A thread for the Civilized Discussion and Debate on Monarchy

LordsFire said:

...Among that list, Thailand is the only nation that can even qualify as a relevant local power.

Which makes two I'm aware of; Thailand and Saudi Arabia. Every other kingdom is too small or too decrepit to be a player of significance on the world stage, and even Saudi Arabia only exists as something other than an American client state because of our peculiar aversion to actually becoming proper imperialists.

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Ah, so we're playing that game where you keep moving the goalposts every time you get an answer you don't like, and we've gone from "Can you name any Monarch who wields significant personal power" to "Also needs to be a major player on the world stage?"

Yinko said:

The historical peasant worker did work less hours and had a very proteinacious diet. (EDIT this is partly to do with the fact that capitalism didn't exist yet, and partly to do with the way that the concept of The State enforces ownership of human labor) They were shorter on average due to fewers calories over-all in relation to their caloric expenditure, but their endurance, strength and physicality were far beyond the average modern man.

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I will note the height bit isn't completely true. Medieval peasants got plenty to eat and were about the same height as modern humans, excavation of skeletons in a study by Richard Streckel showed that people lost a very slight amount of height in the Late Middle Ages/Early Modern Period and then began losing height fast (surprise surprise) in the Rennesaince and Industrial Ages where everything sucked for the lower classes (who were fed pap about how much better they had it than those squalid peasants, producing myths that have survived to this day), hitting an all-time low in the 17th-18th centuries before gradually gaining it back in the 19th. A 9-11th century peasant was just as tall as a 90s kid and most likely significantly more muscular.

In any case gentlemen, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and hope you guys take a break just for today to be with family.

SpaceOrbis said:

So just keep things as there are then. Kings and queens are so antiquated in a world when we can talk to people half a world way. I have no doubt that when the queen dies England may just opt out of having one. I doubt she has any power anyway so it'll matter.

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The Queen has the power to dissolve Parliament. And while people have tried to block it (namely those pitiful Judges) she can and will use it if she has to. She can pretty much reshape the government if she wanted to.

Bear Ribs said:

Ah, so we're playing that game where you keep moving the goalposts every time you get an answer you don't like, and we've gone from "Can you name any Monarch who wields significant personal power" to "Also needs to be a major player on the world stage?"

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No, this is not me moving the goal posts. This is you forgetting what I posted:

LordsFire said:

Can you name any significant nations where a Monarch holds and wields effective authority?

The only ones I'm aware of are in the Middle East.

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Significant nations.

Brunei is not a significant nation, except to the people who live in it, and perhaps those directly on its border.

Thailand is a significant nation, that has some meaningful throw weight in its region. It's a fair example. The others you listed are basically city-states (as best I know). Which is cool, but far from significant to world politics or economics.

Aldarion said:

Greater problem, I think, is modern egoism. Everybody wants to be a king.

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If you think that's a modern conceit, rather than endemic to humanity through all of history, you have a flawed understanding of the human psyche.

The lust for power is at a minimum latent in all human hearts, and dynastic conflict, wars of expansion and conquest, etc, etc, were absolutely rife through all periods of history. When Monarchy was the norm in the western world was no different.

Bear Ribs said:

I will note the height bit isn't completely true. Medieval peasants got plenty to eat and were about the same height as modern humans, excavation of skeletons in a study by Richard Streckel showed that people lost a very slight amount of height in the Late Middle Ages/Early Modern Period and then began losing height fast (surprise surprise) in the Rennesaince and Industrial Ages where everything sucked for the lower classes (who were fed pap about how much better they had it than those squalid peasants, producing myths that have survived to this day), hitting an all-time low in the 17th-18th centuries before gradually gaining it back in the 19th. A 9-11th century peasant was just as tall as a 90s kid and most likely significantly more muscular.

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Thanks. That makes a lot more sense. It was always a bit hard to reconsile what I knew about diet in the middle ages with what I had been told about average heights. I have to wonder how this compares with other formerly fuedal societies. I know there is a statistic they like to throw around about how the Japanese population has been growing taller ever generation since the Meiji period, which doesn't make any sense unless you attribute a lot of it to foreign genes repeatedly entering the pool. Otherwise, the increase would be over a single generation and then flatline.

