/lit/ - Literature

>>16676129
>Bad kings
The whole justification for monarchy is that having a clear leader is, on balance, better than not having one. You therefore agree a system that guarantees an unambiguous leader with no room for squabbling. Obviously the downside is that if the guy you get isn't very good, you're still stuck with him. So this isn't just a minor bug, it's the basic price you pay for the whole thing.

The best short work I know of for making the case against democracy (and implicitly for monarchy) is

>Democracy: The God That Failed
by Hoppe

>>16676146
yeah, I'm reading it now, but it's about democracy in general and has nothing about monarchy. More works about monarchy, any anon?

shameless bump!

>>16676129
Read the Carta de Logu.
Sardinia was divided in 4 kingdoms and there were laws made to adress the probpems you exposed

>>16676191
lots of things
>Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
is a seminal text, although it's not exactly razor-sharp logic of a sort that will win arguments with unbelievers

>>16676129
Look for historical examples of how those questions were answered. Great Britain is a solid place to start although there are no perfect solutions.

Also take a look at the Nerva-Antonine Dynasty in Ancient Rome. Look at what they did with succession.

Personally I still favor democracy but it hasn't existed for as long as monarchy has and thus still has a lot more kinks to work out. You could argue that it is immature as well if you really want to hit your foes in a cheap spot.

>>16676191
just read detailed biographies for an accurate understanding of monarchy. I recommend the Walsh books Philip II and Isabella: The Last Crusader.

>>16676129
I too wish to get my shit straight regarding monarchy.

>>16676303
>>16676311
>>16676316
>>16676331
Thanks for suggestions guys, appreciate it. Also would be interesting to think about how to fix problems of democracy. It's much harder imo, might be impossible. Maybe a very refined and conservative constitution could be a good start?

>>16676474
>Maybe a very refined and conservative constitution could be a good start?
whaddid I just say about Great Britain anon - go do your homework

>>16676129
Romanticized monarchy is always a beauty, but historical monarchy is mostly garbo. We're living the absolute lowest point of democracy right now so anything might look better.

Read The Twelve Caesars

>>16676129
Hobbessss

like Plato put it:
>in good times Monarchy fucking great, Democracy meh
>in bad times Monarchy shit and tyrannical, Democracy meh but not too bad

>>16676706
Aquinas says the same thing in De Regno, a good democracy is the least good system, but a bad democracy is the least bad system.

>>16676706
Don't forget Plato saw democracy as land owning males voting for other land owning males. The majority of thr population in Athens, including the surrounding sing land, were slaves.

Ethno-Nationalistic highly discriminatory democracy with a permanent non-voting underclass is not our modern democracy.

>>16676944
that changes literally nothing unless the purpose of politics is to fulfill some kind of egalitarian ideal.

>>16676129
Patriarcha by Filmore

>>16676937
I imagine this is very true. Bad king would be a disaster for the country, much worse than a bad democracy we are seeing today. It sucks because I don't believe that democracy can ever work well for a long period of time.

>>16676129
>Will of The People
>Divine Right to Rule
Both spooked. I have no obligation to these, I only pretend to since they have might beyond mine... For now. One day, the government will reveal a weak spot and I will tear it asunder, for I may already own myself but I desire freedom. True freedom, not "regulated freedom".

>>16676129
read "democracy the god that failed" and this article
https://mises.org/wire/ten-reasons-why-governments-fail

>>16677073
>Bad king would be a disaster for the country
Historically they haven't, even the absolute worst British king didn't hurt the the country to much and the damaged he caused was fixed by his successor almost immediately.

>>16676129
Read Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics and then base your text around those two texts.

>>16676706
I disagree. Monarchy is one of the few forms where an individual has enough executive power to change course of his nation. Monarchy above all should be necessary in crisis to steer the ship back into calm waters. Then democracy should be preferred. This works only until you have a functional priestly caste that upholds the moral law of the society and excommunicates psychopaths and sociopaths. My feeling is that the main problem we have seen, with the destruction of priestly caste and the moral order, is the proliferation of psychopaths who now run the democracy. And in fact, as societes are organic wholes, now if one desires to rise the social hierarchy, he needs to display psychopathic tendencies. Psychopathy is the moral order by which we rise on our society's ranks.

In reality we should probably have a monarch who can only wield absolute power in times of crisis, a democracy for "regular" times and a strong priestly caste that uphold the moral order and excommunicate individuals with psychopathic tendencies. Of course the problem is obvious, the psychopaths would simply tend towards the new forms of power and look to infiltrate the priestly caste or the king's court. The way to combat this somehow would be to exclude the priestly caste from any kind of business or political affairs and especially by having them take a vow of (relative) poverty, their sole function would be the preservation and strengthening of moral order. I imagine this kind of partition of power would be more functional than current democracy.

Are modern royal houses even that well prepared? Look at Harry in England.

>>16676706
When did Plato ever say that?

