TOWN, but our zip code is affiliated with $LARGER_TOWN some 24 road miles away. (Shorter if you flew because mountains.) Noting the demographics of $TT and $LT, we have very little in common with $LT, but nooooooooo.

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      1. It would be tricky to get the absolute minimum perimeter. The computational costs would be high; in fact I’d wonder if it might to comparable to solving the Traveling Salesman Problem. Perhaps there could be some formula for the allowable ratio of the perimeter to the area enclosed. Though that could be skewed by a district with an irregular coastline.

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        1. The Reader suggests that 10x the perimeter of a circle with the same area as the proposed district as a starting point.

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          1. This was one reason I thought a fixed number of sides, with a “side”defined as either a straight line or a natural geographical feature, such as a road, river, or mountain ridge would make a good control for being ridiculous with the gerrymander. It would not stop all gerrymandering, but it would, at the least, do a good job of constraining it to a rational minimum.

            Keep in mind, the district has to fit in a “tile pattern” with the other districts around it, which does a serious job of constraining all the districts from really bizarre shapes.

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          2. There are still problems that arise from features like coastlines or rivers. If you count the length of the coastline/river, then a sufficiently twisty boundary could be much longer than a straight line drawn from end to end; you might find that getting a minimum perimeter called for changing a square to a long, narrow rectangle, for example (putting more of the perimeter into the straight lines and less into the twisty one). If you don’t count the length of the coastline/river, then any district built along one gets a lot of free perimeter length on its other sides, and coastal districts will get really funny shaped. I’m not sure what would be a good solution to this problem; I don’t see an obvious one.

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      2. The term we want is “convex”. If the shortest path between two points in a district crosses the district’s boundary, reject the districting plan. Path length can be defined either as great circle distance or ground travel time.

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    4. I’m trying to get a ballot initiative together for California where district boundaries have to follow contiguous City, County, State, and Federal borders that cover the proper percentage of the population.

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    5. The thing is that Democrats love to pack and crack themselves. That is, live in locations where 70, 80, 90 percent are Democrats, or else spread themselves out evenly over the rest of the regions. Any sane geographic cut will hinder them.

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    6. BTW, there used to be a really great online demo/game called “The Redistricting Game”, but it was in Adobe Flash and has since gone the way of all Flash things. :-(

      I am unaware of any direct replacement for it, though there are a couple things that do come up when you query “Gerrymandering Game”… It doesn’t feel like they are as good by any means.

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  3. (Kindly disregard my comment the other day. I have been operating with an epic sleep deficit and a couple of organelles from my gallbladder tried doing the job of brain cells. You saw how well that works…)

    Ultimately all systems have major problems in the same area: Bad actors deliberately subverting and corrupting systems to their own advantage. I confess I’ve no ide how to adequately safeguard there as all previous attempts seem only to be as effective as the underlying moral framework of those involved.

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    1. Also, the student as an exercise may be interested in the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, a little taught Era with larger effects on later events than most are aware. A curious hybrid that assesses better than its contemporaries, but probably more poorly than modern forms of governance.

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      1. I teach it in the context of its relations with the Holy Roman Empire 2.0. If you had nobles who were willing to pick the most competent candidate, things went pretty smoothly, all things being equal. When you started getting outside thumbs on the scale, along with “this guy’s good, but his family is also eying our throne,” it started to fall apart.

        As someone said, the real Miracle of Vienna in 1683 was that no Polish noble invoked the liberum veto. ;)

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      2. Every so often I noodle around medieval/renfaire fantasy ideas based on the early Swiss Confederation and its legends (William Tell, etc): people who are either yeomen or lower gentry in social rank, and who treat comparatively equally with each other, using pikes crossbows to take on a foreign overclass. (This, by the way, relates to the one true thing Mao said, and the corollary he and his Western admirers preferred not to talk about: if power comes out of the business end of a weapon, then power can only be shared remotely equitably among armed people.)

        If some of the sneery grimdark deconstructor types actually wanted to build up an alternative to the Tolkienesque One True King stuff, that’s where they should be looking. But, of course, that lot are proper barbarians, who can only destroy, not build.

        And of course, there’s always the anarcho-libertarian paradise known as saga-era Iceland. Bad place to be a bondsman, or bondwoman, of course, but for fictional purposes, the harsh environment and resulting demands on Standard Thuggish Armed Overclass to actually have a broad variety of skills makes it easy to come up with an imaginary version that doesn’t have much of an underclass.

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    2. In the case of the US system, it worked fairly well through giving each branch something to compete with the other branches over.

      However, once the branches each discovered they could give up the risks and retain the trap pings by handing power over bureaucracies, that short-circuited the checks and balances.

      And apparently I’ve heard most of the historians and social researchers of the 40’s and 50’s were pretty much unanimous that this drift toward bureaucracy was the single biggest threat to Western civilization. At least until the bureaucracies took over academia…

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        2. That ranks with using an over-under to double tap a silhouette target. Took a while before my shoulder forgave me.

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  4. Power.

    -That- is the problem. Power. Power over others. Absent that, who the heck would want the job? Who would care who had it?

    But a total absence of power breeds its own hellishness, as someone quickly says “oh yeah?” and demonstrates that while Might doesn’t often make Right, it usually makes Obey a thing. And that leads rather quickly to Woe.

    So the real trick is to make the Power as small as practical, and the job of Power as unrewarding as possible. Precluding gain from Power use is essential, not just unrewarding the job itself. Crappy pay for HMFWIC and a lifetime enforcement of poverty would be one way. Crucifixion of the former Grand PooBah would be another way.