LordsFire said:

The lust for power is at a minimum latent in all human hearts, and dynastic conflict, wars of expansion and conquest, etc, etc, were absolutely rife through all periods of history. When Monarchy was the norm in the western world was no different.

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I don't think the claim is that monarchy makes people want power less.

LordsFire said:

No, this is not me moving the goal posts. This is you forgetting what I posted:


Significant nations.

Brunei is not a significant nation, except to the people who live in it, and perhaps those directly on its border.

Thailand is a significant nation, that has some meaningful throw weight in its region. It's a fair example. The others you listed are basically city-states (as best I know). Which is cool, but far from significant to world politics or economics.

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Well fair enough, I retract stating that you moved the goalposts.

Significant is a pretty relative and vague term, however, and without you further defining it I had no way to understand what you meant. I suspect you are basing it entirely on land mass rather than actual importance. Liechtenstein, f'rex, is basically a critically important lynchpin of the entire European economy, it handles or manages more than twice as many trusts, megacorporations, and other financial entities as it has citizens. It has the richest citizens, based on parity purchasing power, in the entire world. Nobody in their right mind would consider it insignificant in any measure except acreage.

As for your assertion that Brunei is insignificant...


Brunei is ludicrously powerful and important (one might even say significant), and can influence much of Asia by it's decisions. By some coincidence has a staggeringly rich average citizen who has a longer average lifespan and higher living standards than anywhere else in Asia and is better than most of the world. You're actually going to find this is a running theme through this thread, Monarchies tend on average to produce richer, more socially mobile citizens than democracies and way, way better average citizens than communism. Brunei also has a microscopic national debt compared to, say, the US, low levels of violence There're always exceptions but the correlation exists.

LordsFire said:

If you think that's a modern conceit, rather than endemic to humanity through all of history, you have a flawed understanding of the human psyche.

The lust for power is at a minimum latent in all human hearts, and dynastic conflict, wars of expansion and conquest, etc, etc, were absolutely rife through all periods of history. When Monarchy was the norm in the western world was no different.

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Lust for power has always existed, but what I am talking about is different. There were always individuals who strove for something, but today, there appears to be a widespread idea that everybody deserves to be worshipped.

KilroywasNOTHere said:

and who do you think will prop up these new royals, God? Call me the devil if you wish but givin that God has very often rebuked violent revolution I press X to doubt. No the people who will be propping up these new monarchs will be lesser lords, businessmen all of which will probably have their fingers in the pots of globalist trade, unless of course you somehow thanos away all tech that makes long distance communication possible. What's likely to happen is the king will be a puppet, and if he dares protest against the evils of those that made him, they'll laugh him off.

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Royalty could be propped up by literally any means possible. Best way perhaps would be choosing members of surviving families with dynastic legitimacy - for Croatia, this would mean crowning Habsburgs (or actually admitting them, as I don't think Croatian Parliament ever formally deposed the Habsburgs - so they technically still hold the right to the Crown of Croatia).

As for general terms, electing kings was a thing. Hungary and Croatia did it multiple times through history - that is in fact how the union happened, as majority of Croatian nobility elected Coloman for a king.

Now, when it comes to the likely scenario, that is indeed a very real possibility. But even in kingdoms where nobility elected monarchs, monarchs still tended to butt heads with the nobility. This means that modern monarchs would actually be very likely to oppose the globalist plutocrats, because after all a monarch too is essentially a businessman, except his business is running the state. Of course, this is also the reason why democracies are so widespread today: big money threw off monarchies so as to get rid of any limitations to their power.

Aldarion said:

Lust for power has always existed, but what I am talking about is different. There were always individuals who strove for something, but today, there appears to be a widespread idea that everybody deserves to be worshipped.

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This is no different than at any other point in history. It just expresses differently with technology and the like.

I’m not sure if I would call myself a monarchist, but I’m extremely sympathetic to the position as well as being skeptical of democratic republics. I’d go so far as to say that our current incarnation of democracy has failed and has become a veneer on top of a kleptocracy. So what we have is going to have to change.

