A thread for the Civilized Discussion and Debate on Monarchy

[The Whispering Monk]

Huh, the country with the lowest elasticity, and hence highest social mobility, is a monarchy. The number two position is also held by a monarchy. Even in the medieval period things were not remotely as stratified as you may have been led to believe by Dungeons and Dragons history, there was quite significant amounts of upward and downward mobility, by all accounts as much or more than the modern extremely stratified society. Americans tend to dramatically overestimate how much social mobility they really have.

Question since there's no link to the original data.

It measures income, but nothing else. Is there a true comparison of wealth? Does it measure property ownership or other metrics. Does it compare to national inflation? Lots of unanswered questions for this random stat board.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Most typically a constitution and/or a parliament/congress/whatever elected body. Sometimes it's balanced against nobility or a powerful religious institution. Often it's a mix and match between those. There's a fair range of options.

So...if I'm understanding the general bent of the 'pro-monarchical' faction here so far...y'all are stating that ANY Monarchy is quantifiably better for humanity than any other form of government. Is my understanding correct?

 

[Lord Sovereign]

I think you forgot something.

There was a mishap with posting! Might have hit the keys too quickly before it realised I was meaning to type.

Anyways, you'd be surprised how many checks and balances a monarchy has. Even in a non English context, the King has got the nobles and the Church, an absolute shit show of different opinions and grudges which he has to keep happy. Because one of the foremost roles of the King is as a mediator, providing law and justice to his subjects be they great or small. This puts a bit of a dampener on wielding "phenomenal cosmic power." If he failed in that task, or even worse proved a tyrant, things ended badly for them (cough, Edward II getting a red hot iron poker shoved up his arse, cough, Richard II (vicious little shit that he was) getting starved to death in captivity, cough, Richard III getting thrown under the bus by England's nobility at Bosworth field because the wanker murdered the Princes in the Tower, cough).

In the English context, it's even more so. The House of Commons controls the purse strings and the King has to get their permission to levy a tax. The House of Lords is the aforementioned woes of nobles and church, and what's worse those peasants are quite aware of their rights and are more than willing to use a crown court to seek justice.

Medieval society was surprisingly sophisticated and advanced, much more so than many today realise.

 

[Aldarion]

So...if I'm understanding the general bent of the 'pro-monarchical' faction here so far...y'all are stating that ANY Monarchy is quantifiably better for humanity than any other form of government. Is my understanding correct?

Can't say for others, but no. Monarchy is the best form of government as a general rule, but a good democracy is still better than a bad monarchy.

So what constrains the power of the Monarchy?

As far as an unconstitutional monarchy goes...

1. Tradition. Power of a monarch is based largely on tradition and custom, so tradition and custom also constrain it. That is why absolutism ultimately caused destruction of monarchies - it introduced modernism and reduced importance of tradition.
2. Differing centres of power. Under a democratic government, everybody wants government to increase because they hope to exploit its power; this is also true for socialist / totalitarian systems. But under a monarchy, there are usually multiple competing centres of power, meaning that power of a monarch is typically (but not always) far more constrained than that of a democratic government.

In fact, monarchy has more effective checks against governmental power than a democracy does.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

1. Tradition. Power of a monarch is based largely on tradition and custom, so tradition and custom also constrain it. That is why absolutism ultimately caused destruction of monarchies - it introduced modernism and reduced importance of tradition.

I'm guessing you aren't a big fan of Louis XIV? Not being a fan of his is an entirely reasonable position, mind you.

But to expand on this, yes, absolutely right. This is how England's monarchy almost came to an end in the 17th century thanks to the best efforts of the Stuarts (Charles II and Anne aside). Charles I and James II tried to impose divine right, and it went down like a tub of cold sick with both Houses of Parliament.

 

[Bear Ribs]

I'm amused by your lack of counter example.

When's the last time a Danish or Norwegian Monarch did something relevant.

Why would I need a counter-example? You didn't give any example in the first place, you made an entirely fallacious argument based on no data and reference to an entirely different government. But as you need more...
The queen formed a new government with Mette Frederickson as prime minister in 2019. More recently, she's been throwing her political weight around to push back against the immigration of Muslims into Denmark which is making some waves and likely to lead to some political changes.