    “Announce for Imperator? I can work half as hard for thrice the money as a laborer on civvy street. Gah. No. And I get to keep my nuts.”

    I remember reading a story, long ago, where the Head of Planet was a volunteer, taking up the Necklace of State by expressing the will to do so. The “voters” could, at any time, walk into the voting booth and press the “no confidence” button. If enough folks did so, the necklace explodes, decapitating the Head of Planet. Quitting is forbidden, and results in detonation, unless someone else willingly takes it from you.

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    1. “Crucifixion of the former Grand PooBah would be another way.”

      Thus giving the “Grand PooBah” extremely good reasons to gain enough power that he’d never be “the former”. ☹

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    2. Did Trump gain anything from being President? Doubtful.

      What has Biden gained from his “public service” 10s of millions of $$$ Also note that the rule is that the personal wealth of Congressional Representatives and Senators explodes once they’ve been elected.

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      1. Did Trump gain anything from being President? Doubtful.

        ……………..

        Sudden visibility to the masses? No. Already had that.

        More money? No. Already had plenty. In fact every quarter a donation was made to a charity. Couldn’t refuse it, to apply a drop to the budget, that is baked in somewhere. Couldn’t give it to a budget line item. But he could donate it to charities, and did. A lot of liberal media noting that on Trump taxes the donation line shows $0. Okay. So does ours. Does not mean we haven’t donated to charities. Our reasoning? Not enough money donated, with what we pay out in deductible interest, to trigger a deduction. Why should I tell the IRS who we gave money to? Now my mom, whose income is tiny, those donations, even if only a tiny dollar amount, it does (7% of her pension, interest, and dividends, since her SS isn’t taxed, is tiny, but makes a difference between paying anything in taxes, especially state).

        Insider trading? Not a chance. (My opinion.)

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        1. Aye. Donations to our selected cause go unreported, though I have to admit our (retirement) income is low enough so that itemizing deductions is pointless.

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          1. I don’t even keep records anymore. Only reason I have house property tax is records to prove paid, and house interest is year-end reports. Track medical. While medical is not enough to trip federal, state it is a deduction (starting year turned 66).

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    3. In the Kingdom of Xylar, the King reigns for 5 years. At the end, they chop off his head in a big public ceremony and throw it into the crowd. Whoever catches the head becomes the next 5-year King. — ‘The Goblin Tower’, ‘The Clocks Of Iraz’, and ‘The Unbeheaded King’ by L. Sprague deCamp

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      1. I got this image of a mercenary captain being the one who catches the former king’s head.

        He builds up an army loyal to him not the kingdom.

        So when it comes time for him to “lose his head”, he says “No Way” and has an army to back him up. 😈😈😈😈😈😈😈

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  5. The tyranny of the Bureacracy. I’m reminded of Mr Kiku in Heinlein’s The Star Beast. Just a bureacratic functionary – with tremendous relegated power. I hope we don’t undergo a Milei solution, but I fear we may follow some of that path. Americans tend to be resolute in their decisions.

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    1. A spinning top can not right itself. It requires an outside force.

      The range of dysfunctions a political system can have is always greater than the designers anticipated.

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      1. More simply: Entropy Wins, Each And Every Time.

        :-D

        Then there’s also Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, which, being about mathematics, would seem irrelevant… BUT:

        The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e. an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of natural numbers. For any such consistent formal system, there will always be statements about natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system.

        The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that the system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.

        Applicability to the problem: If a system so clear and reliable as mathematics can’t be self-contained and simultaneously demonstrate self-consistency, how can a muddled mess like English hope to do so?

        =========

        BTW, one thing to truly grasp about the brilliance of the Founders is that the current US government is the oldest standing, consistently in power, government in current world history, of any major power nation on the planet.

        Yes, seriously — for all the claims of how the USA is so “new and untested” compared to, say, England, our government is the oldest government on the planet of those nations who change things on the world stage routinely.

        Our current government was formed in 1789.

        Not one single major nation on earth existed prior to that, without serious changes being made since.

        Russia, China, Spain, France? Major revolutions, sometimes more than one.

        Japan? Duh.

        Germany, Italy? Did not exist in their current form.

        Anything in the South Americas? All formed after 1800.

        Mexico? Revolution in the 1800s.

        Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India? All former Brit “property” and governed by the UK.

        Portugal, Greece, Lichtenstein, etc.? All too minor in power to apply here.

        England!! Close, but no cigar. They were a pure, absolutist monarchy until 1820, when they had a “polite” revolution and became a parliamentary figurehead monarchy — close, but still a major upheaval in how the national government works.

        By all means, list another, and it’ll fall into one of the above categories.

        The USA is the oldest contiguously operating national government on the planet.

        A pretty impressive thing for the Founders to have managed to create. And one both our eddimikashinal system and the journoliars have never ever bothered to call attention to.

        A — the Founders, for their flaws, did something very very Right.
        B — eph with that system (like the current admin, and the Left, in general are doing) at your own peril.

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        1. And yet malice, selfishness, and greed have taken over our halls of government. Franklin said we have our Republic, if we can keep it.

          But more to the point was this paragraph in his Sep 17, 1787 address to the convention: “In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government.”

          Even Franklin recognized that the system put in place by the Constitution would not last. The solution that looms from his words is this, that the corrupt must be swept from our government. As they will not willingly surrender their offices, it falls on us to rescind the monopoly on force exercised by our government, and take upon ourselves the God-given right to remove these detriments to our lives, liberty, and well-being. The Declaration holds that this should not be done lightly, and I fully agree. It seems self evident that the causes for doing so, if listed, would greatly exceed those which justified the original Revolution. I think the questions are not should we take such an action; but when do we do so, and which should be the criteria for judgement of corruption?