So, would a monarchy be better? Well, a good monarchy would be better than what we have now. In theory, a certain kind of bad monarchy might not be so different than what we have now, it depends on a lot of factors.

Currently, it is not our elected representatives who rule the nation, but a number of powerful corporations, banks, media conglomerates, bureaucrats, and institutions mostly private but also unelected government agencies. A king may replace the president and congress, but if the true rulers remain in power, they will continue to rule and the king with simply be a figurehead as our politicians far too often are. If we were to suddenly magically change into a monarchy, then the king would have to purge our society of its current corrupt ruling elite. I don’t mean politicians - I mean Wallstreet moguls, tech-companies, media corporations, banks, universities, government agencies, multinational companies. Many of the people in charge of these institutions would need to be punished in some way for their crimes against their nation.

So the rule of even the most benign monarch, for it to be a rule at all and not just a show, would have to begin with a terrifying reign of terror where the nation’s most powerful institutions and people are destroyed. Of course, most of these institutions exist across borders, so the bulk of these institutions would survive and would use their remaining power and influence to wage war on the monarch and his nation. If changing to a monarchy had the potential to help anything, it would only be after the country went through a period of being much worse.

Also, how do we even get a monarch if we don’t already have one? If you’re from a European nation that already has a monarch and you just want him to have more power, that is one thing, but what about us in the USA or countless other places with no recent history of monarchy?

It would be cool if the direct male heir of George Washington could come along with George Washington’s reforged sword to claim kingship over the United States - perhaps after Joe Biden tried to kill Hunter because he resents him for surviving his superior brother. That would be awesome, especially if that descendant of George Washington epitomized all of the qualities that a ruler should have. That’s not going to happen though. To get a king when you have a democracy, you need to have a coup, a collapse, or a president radically expanding his power. So don’t expect George Washington’s heir. A more likely way of getting a king is by Donald Trump seizing power some kind of way. That’s one of the better scenarios, because at least Trump has some good positions and opposes the current corrupt system. We could also see Joe Biden suspend the 2024 because of the “Omega variant” and claim some kind of energy powers to make himself effectively a monarch, albeit one subservient to other unelected people.

I would like to have this ideal sort of monarchy that so many of us imagine, but I don‘t know how to get there from where we are now.

ShieldWife said:

Currently, it is not our elected representatives who rule the nation, but a number of powerful corporations, banks, media conglomerates, bureaucrats, and institutions mostly private but also unelected government agencies. A king may replace the president and congress, but if the true rulers remain in power, they will continue to rule and the king with simply be a figurehead as our politicians far too often are. If we were to suddenly magically change into a monarchy, then the king would have to purge our society of its current corrupt ruling elite. I don’t mean politicians - I mean Wallstreet moguls, tech-companies, media corporations, banks, universities, government agencies, multinational companies. Many of the people in charge of these institutions would need to be punished in some way for their crimes against their nation.

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Would be nice if that were true, but I fear it isn't. Real power currently resides, and always has resided, in the hands of our elected leaders. Oh of course these institutions can use their money to pay people off and get a few kickbacks, but they don't actually have hard power. These people only get to be truly influential when "leaders" are feckless galaxy brains, which many of our political class unfortunately are. On top of that, these aforementioned galaxy brains are merrily ruining everything on their own just fine. Bis business and co are simply cashing in.

In the 1970s you might have said the same of the United Kingdom, except in regards to the unions. Thanks to Labour's dogma and weakness they managed to bring my country to its knees.

Then we elected a woman with the heart and stomach of a king, and she destroyed them utterly. Putting the right person in office can change more than you realise.

ShieldWife said:

It would be cool if the direct male heir of George Washington could come along with George Washington’s reforged sword to claim kingship over the United States

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George Washington said "No" when he was asked to be King of the US. Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette would have been a better choice.

Lafayette basically wrote the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789 (i.e. the French Bill of Rights) and named his son Georges Washington.

LordsFire said:

This is no different than at any other point in history. It just expresses differently with technology and the like.