Edit: Should add you're also missing the entire point. Monarchies aren't about the government doing something. They're about producing a limited and distributed government with an inability to do something outside of narrow constraints baked in. They are about not having to worry about the most terrifying words in the English language. One of the reasons peasants had it so well under monarchy was because they were largely left to their own devices and the government wasn't all up in their business doing something.

Question since there's no link to the original data.

It measures income, but nothing else. Is there a true comparison of wealth? Does it measure property ownership or other metrics. Does it compare to national inflation? Lots of unanswered questions for this random stat board.

Original data here. It is indeed entirely income, and it should automatically ignore inflation since it's comparing percentiles, if everybody's wages doubled from inflation, the guy who's in the 44th percentile will still be in the 44th percentile. It doesn't look at property ownership but I'm not sure that's much of a confounding factor, I find the possibility of a person owning massive amounts of land while having negligible income unlikely, and likewise I doubt many people have massive amounts of income and yet own no property. There are undoubtedly outliers but they shouldn't dramatically alter the situation.

So...if I'm understanding the general bent of the 'pro-monarchical' faction here so far...y'all are stating that ANY Monarchy is quantifiably better for humanity than any other form of government. Is my understanding correct?

No, I would classify that as batshit insane actually. I'm of the position that in some ways, particularly the expanded social mobility, relatively low levels of work extracted from the poorest members of society, high levels of government stability, higher levels of freedom people enjoyed, and general low levels of violence and abuse peasantry had historically, those governments had something going for them that modern governments could learn from. This needs to be adjusted for the fact that the most successful monarchies were generally in different technological times and things simply don't work the same way they did when mail had to be hand delivered by a horse rider or homing pigeon, so this is a process that needs considerable care and examination of actual facts.

Unfortunately, because a great many people get their ideas on how monarchy works from the likes of Netflix, Dungeons and Dragons, or some Isekai novel they mistook for fact, we get a lot of drivel and nonsense notions like the ones I've dispelled above, that drown out the potential good ideas we could otherwise make use of.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Medieval society was surprisingly sophisticated and advanced, much more so than many today realise.

Not wrong there. Too many people don't think about all the different 'tugs' a human society will place on ANY ruling body.

Original data here.

Hmm...one thing I'm spotting is that the only Monarch at the top in this source is the UK. The others (correct me if I'm wrong) are at the bottom. The 'Democratic' countries are all higher up the chain than most of the Monarchies. Does that mean UK is an outlier we have to throw out statistically? I mean, realistically, the Monarch in the UK has absolutely no authority. So it's anything BUT a practical monarchy. IFF that's the case, you're unable to use it as an example of a successful monarchy.

Monarchy is the best form of government as a general rule, but a good democracy is still better than a bad monarchy.

One of my biggest problems with this idea is that, historically, a Monarchy is very afraid of things that rock the boat like invention. It's NOT an accident that the US has been a constant source of invention and development that has spread across the world. As a secondary effect that seems too important to ignore.

In fact, monarchy has more effective checks against governmental power than a democracy does.

Are those effective checks inherent to the system or just an accident of self preservation by parties the rogue monarch steps on?

This is all pretty theoretical so answer me this. What form does the ideal, modern, monarchy take? How is it structured? How are the 'checks on monarchy' enshrined and empowered? What can the monarch do that the other power holders can't?

 

[VictortheMonarch]

Ah yes, the ones with actual history of being a single nation not defined by Europeans deciding which chunks they wanted for themselves...

And well... I wouldn't actually want to LIVE in any of those places tbh.

Stability is fine and all... but like... only my little brother being able to drive would be kind of a problem... And like, sure, England's Monarchy was stable for a good long time... but like, I wouldn't wanna live under Henry VIII personally, I dunno, maybe it's just a me thing, but stability isn't how I define "good", certainly not as my primary metric.

Stability is everything, look at the rest of the world. Rather not go from a paradise to a shithole. Most of the time you were unaffected by the monarch, as democracy was still ongoing.