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  7. Quote

    If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

    James Madison, The Federalist Papers, 1788

    End Quote

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      1. THIS^. THAT^. THE OTHER AS WELL^.

        For all their flaws – and let us be honest, all have many, they worked out that they needed a system that MAYBE could work around their OWN imperfections.

        It is a testament to their wisdom that it took as long as did (so it seems…) to bypass and destroy the safeguards…. BUT… we do not Truly Know that those safeguards are fully bypassed and truly destroyed. Those who believe (NOT think!) they have managed it are acting like the cornered and lashing out in abject terror. And THAT, folks, is HOPE! They seemingly have EVERY ADVANTAGE…. and are panicking. Perhaps…. we have already won. It’s just that proving it might be unnecessarily bloody. If ONLY they could Truly THINK for themselves!

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        1. See my comment, elsewhere in this comment thread, beginning with “More simply: Entropy Wins, Each And Every Time.“

          An assertion to bolster your argument. ;-)

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  8. I believe it was the late Jerry Pournelle who pointed out how the succession problem can become a serious issue in representative government and that is when loss of power equates to real, serious repercussions–imprisonment, even death. If that becomes the case then the party in power cannot afford to ever give up power for fear of having the same repercussions applied to them.

    That seems to be where we’re headed with the current lawfare against the previous President. Indeed, it may already be too late to avoid at least an attempt to remain in power by force by the current party regardless of what happens in the election. (Probably is, but I like to be optimistic.)

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    1. The only solution I know of from history is always a violent and deadly one. Unfortunately, it’s always the Democrats/Marxists who crow about the hand of history supporting them. What’s that saying about reaping and sowing? Ol’ Grim is probably sharpening his scythe right now.

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    2. If the Biden* Regime attempts to remain in power after a Trump win, or through trieckery or force, then may the Potomac run red with the blood of the bureaucrats and politicians and thus that try to enable it.

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      1. Doubt it. Same type of talk happened in 2020. As long as the beer flows and football is broadcast, things will have to get much worse before your wish happens.

        I think “they” would launch on the Russians before “they” gave up power.

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        1. I suspect that you underestimate, by a considerable margin, the level of ire inherent in the people. And that there are, indeed, people who have had enough of this crap, in power.

          It would not be a total groundswell that broke the dam, it would likely be a state which says, “Enough!” and reacts, with others forming a coalition to stand against the Left.

          Florida does seem to be the likely source of such, with Desantis being willing to tell the Feds to GFT.

          Once that happens, it will act as a seed to produce a s^^^storm of rain from every corner of the nation. The problem with the Right’s power ties to the fact that, yes, we aren’t “uncomfortable” — but enough of us are wise enough to see where this leads, inevitably. But we need an Event which really triggers us. The government response to Jan 6 was not sufficient, but it did set up a reaction to a repeat of the same result, which won’t be pretty.

          And if there is anything Jan 6 showed, it’s that we are already sick and tired of the chicanery.

          I may be wrong, but I suspect that it’s you, not me.

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          2. “Florida does seem to be the likely source of such, with Desantis being willing to tell the Feds to GFT.”

            My own personal bet is on TX, for two reasons:

            1. TX has a higher concentration of the resources, in a high state of development, that neither side can get along without. Oil, coal, food, and possibly military age effectives, etc.
            2. TX has a long land border that’s hard to control even in the face of passive opposition. Abbott has interfered with a great deal of traffic, and it’s still getting through. Imagine what it would be like in the face of active jamming of comms, GPS, satellite data, etc., all of it geared to letting loosely formed bodies of personnel through. Abbott’s challenge for border control is also more direct than DeSantis’ challenge to DEI.

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            1. While I concur it will almost certainly be one of the two, my money is on FL because border control is a “local” issue — and can be responded to by the Feds as such, whereas DIE and the rest of the Leftist Agenda are things that Desantis attacks, and are much less easily dismissed. I think he’s been more active in general in this regards, so he’s likely to take the first step.

              a — I can also see him reaching out to Abbott so they can just do it together, for more solidarity.

              b — I can see Desantis making a public statement, with Abbott as little as hours behind him joining hands, too, probably warning Abbott of his intentions as soon as he decides to act, thereby allowing Abbott to get all his ducks in a row quickly to follow suit.

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          3. See also: supersaturated solution, supercooled/superheated fluid.

            They all look perfectly innocuous and stable, until they get that one seed particle and KABLOOEY! State change sweeps through the entire volume in seconds.

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    3. They are that stupid and out right criminal. Whether we want it or not a purge is coming, the only question is what type that purge will take. 1776/1861, or, something different.

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        2. I think “A Farewell to Kings” is a much more appropriate tune: “…Cities full of hatred, fear and lies! Withered hearts with cruel, tormented eyes. Scheming demons dressed in kingly guise! Beating down the multitudes and scoffing at wise. Can’t we raise our eyes and make a start? Can’t we find the minds to lead us closer to the heart?”

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      1. Actually, I first thought of that in connection to our politics when the special investigator laid out that HRC had committed all the elements of a crime — but no prosecutor would prosecute.

        The “immunity for those in power” tends to be closely tied to the use of power to persecute.

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  9. When applying this to world-building remember it only works when the voting body is small enough to communicate, which turns heavily on your technology level.

    Athens was noted to be unwieldy in size at a city level, though its being a direct democracy did not help. Interstellar democracies require FTL travel and probably instant communication — though monarchies are only slightly better positioned.