The very act of arguing over whichever "system" is a sign of decadence and distance from the monarchical ideal

>>16677206
>Look at Harry in England.
That's normal, happens every generation.

>>16676474
The main problems with One Strong Ruler systems:

a) When a really great ruler finally goes, it always leaves a massive power vacuum and everything falls apart, because he will inevitably have tuned the system to give himself as much power as possible. Even the guys who tried to look ahead and plan for their successor didn't solve this problem. See e.g. Genghis Khan, Elizabeth the First, etc

b) What do you do if you have a bad ruler?

c) What do you do if you have a good ruler who gets old and weak and/or mad and turns into a bad ruler? In a way this is worse than (b) because he will have built up a lot of loyalty so people will follow him to certain doom. (You could argue Hitler was a bit like this.)

Various things have been suggested (or tried) to fix some of these problems. For example, suppose the "main" successor is obviously terrible. You can have a group of aristocrats and if they unanimously agree, you can bypass him and pick either the next in line, or someone from a certain small pool of candidates. It's not really so different from a Royal Family, it just gives you a bit more room for manouever.

>>16677206
the Statesman [303], I'm not sure if he mentioned it in the Republic or the Laws though.

>>16676474
The most obvious way to 'fix' democracy is to have multiple votes, where people can "earn" or "lose" votes for good or bad behaviour. There's a novel by Neville Shute which explores this, IIRC. You could argue Heinlein's Starship Troopers is also a form of it.

So for example, everyone starts with a basic one vote, but then:

* Achieve a certain level of education = gain one vote

* Stay married for X time = gain one vote

* Raise child to age 18 = gain one vote

* Employ X people for X time = gain one vote

* Pay taxes for X time = gain one vote

* Serve in the military for X time = gain one vote

* Cure cancer / write a cool book / etc = gain one vote

--

* Bad criminal conviction = lose one vote

* X amount of time receiving welfare = lose one vote

etc

>>16676129
why don't we limit the term for a monarch to like 4-5 years and allow everyone in the kingdom to choose who their next monarch will be through the casting of ballots? that way the successor monarch will have the legitimacy from being chosen as the leader of the people by the people, and at the same time, any bad monarchs will be rotated out before they can do any harm.

>>16677332
>The most obvious way to 'fix' democracy is to have multiple votes, where people can "earn" or "lose" votes for good or bad behaviour
Good or bad bebavior will be jugded by the State and as such it will have tje same problems the austrians point out
>>16677091
>read "democracy the god that failed" and this article
>https://mises.org/wire/ten-reasons-why-governments-fail
There is no way out, ancap is the only solution that considers human nature for what it is

>>16677414
>why don't we limit the term for a monarch to like 4-5 years and allow everyone in the kingdom to choose who their next monarch will be through the casting of ballots?
>>16677091
>read "democracy the god that failed" and this article
>https://mises.org/wire/ten-reasons-why-governments-fail

>>16677414
there's no difference between that or democracy. only that more executive power of democracy would be concentrated in one person. but the underlying problems will be the same, moneyed interests deciding who are the candidates, who gets shilled on media, and what they can do when they get elected.

>>16677414
terrible idea. Short term monarch would just rob the fuck out of his country.

OP here again. I talked with my brother about these things and he has some suggestions. He says that to solve problems of monarchy aristocracy and people must assume responsibility. What he means is that when king dies, elite circle should unanimously support one good candidate and it is their responsibility that succession proceeds without problems. As such, most of the time best candidates would be picked to become a new king which helps with the second issue too. Inevitably though, bad king would happen. In those cases both aristocracy and people should come together and overthrow him. In doing that though, they must stay good intentioned and responsible. They should be able to distinguish who is a good king having a short term crisis or a real bad king who is ignoring and abusing his duties.

To solve problems of democracy he suggests a very rigid constitution that limits government taxing, debt ceiling and governments involvement in social issues. Gold/silver standard and decentralized banking also must be in constitution. On top of that he suggest to decentralize heck out of government and have a local democracy similar to Swiss system.

>>16676129
read revolt against the modern world

>>16677615
>On top of that he suggest to decentralize heck out of government and have a local democracy similar to Swiss system

keep in mind, things only work at certain scales. Democracy was made for city states, not multi-state empires like the USA. We can keep democracy, but it would involve separating into many smaller nations.

>>16677615
Complete fanfic. "they must stay good intentioned and responsbile". If people did that you wouldn't need to do anything. The issue is much more complex than having some "well-intentioned" aristocracy.

You are all forgetting De Monarchia by Dante.

>>16677615
>To solve problems of democracy he suggests a very rigid constitution that limits government taxing, debt ceiling and governments involvement in social issues. Gold/silver standard and decentralized banking also must be in constitution.
A constitution created and maintained by the same government? You realize gold standard was in the american constitution too? Why do you still think a piece of paper has any power?