 

[VictortheMonarch]

I'm amused by your lack of counter example.

When's the last time a Danish or Norwegian Monarch did something relevant.

Quite often. The Monarchs are laid back, yes, but they tend to hold a plethora of charities, each of the Scandinavian monarchies do. They give out more money to charities each year than pretty much anyone else in the world.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Not wrong there. Too many people don't think about all the different 'tugs' a human society will place on ANY ruling body.

Hmm...one thing I'm spotting is that the only Monarch at the top in this source is the UK. The others (correct me if I'm wrong) are at the bottom. The 'Democratic' countries are all higher up the chain than most of the Monarchies. Does that mean UK is an outlier we have to throw out statistically? I mean, realistically, the Monarch in the UK has absolutely no authority. So it's anything BUT a practical monarchy. IFF that's the case, you're unable to use it as an example of a successful monarchy.

... Umm, I'm pretty sure you're misreading the chart there. He's measuring intergenerational elasticity. The higher said elasticity is, the harder it is for a poor person to get rich and vice versa. It's essentially a way to measure how likely poor dad is to equal poor son later in life. To quote:

All this said, if one number is to summarize the degree to which inequality is transmitted across the generations, just as sometimes one number, like a Gini coefficient, is used to summarize the degree of inequality at a point in time, then the intergenerational elasticity is an appropriate statistic to use.

And a page up:

In countries like Finland, Norway, and Denmark the tie between parental economic status and the adult earnings of children is weakest: less than one-fifth of any economic advantage or disadvantage that a father may have had in his time is passed on to a son in adulthood. In Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States roughly 50 percent of any advantage or disadvantage is passed on. The “intergenerational earnings elasticity,” is derived from a regression-to the-mean model, usually as the least squares estimate of the coefficient β in the equation:

One of my biggest problems with this idea is that, historically, a Monarchy is very afraid of things that rock the boat like invention. It's NOT an accident that the US has been a constant source of invention and development that has spread across the world. As a secondary effect that seems too important to ignore.

Are those effective checks inherent to the system or just an accident of self preservation by parties the rogue monarch steps on?

This is all pretty theoretical so answer me this. What form does the ideal, modern, monarchy take? How is it structured? How are the 'checks on monarchy' enshrined and empowered? What can the monarch do that the other power holders can't?

Imma politely disagree, Monarchies do not have a history of being afraid of invention, rather they have a history of embracing it. The moldboard plow, the theory of genetics, the stirrup, the idea that you should wash your hands before performing surgery, surgery itself, the list of inventions under monarchies is significantly larger than those of the US.

Note also that the US doesn't really have the tremendous history of invention it likes to pretend it does. Operation Overcast and Paperclip were all about looting German intellectual property for American use, there wouldn't have been a space race is the US hadn't stolen both scientists and massive amounts of data. Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures is basically an extended call to steal the bejesus out of everybody else's patents for American use, and the US did so on a grand scale, basically occupying the position of copying and stealing everybody else's technology that China does today.

To procure all such machines as are known in any part of Europe, can only require a proper provision and due pains. The {222} knowledge of several of the most important of them is already possessed. The preparation of them here, is in most cases, practicable on nearly equal terms.

Note that Hamilton was stressing how he wanted to steal European technology (illegally), not build any inventions in the US. This continued for a long time. Slater the Traitor is highly praised in the US for stealing European intellectual property and building mills with it in the US. The US didn't start inventing its own new technology (and suddenly become deeply interested in IP rights) until relatively recently. This makes it hard for me to countenance the idea that the US is a powerhouse of invention compared to historical monarchies.

In trade wars of 200 years ago, the pirates were Americans

Intellectual pirates were celebrated in the young United States, just as they are now in China. A man who smuggled a cotton-processing machine from London was hailed by one Pennsylvania trade group as "the ingenious artizan who counterfeited the Carding and Spinning Machine" and was promised awards

apnews.com

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Imma politely disagree, Monarchies do not have a history of being afraid of invention, rather they have a history of embracing it. The moldboard plow, the theory of genetics, the stirrup, the idea that you should wash your hands before performing surgery, surgery itself, the list of inventions under monarchies is significantly larger than those of the US.