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    1. CJ Cherryh plays with that in her Cyteen universe. Elections take weeks/months because of the time it takes to send the results in from the various solar systems.

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      1. This would preclude snap elections. Fortunately, in a democracy, you have scheduled elections. With elective monarchies you have interregnums, notoriously troublesome times.

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        1. In a democracy like ours, yes…not in a democracy that uses the Westminster parliamentary system. Perfect example, the snap elections called for July in the UK that the Tories are probably going to lose.

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          2. The problem with the system in the UK is that it is spectacularly less responsive to the mandate of the masses … it’s effectively not all that “democratic”.

            This is how they keep importing more migrants — across all of Europe, not just the UK, but the UK in particular, ATM — despite the fact that the natural born citizens are getting fed up with the baggage (problems, violent crime, rape, very bad attitudes for “guests”) which they bring with them. There will be violence before long. And it will not be pretty. “Disarmed”? No, not with modern technologies. There are many techs based on primitive sh** that they can find out or figure out, easily.

            One of the reasons Euros/whites have learned to not like war is that they are clearly so damned f***ing good at it. I would not speak highly of the immigrant’s chances when push comes to shove, and it will before too much longer. There is a good reason there are so many populist anti-immigrant political movements slowly gaining power in European nations. That’s the Euros attempting to avoid making sh** get a lot more violent.

            Liked by 1 person

  10. “The “kill all your relatives before one kills you” issue pretty much guarantees the king will be a paranoid schemer because all the non-paranoid schemers will have been killed by their relatives. Paranoid scemers rarely make good monarchs.”

    This. This is the root of <em>so much trouble</em>.

    And it’s going to be an important background thing in some stories I’m writing, that now and again becomes foreground as people dodge or try to thwart assassination attempts….

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Reminds me of a short story. All the heirs must gather at the isolated estate that is on an island to determine the smartest heir. If a potential heir does not show up voluntarily, they will be forced to. Cannot bring security. One heir (I think the youngest) convinces a friend to go in their place and impersonate this heir. The friend has skills (cop, retired military, etc.). Family dynamics is fraught with peril. In the end, most everyone survives, but because the one heir set it up so that it was acknowledged as present, but actually wasn’t, is deemed the smartest. Reality check, this potential heir did not care if inherited anything, just determined to not show up.

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        1. Yes.

          That was the twist. The reader knows before the end based on flashback and slow roll out, but not much longer than any other character.

          Liked by 2 people

    2. :points at film Tony Stark: Just because Stane almost pulled it off doesn’t mean he was the first one. What made Tony really paranoid about Stane was that he at least halfway trusted him, and Stane used that. Means Tony was even MORE twitchy every after about being betrayed.

      Liked by 1 person

  11. What about the system some of the Roman emperors used, where the emperor adopted a suitable successor as his son and heir? I don’t see a discussion of that in your comments.

    You also don’t seem to mention Aristotle’s third system, aristocracy/oligarchy, or rule by the “few”—that is, by some subset of the population thought to have special qualifications. That seems to go some way toward avoiding the succession problem.

    For each of the three modes, Aristotle distinguishes a good form from a bad form: monarchy versus tyranny, aristocracy versus oligarchy, and a system he never named versus democracy. The distinction seems to be that the bad ruler ruled according to their own interests or biases or passions, but the good ruler ruled as a trustee for the whole of the people. (That distinction does apply to rule by the many: What the majority vote for is not necessarily for the good of the whole of the people.)

    I wonder if Aristotle would consider either the British or the American system to be rule by the many? He was used to Athens, where the many ruled directly (a system sometimes called demarchy). Would he consider a body of elected representatives to be “the many” or “the few”? Certainly our legislators often act like an oligarchy holding office for life, and remote from the interests of the people who vote for them.

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    1. It ran into the problems of both the hereditary model and the despot model, just with more options for attaining the crown.

      Also note that the Emperors that were able to pull that off were also childless.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. IMO the problem with “rule by the few” is that the succession problem is roughly the same as the problem with Monarchies, especially when the sons of the few automatically take over on the deaths of the father.

      IE: Good nobles are followed by idiot/evil nobles.

      Even when the sons of the few don’t automatically take over, the few may select their successors based on the successors “mouthing” the “correct views” not on the basis of competence.

      Liked by 2 people

      2. Conversely, the trouble with rule by the many is that the many can abuse unpopular minorities with a good conscience. And the wealthy are almost always an unpopular minority, even if they came by their wealth through productive work. So you can end up with confiscation of wealth, forced redistribution, taxation that takes away the rewards of high productivity, punitive measures toward creditors, and other things that can wreck an economy—or you get noneconomic phenomena such as censorship of minority views, suppression of criticism, or blasphemy laws; or outright lynchings (have you ever read Kipling’s “As Easy as A.B.C.”?). All of which is why Madison advocated a mixed constitution where each of the three forms had some role.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Which is why keeping rule as local as possible, and general as an extension of local is a good idea. With general severely limited in powers.
          Look, we have the best of systems. If we adhere to it.

          Liked by 3 people

          1. I agree, but add the following–Local rule when that expands liberty, state or federal when it does not. Local does not get to ignore federal rulings or state laws supporting expanded individual freedoms.

            The goal being maximum human liberty.

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            1. Yes. One of Barry Goldwater’s errors, it seems to me, was his advocacy of state’s rights as a general principle. I don’t think that a state has a right to violate the rights of its people; and when one is doing so systematically, I think there’s a case for federal intervention. On the other hand, the specific form of that intervention may do a lot of harm; federal intervention in the abuses of the southern states certainly has done, however much some intervention was needed.