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Personally, I think it may be a consequence of democracy - but also, democracy may be a consequence of that.

ShieldWife said:

Also, how do we even get a monarch if we don’t already have one?

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Monarchies arise from petty tyrants. The warlord who settles down and teaching his son to invest in his holdings. As such, there are only really three ways for this to happen: a country with an active monarchy conquers you, a dictator takes over and successfully passes things down his lineage to the point that people accept it as a monarchy, society collapses with petty warlords taking over as much as they can as they reenact the early iron age. The possibility of voting one into power is so remote as to be functionally impossible, because systems almost never dismantle themselves, the system would have to be under severe external threat and see that as the only viable solution.

Lord Sovereign said:

Then we elected a woman with the heart and stomach of a king, and she destroyed them utterly. Putting the right person in office can change more than you realise.

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Ah, Margret Thatcher. She had some great quotes.

“Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”

“I'm back... and you knew I was coming. On my way here I passed a cinema with the sign 'The Mummy Returns'.”

“Any leader has to have a certain amount of steel in them, so I am not that put out being called the Iron Lady.”

“When people are free to choose, they choose freedom”

“Well, there’s a lot to react against! [in response to the accusation that she was a reactionary]”

“And I will go on criticising Socialism, and opposing Socialism because it is bad for Britain (...) It’s the Labour Government that have brought us record peace-time taxation. They’ve got the usual Socialist disease – they’ve run out of other people’s money.”



There was a bunch more.

Simonbob said:

Ah, Margret Thatcher. She had some great quotes.

“Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.”

“I'm back... and you knew I was coming. On my way here I passed a cinema with the sign 'The Mummy Returns'.”

“Any leader has to have a certain amount of steel in them, so I am not that put out being called the Iron Lady.”

“When people are free to choose, they choose freedom”

“Well, there’s a lot to react against! [in response to the accusation that she was a reactionary]”

“And I will go on criticising Socialism, and opposing Socialism because it is bad for Britain (...) It’s the Labour Government that have brought us record peace-time taxation. They’ve got the usual Socialist disease – they’ve run out of other people’s money.”



There was a bunch more.

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While I don't particularly like all of the things Baroness Thatcher did when she was Prime Minister and I was pre-pubescent child ... she's got bigger balls than most men.

bintananth said:

While I don't particularly like all of the things Baroness Thatcher did when she was Prime Minister and I was pre-pubescent child ... she's got bigger balls than most men.

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Heh.

When I was young, there was an international peace keeping operation, and the brits were part of it. I distinctly remember, there was some fighting, the US President at one stage said "Stop fighting in this area, or else!" and was ignored. And did bugger all.

Then, Maggie Thatcher announced that the next fighting in a certain area would be bombed. That conflict stopped for a few weeks, then the moment it restated, it was bombed, just like she said. After that, locals all listened when Maggie spoke.

Simonbob said:

Heh.

When I was young, there was an international peace keeping operation, and the brits were part of it. I distinctly remember, there was some fighting, the US President at one stage said "Stop fighting in this area, or else!" and was ignored. And did bugger all.

Then, Maggie Thatcher announced that the next fighting in a certain area would be bombed. That conflict stopped for a few weeks, then the moment it restated, it was bombed, just like she said. After that, locals all listened when Maggie spoke.

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when you promise violence you have to deliver.

Cherico said:

when you promise violence you have to deliver.

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And she did deliver.

She was probably the best British PM since Churchill and I do not have a lot of good things to say about him.

VictortheMonarch said:

The Queen has the power to dissolve Parliament. And while people have tried to block it (namely those pitiful Judges) she can and will use it if she has to. She can pretty much reshape the government if she wanted to.

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No, she doesn't. Parliament removed that power decades ago. Hell, Parliament has practically all the power now, they removed the other two branches (the Lords and the Royals) as political entities.

Aaron Fox said:

No, she doesn't. Parliament removed that power decades ago. Hell, Parliament has practically all the power now, they removed the other two branches (the Lords and the Royals) as political entities.

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That I think was a mistake and one the british are paying for.

Over concentration of power is a bad thing.