Just to add, all the nobel prizes the German Empire won are something of a death blow to that idea. But I'm not done there, as Tsar Peter the Great was a rabid moderniser. The man took Russia out of the Middle Ages and into the 18th century.

 

[Bacle]

The only type of monarchy that should even be countanced in the US, and most Western nations that do not have monarchies lingering around for ceremonial purposes, would be a Naboo-style electoral monarchy.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

The only type of monarchy that should even be countanced in the US, and most Western nations that do not have monarchies lingering around for ceremonial purposes, would be a Naboo-style electoral monarchy.

I don't know why you'd want a pussified Holy Roman Empire over the real deal, but oh well. And that system was seen as dysfunctional even back in the day!

 

[Bacle]

I don't know why you'd want a pussified Holy Roman Empire over the real deal, but oh well. And that system was seen as dysfunctional even back in the day!

I do not want any monarchy in the US, and think the days of monarchies being at all worth maintaining are long gone, but I'd prefer a monarchy where the monarchy is voted in to one that is in because of bloodline.

 

[VictortheMonarch]

I do not want any monarchy in the US, and think the days of monarchies being at all worth maintaining are long gone, but I'd prefer a monarchy where the monarchy is voted in to one that is in because of bloodline.

And the discussion isn't about America, but on Monarchy as a whole. Besides that, the HRE was more a Aristocracy than an actual Monarchy. The Holy Roman Emperor held little to no power. he could direct, but only as long as the electors wished to follow him.

 

[Largo]

Your English Medieval Peasant, f'rex, worked about eight hours a day... and only worked 150 days a year, had a ton of feast days, and had sex five times a day by some accounts. Adjusted for the lack of technology, since one can hardly fault the middle ages for lacking internet or COVID vaccines, life was pretty danged good, while somehow each new advance in automation, robotics, and other "labor-saving" devices has forced people in modern times to work even more hours.

This is fundamentally horseshit.

Peasants worked less than they could have because they had no ability to actually improve their lives. There comes a point, when you're living as a subsistence farmer, that you can't actually improve your lot by working better or harder. There's only so much food you can store and so many limited goods you can get in an environment which has a very limited access to markets, never mind that diminishing returns means that there comes a point where you're burning more calories than you might earn by farming more marginal land more.

You've probably heard financial people say that it's important when you're starting to save up an emergency fund of 3-6 months? Imagine a world where 95% of people literally could not have more than that. We would certainly work quite a bit less in that scenario.

 

[Terthna]

I do not want any monarchy in the US, and think the days of monarchies being at all worth maintaining are long gone, but I'd prefer a monarchy where the monarchy is voted in to one that is in because of bloodline.

Honestly, I think those trying to argue in favor of monarchies over republics (we are not a democracy; we never were) are just pissed that our current system is failing, and want to throw the baby out with the bath water in favor of an idealized alternative.

 

[Bacle]

Honestly, I think those trying to argue in favor of monarchies over republics (we are not a democracy; we never were) are just pissed that our current system is failing, and want to throw the baby out with the bath water in favor of an idealized alternative.

Maybe; I think some are just contemptuous of the idea of the 'lowest common denominator' getting the same voice/vote as a scholar or priest, but won't come out and admit it, because they know it won't look good for them.

 

[bintananth]

I'm of the opinion that a Constitutional Monarch with limited - but very real and exerciseable - powers is a good thing.

Basically, one where their job is to say "No, that's stupid and we ain't doing that" and "These are the people in charge of the everyday things that I just sign the paperwork for" with a bit of pomp, circumstance, and ceremony indicating that if everything goes to hell in a handbasket there's someone above politics who is trustworthy and respected enough to step in during a crisis with "here's what we're going to do" that actually gets listened to.

How the Monarch is selected doesn't really matter.

 

[Terthna]

Maybe; I think some are just contemptuous of the idea of the 'lowest common denominator' getting the same voice/vote as a scholar or priest, but won't come out and admit it, because they know it won't look good for them.

I'd like to think better of them than that, but even I've grown tired of the ignorant masses screwing things up for the rest of us.