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        2. True.

          But as long as the rulers are human (not perfect) no system of government is going to be perfect.

          Liked by 1 person

      3. “Even when the sons of the few don’t automatically take over, the few may select their successors based on the successors “mouthing” the “correct views” not on the basis of competence.”

        “Mouthing the correct views while incompetent” works just as well for getting elected as for getting selected, as a number of American politicians have proven, over and over again.

        Due to what some call entropy and others original sin, “the internal safeguards against human selfishness and stupidity just failed, and we are now in the soup” is the end-state of every form of government. A lot of the current behaviors on the fringe of the American left and the right, with a significant portion of the one going openly pro-police-state, and portions of the other flirting with monarchy, appear to my ignorant mind, to be a response to the smug bowties aligned with the dominant figures of both parties telling everyone to trust the process, and nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong…

        A bad government is one where domination by human selfishness and stupidity is the start-state, rather than the end-state. The US system represents the best start-state, and best safeguards against a bad end-state, that humanity has so far developed. That doesn’t mean someone’s not going to come up with some improvements down the line (I don’t know what, unless the telework and maker trends lead to some major form of decentralization at both the political and economic levels). But it’s the best we’ve got right now.

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        1. The checks-and-balances do work as long as all three branches aren’t corrupted. But it does work much better when at least two of the branches aren’t corrupted and can reign in the bad branch. When two are bad, there’s not a whole lot that the third can effectively do. But at least it can be pointed out to the people, who may decide to take matters into their own hand as a last resort.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. Watches in mind’s eye visions of Yul Brynner in various roles, including Cowboy Killer Robot and Pharaoh. Shudders.

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          1. He was good at those, wasn’t he?

            Actually, the child playing Pharaoh’s firstborn gave me a mild chill: accidentally or otherwise, he came across to me as just as arrogant as Dad and somehow, likely to be even more ruthless.

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        3. Safeguards against stupidity, selfishness, greed and self-aggrandizement do not fail. They are systematically broken down by the corrupt villains that take over the government when The People are not vigilant. It’s taken them a hundred years to reach this state of dysfunction, and they’re doing all they can to make it worse.

          Liked by 1 person

      4. Which if you look at it through the eyes of an observer and not a partisan, that is exactly what is happening in many congressional as well as senatorial seats. The father bequeaths the seat to ether a child or retaliative, i.e. the Bushes, Gores, etc. I loath making term limits, thereby taking away a person’s right to choose. But if those who served remembered their oath and not their pocket books my feeling of loathing, might be repugnant instead of resigned. Human nature is what it is, it hasn’t changed in a thousand years. Humans have both the quality for great good, or great evil. We really need to start making better choices at the lower levels. Thereby seeding the next crop of politicians from which to draw the next congress critters. Loathsome beasties that they are.

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          1. Agreed. Term limits were passed by the electorate in California back in the ’90s. They don’t appear to have improved things

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            1. In the Golden State they just swap seats – term out on the county board of supes? Bingo bango you pass Go and proceed to the Assembly or State Senate. Term out in the Assembly? Why, there’s a big city mayorship just sitting there, recently vacated due to … term limits. The Party does do some winnowing at each round, but a lot of that is just pruning to allow scions to have someplace to start.

              Liked by 1 person

              2. The parties in every state attempt to do that. Bob the Assemblyman is about to retire because he’s an old decrepit fossil who has had three strokes this year? Put the party backing behind Jill the County Supervisor, who has been a faithful party hack in her current job! The only thing that term limits do is let the lower ranks know how long they need to wait before they might get a shot at the higher office.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. In California, the path is most often something like appointment to a City board (e.g. Zoning); school board; city council; county supervisor; Assembly; Senate. At each level, the next level is narrower, performing some of the winnowing; failure at the Supervisor to Assembly level is often compensated by appointment to various county and state boards and commissions. I think the best, most successful exemplar is Sunne McPeak and her post-Supervisor career.

                  Part of the political problem in the US is that most people don’t want to be politicians, leaving the field open to those who have Ideas For Our Own Good.

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              3. Yes. When California was considering term limits, the anti-termers predicted major boosts to the bureaucracy, though I’m not sure they realized (or announced) the issue of politicians marching through the offices.

                For various reasons, some of the more repugnant members of California’s post-limit PTB went through local offices on their ways to create more havoc at the federal level.

                Liked by 1 person

          2. Remove the block that the federal government jobs can’t be replaced by the incoming president. They are all political appointments. Maybe make it so that only 60% of the existing staff can be replaced in any one year. Chainsaw every 4 years possible.

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            1. Yes indeed the attempt to correct the problems of the patronage system by adding the Civil Service rules itself caused issues over time. To be honest each method has its weaknesses. The patronage system usually leads to local bosses who provide sinecure jobs to their favorites without reference to merit. The civil service model theoretically uses merit for its various promotions, However, this quickly becomes overwhelmed leading to a bureaucracy that is just trying to protect their own territory. I think perhaps having a way to dump the unappointed managerial types at GS13-GS10 might help. Similarly being able to easily fire (preferably for cause) those who are intentionally insubordinate might help too. The biggest issue is the government has metastasized into something probably an order of magnitude larger than it was ever intended to be. This seems to be because of the factory model of governance that is the signature of the 20th century.

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          4. But if the bureaucracy, or say the top 20% of positions (which is most of the “problem children” trying to build empires), could be replaced by the incoming president on his sole authority, the bureaucracy could be kept in line. Maybe. The problem isn’t the workers, its their “betters” (i.e., tenured deadwood) in the hierarchy.

            Just my 20 mills…

            Liked by 1 person

            1. “The problem isn’t the workers, its their “betters” (i.e., tenured deadwood) in the hierarchy.”

              There’s a LOT of that “tenured deadwood” at all levels. One of the problems both W Bush and Trump had is that the “worker bees” had a pronounced tendency towards “malicious compliance” at best and active obstruction at worst, knowing that actually doing anything about it was a production.

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                    1. Can’t tell you how many of us got our work done despite the system, not because of it. It wears you down.

                      And bureaucracy (at least DoD bureaucracy) sorts for specific personality types, tending toward conscientious, methodical, detail-oriented and respectful of authority. I saw the results when someone with a wildly different type of personality tried to, “tough it out,” and it wasn’t pretty.

                      Liked by 1 person

                2. I gave up on Sean Hannity when his bleating that “Most of the FBI agents are honest. Really!” proved to be something best wiped off one’s shoes.

                  Besides, picture interactions with low-level bureaucrats. DMV or (Lord help us) Social Security. (There was little regret when the Flyover Falls SS office was closed in favor of telephone, and the Dragonette and her armed(!) security guard* lost their jobs.)

                  ((*)) Seriously, how bad does a Social Security office have to be when the only other worker in the place is an overamped security officer? Local answer was Really Bad.

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                  1. I grew up experiencing the New Jersey DMV (shudder). My wife had similar bad experiences with California DMV, and only slightly better experiences with Indiana DMV. By contrast, Ohio BMV has been a breeze to deal with. Even better, since they went with electronic check-in kiosks, we don’t even have to stand in line, you can just sit and wait for your number to be called. The staff are helpful and efficient and sometimes even friendly, and things move fast. Language barriers, or people not having paperwork in hand, are the usual causes for any slowdowns – and the latter mostly because the staff take time to explain exactly what paperwork a person needs to come back with. I got in and out in less than twenty minutes the last time I had to renew my registrations.

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                    3. OR DMV has been pretty good, though with Covidiocy they went off the rails (you Must Wait Outside, and so on). OTOH, when $SPOUSE was getting a temp disabled tag for me (while a surgeon was repairing my knee), they were quite helpful and fast.

                      I’ll probably get to recheck this, with another surgeon cleaning up a different problem in the same knee. I’m going to try to get the permit preop. I hope.

                      A lot of business can be done online now, too. I think the gimp tag has to be done in person. It’s easy to get to, so we’ll see.

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                    4. BIL should have one now given where he is at with the infection of his knee replacement. But they already have one for SIL’s shingle outbreaks.

                      Blood tests show infection is undetectable (given type, won’t say “gone”), but still on heavy duty infusion IV antibiotics. Tests have to test liver (& other?) function because of the level and duration of the antibiotics. Turns out he’s allergic to the glue/tape used to secure the IV lines (rashes) and shingles has erupted (yes, he has had the shingles vaccine). One miserable patient. All we can do is continue to let them know we are here to help, and prayers.

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                    5. These days our registrations (every 2 years) and drivers licenses (unless want a new picture, why? Every 8 years) are online. New drivers do have to go in. Getting driving test is a PIA and is only offered in specific regional offices, which really sucks for surrounding tiny towns.

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                    6. The absolute worst DMV was in San Jose, where the line was absolutely horrible. Two really long lines, and it was 50-50 that the (unmarked) line you were in was the wrong one. Yes, you had to go through both for testing, or one twice. Arggh. (Cali did written tests on some motorcycle endorsement renewals.)

                      OR was heaven in comparison. Had to take the written test when we moved up here, and redo the eye test every 12? years, but it was pretty efficient. Haven’t had to go in there in some years; most of what I’ve needed has been via mail/online.

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                    7. The Massachusetts RMV (Registry of Motor Vehicles AKA the Registry) used to really be like the DMV in Zootopia. In fact the Sloths would have provided a 200-300% speed up. Somewhere some of this changed. Much can be done online and their website is one of the best MASS Gov ones I’ve ever seen. Better than even many GOOD commercial sites. There is also the fact that most large car dealerships have registry sites on premises to do vehicle initial registrations and transfers. In addition, here are some commercial groups (AAA, some insurance Co. ???) that have fairly full service RMV sites that do license renewal (when they require a new picture) and many other sevices if you are a member/customer. Some things still suck though. When both daughters got licenses it was a nightmare to find an RMV that had an opening. Maybe thats changed but by the sounds of my nephew and niece’s more recent attempts I think not.

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                  2. Feeb frontline (i.e. new) agents are the same mixed bag as in any LE career path, with a bit of quality boost over places like BATF just from the entry screening. The problem is the selection-for-higher process progressively selects for things inappropriate in a functioning republic, yielding James Comeys.

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                  3. We both did our paperwork for SS online. Easy.

                    Dad’s SS OTOH. Mom got the paperwork, had it filled out. A classmate of mom and dad’s worked for the SS locally. Told mom to bring it to her. She took it, tore it up, gave mom the one she’d filled out. Went over it with mom and dad, had dad sign it. Dad’s disability SS (stroke at age 50, due to clogged jugular arteries) went through first time. The only way that happens is if someone in the SS office, or legal specialty assistance (which costs) shepherds someone through the process. (40 years ago.)

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                    1. It’s easy to apply for Social Security online, but you have to go in to the office to cancel it and wait for ‘full retirement age’ which in my case is 67 and 8 months. 3 hours of waiting for the 3 minutes it took to actually get it done.

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                    2. Three hours? Hopefully bathrooms available. No way would I last. Also would need water and emergency substance. Thank goodness for ebooks.

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                    3. $SPOUSE and I signed up when it could be done at age 62. She had to deal with the Dragon lady, and finished on the phone with the office in Medford. For me, the F-Falls office was already closed (was in there earlier for some forgotten reason), and the phone people were really helpful. OTOH, haven’t had anything complex.

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      5. On the other hand, if you have a reasonably large pool of nobles, it doesn’t matter if some of the heirs are poor successors; what matters is the average quality of the pool. That’s still a problem, but less of one. And when the many rule, you also have issues with the average quality of the many.

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        1. “Just think how stupid the average person is, and then remember that half of them are even stupider than that.” — George Carlin

          Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something. Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again, too. Who decides? — RAH

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    3. and a system he never named versus democracy.

      “Ochlocracy” wasn’t it? “Rule by mob”?

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      1. No, rule of the mob was what he called “democracy,” which he considered to be one of the bad forms. I believe it was essentially the same as “ochlocracy.” It’s the good form of rule by the many for which he doesn’t seem to have had a name. At least I couldn’t find a name for it when I read the Politics a few years ago.

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          1. I’ve also seen “commonwealth.” But when I read the Politics (admittedly in English translation; I don’t know enough Greek), I didn’t see any specific word being used for it. “Polity” might be taken as an English form of politeia, which I believe is the title of the book by Plato that’s usually called the Republic; but Plato’s “republic” is certainly not government by the many.

            Liked by 1 person

  12. Another problem is that, long before the election, the political parties (which are themselves bureaucracies, incorporating all the evils thereof) pick the candidates. The poor voters only get to choose between the various venal, corrupt wretches puked up by the parties. See: Biden, (gag)Hillary, MaligNancy, Schiff-head, Swalwell, et cetera, ad nauseam. If by some miracle a few decent candidates get into the race, The Party will torpedo them even at the cost of losing the election. Recall what Vichy Mitchy did in the 2022 Alaska Senate race.

    As if that weren’t enough, The Party and the bureaucracy control counting the votes. Voters fill out ballots, but there is no assurance that the results have anything to do with how they voted. The dead vote Democrat for eternity.

    ———————————

    Grandpa voted Republican until the day he died — but he’s been voting Democrat ever since.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. California uses a “Jungle Primary” system. All of the candidates face off in a massive primary (the presidency isn’t subject to this), and the top two winners face each other in the general election – even if they’re both from the same party. As a result, the only purpose of a political party is to endorse a political candidate.

      Things have not improved in California since this system was implemented.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Things have not improved in California since this system was implemented.

        The CA Jungle Primary change was meant to improve the probability that everyone elected was a Dem, and it has improved that noticeably.

        Liked by 1 person

  14. another thing that democracy does is to expand the number of people the ruler needs to keep “sweet.” Thinking cynically, as one ought, the point of being the ruler is to reward your friends, punish your enemies, and ignore the rest. Friends are those who keep you in power. That’s why the left, in particular, likes to reduce people to blocks. You have only to reward the person who controls the block and can ignore its members, which makes the rewards more salient to the powerful and explains why a JackA— like Sharpton is smoking cigars at the Union League Club.

    It also explains why Trump is an existential threat to them. Should the block strategy breakdown, they’re done.

    Liked by 3 people

  15. A usual test case I have is ‘what if the crown prince is a psychopath, and the nobles know it’, with the conclusion that this is one place where civil wars of succession happen.

    For all that current circumstances can clearly only end very well, this was not the first violation of ‘let people retire’. Trump campaigned on ‘Lock her up.’

    There are several problems for those who conclude that there is some sort of easy fix. One is that HRC was already unhinged enough that nothing was a stronger motivation for her than ambition. Two, it is not clear that Obama had no access to power when he was not in office.

    The logic of allowing people to retire is probably sound. However, it does not apply to people who have things that matter to them more than life, and one of those is hurting people.

    It was not a good environment for Patricians in Rome. A contributing factor to Caesar’s extreme personality or madness is being sixteen, and married, and having Dictator Sulla himself speak to him in an effort to have him divorce her. (The marriage was across political lines.)

    Some of having a BHO or an HRC is simply law of large numbers. Some of it is downstream of having communists. As such, an example of the possibility of peace being a wee bit downstream of religion, and of culture.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Two, it is not clear that Obama had no access to power when he was not in office.

      Evidence suggests that Obama wields considerable influence over the current maladminstration in fact

      Liked by 1 person

  16. Eventually if you want to make a functioning democracy or representive democracy you have to fix at least two things:

    The broken election process, which is designed to be rigged.

    The apathetic subjects that are still enjoying the river ride in their tubes and beers coming up on the waterfall while ignoring the people on the shore trying to get their attention.

    Yeah, feeling cynical after yesterdays runoff results where 2% of the registered voters even bothered to show up. Let’s have some more Democratic RINOs in Austin ya lazy complaining MFers…

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    1. The election process is NOT designed to be rigged. The fact it’s gotten rigged doesn’t mean that was the design.
      AND as for apathetic, that’s what you get when people think their vote doesn’t count.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. From a auditor/hacker viewpoint, most elections are designed for honest people like physics homework has perfectly spherical fictionless cows not based in reality. So they get rigged, are not formally audited and both parties, except a small minority, go along like the three monkeys as long as they get their share of the spoils. Or is there just one party?

        I’ve been moderately/seriously involved in the election analysis, local and state politics for about 15 years*. Most people don’t give a sheeet, it hasn’t hit rock bottom yet. No one really cared about school board elections until things got evil.

        Did a couple of surveys with the local group that interviews registered voters after the election as part of our audits. Most of the nonvoting registered voters are woefully lazy instead of being discouraged. Not voting as worked out for them so far, so they don’t vote. Or they might vote the national election every 4 years and ignore the state and local elections**.

        Registered voters are like churchians that only show up at Christmas and maybe Easter if at all.

        *(You get more serious about taxes and such when you have property.)

        **(We’ve seen extreme amounts of PAC money going into state and key local races this year over the past elections. It’s easy to buy the smaller races. It’s also easy for a few votes to make a difference.)

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      2. No, it wasn’t originally designed to be rigged. But the latest “Great Ideas”, from last-minute changes to early voting to mail-in ballots to banning of voter ID to the use of voting machines which are (relatively) easy to hack and accessible remotely (!!!), have redesigned it to be quite easy to rig.

        “Most secure election ever” my rosy red a**. :-x

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Yeah, every dirty trick in the book, plus some new ones they learned from their buddies in other states. Not so hard when you have the agency that corrupts foreign elections helping you…

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        2. Those vote stealing machines were designed to rig elections. The votes are stored as floating point numbers, and ‘coefficients’ are applied. If, say, Candidate B’s coefficient is set to 1.2, and Candidate T’s coefficient is set to 0.8, one vote for B is actually stored as 1.2, and one for T is stored as 0.8. They both round to 1 when displayed individually, but when added up the totals are skewed such that if they both got 1,000 votes, the results will show 1,200 for B and 800 for T.

          There are a lot of other ‘adjustments’ that can be applied, through hidden interfaces available only to the election officials. Batches of votes can be directly transferred from one candidate to another, just in case the ‘coefficients’ weren’t skewed enough.

          Liked by 1 person

  17. There was a fantasy novel (that I am pretty sure was YA) in which the monarch could retire and pass off the duties to his child. Very firmly fantasy, but sounds like a nice method to keep a monarchy from the issues of aged/senile monarchs and the problem of frustrated successors not having anything to do.

    Still not a great system.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. As I noted in the post that was tried in Japan (see retired Emperors). Didn’t work because ambitious heirs would get supporters to “retire” the current Emperor whether or not the Emperor wanted to retire.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. It’s happened from time to time. Sometimes it’s successful.

      Sometimes the old monarch remains as a power behind the throne while the young monarch learns the job (Tokugawa Ieyesu did this).

      Sometimes it fails badly. King Lear is an example of this.

      One of the biggest problems is that it’s hard for the old ruler to transition from being the most important person in the kingdom to being an advisor at most. And the old king will remain a constant distraction to the new king’s power no matter how honest the old king was about handing power over

      Liked by 1 person

    1. I was reading something recently where the author had the CCP chairman just suddenly decide to recognize ROC as a country, another China, with zero consequences.

      I guess the author supposed that dictatorial central planning thing really worked well for controlling everyone no matter what changes upset which institutional applecarts. Dunno, he didn’t say.

      One among several reasons why that series got walled.

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  19. I am really terrified of efficient “get the trains running on time” governments. But I think everyone in Government needs to be replaced periodically, like someone quipped, by people randomly selected from the phone book.

    And then given a nice retirement or a 40′ pine enema.

    So I’m also terrified of myself.

    You guys fix it. I’m not qualified and I don’t like bunkers.

    Liked by 2 people

  20. England has been seeing another battle in the long, long war between Parliament and the Civil Service on who really controls the country.

    Currently, we have the same issue in the United States, combined with a Congress that depends on the Civil Service for doing things that they can’t pass laws for.

    (I have many things that I hate Woodrow Wilson for, but his idea of an “apolitical” civil service is one thing that I truly despise. Say what you will about the spoils system, at the very least it meant that every four to eight years there was some turnover at the highest levels…)

    Liked by 1 person

  22. Has anybody been following the Trump hush money trial?

    The instructions Judge Merchan gave the jury are a doozie.

    I don’t know about any of you, but I’ve got this icky gut feeling that this is a very deliberate provocation. That this is intended to create a reaction…

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    2. Since this whole lawfare crapshow started, even Sarah’s been willing to admit that the whole purpose was to railroad Trump into jail and probably kill him. After that, the possibilities are endless.

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    3. Delta Tau Chi had a fairer trial before Dean Wormer and Omega House (Animal House reference for those who may not remember) than Trump had before Judge Merchan.
       

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  23. I forgot to circle back to the psychopathic crown prince, and the barons.

    The purpose of the second ammendment is internal security.

    One formulation of that reasoning mentions the case of an enemy who falls from the sky, or some such. This is maybe more literally about uncertain information about one’s foes. Perhaps the next town over decides to go bandit, or something. A known standing army could effectively be like the French line of fortifications in WWII. See ‘fixed defenses … monumnet to the stupidity of mankind’.

    So, effectively, every man is a baron or a prince.

    Well then, why haven’t the current problems been solved already?

    1. Americans are terrifying. If one has any sense, one does not want to lightly risk a fight with many of them.
    2. It seems very likely that they are still choosing up sides.

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    1. Using the Manhattan DA and “judge” as procedural examples, and following the J6 “insurrection” “logic”, this is an obvious attempt to trigger an assassination of a Federal official and subvert Our Democracy (TM), and therefore he should be tried on any charge that can be thought up (upgraded to a felony if necessary), and everyone who applauded him, or even listened to him without objecting, (i.e., The View Crew and their cheerleaders) should be locked up indefinitely without trial.

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