>>16677744

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/25605/why-was-a-gold-standard-not-stipulated-in-the-u-s-constitution

>>16677414
Kek

>>16677662
Yeah, there is no way to guarantee that aristocracy would behave in such way. But it is in their best interest to do so, because it is better than having a civil war.

>>16677414
As I re-read this, this sounds like a nice trolling. If so, good job anon.

>>16676129
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

>>16676474
When people speak about democracy, and 'fixing' it, they often forget the crucial thing:
Democracy is not about equality. Neither is it, really, about democracy, at least when we're talking about the implementation, not the idea. A democratic regime, once established, will quickly drift away from democratic institutions, becoming a smokescreen for power games. In fact, any regime will, be it a monarchy, a fascist state, whatever socialist or communist utopia you make up, power games are endemic to any human society, even the smallest ones. Workplaces, schools, even Minecraft servers have power struggles. Democracy provides a bloodless way to solve them, calming the populace through the illusion of choice, giving the losers among the elites a chance to recover.
An authoritarian state is unable to consistently change. It is too rigid, lacking any meaningful introspection. It slowly accumulates mistakes and breeds conflict until it rots. Problems unsolved, popular desires unfulfilled, it stresses the state. What's worse, the rigidity of such a state allows it to rot for a long time, it could maintain its own weight indefinitely. The longer this goes on, the harder will be the fall. One way or another, a moment of weakness comes, and the whole shitshow crashes down, violently. A luckier state happens upon a miracle worker, a reformist, who goes on to either breathe a second life into it, or do away with authoritarianism altogether.
Authoritarianism is unavoidable in undeveloped countries. It is necessary for rapid development in many cases. It is incompatible with constant change, and constant change has been ravaging the world since the 19th century, which is one of the reasons democratic institutions were rapidly adopted by the developed countries up until nowadays.

That said, the modern democracy has failed. I could identify a couple of reasons for that:
1) The degradation and eventual failure of democratic institutions, partly due to underestimating the capabilities of various interest groups, partly due to their shared interests working too much in favour of one player, one group has won over and is now dominating the playing field. The democratic instruments still remain, the populace still has an illusion of choice. So the democracy still woks as a stabilizer, but now the stability is harmful, because no resistance is offered to the forming tyranny when it is at its weakest.
2) Poor application of democratic process. People have a very short memory when it comes to politics. That fact has always been exploited by the politicians. You can fuck up all you want as long as your fuck ups go unnoticed. That works towards the degradation of democratic institutions, since the fulfillment of popular desires could always be bypassed or put off, rendering the whole process pointless, radicalizing the opposition. Such, so to speak, bugs are commonplace in democracies. Some sort of rework is needed.

>>16678397
I could go in depth how I disagree on monarchy being rigid, lacking introspection and accumulating mistakes, but I'm too tired for it. Hope some other anon does it instead before I come back tomorrow.

>>16678397
Monarchy is not rigid. It is the ONLY system where radical change can be ushered in quickly and effectively. Democracy on the other hand tends towards an equilibrium, dictated by financial interests of the small elite. The fact that populists like Trump, Orban, Salvini etc. are getting elected is simply the natural response of a population that increasingly knows that democracy does not suit their needs anymore. In essence, they are trying to elect a "monarch" that will do away with complete utter control of financial oligarchs. The "democratic" media and academia are simply a buffer-zone and indoctrination tool for these same oligarchs and they will defend their overlords to death lest their lose their privileges in this or the next system.

>>16676129
Here is a book that will actually help you
Its an essay that actually cites its sources so you have some stuff to fill your bibliography
It is packed with quotes from various time periods.
Its also not a weak histography making strong claims about the correlation between democracy, total war and tyranny

>>16678771
Thanks anon, I will get this book and Leviathan tomorrow.

>>16678397
>An authoritarian state is unable to consistently change. It is too rigid, lacking any meaningful introspection. It slowly accumulates mistakes and breeds conflict until it rots.
This is democracy too dumbass

>>16676129
>Legitimacy of succession
I read some Procopius a few years back (History of the Wars). Anytime there was a new Persian king, the absolute first thing he would do would be to kill all his half-brothers or anyone else who had a whiff of a claim to the throne. This was just SOP and overall less bloodshed than a civil war.

>Bad kings or what to do with bad kings
Dodging the question a little, but one of the flaws of democracy is that it is easily co-opted and becomes plutocracy and/or mob rule. The people holding power have it because they actively seek it out, either for the power itself or for all the side benefits. Monarchy hardly has a monopoly on bad rulers.

I worked with a self-avowed monarchist way back in the 90's, his views were super outlandish then. He argued that overall kings had less power in ye olden times than our centralized "democratic" government has now. An incompetent ruler had less scope for causing trouble, fwiw.

>>16678844
also when yo say democracy do you mean pure democracy or representative democracy? The book is arguing for monarchy / republics so if the scope of your essay revolves around an American or swiss style democracy vs absolutism it might be less helpful

>>16676129
Read the republic based monarchads

>>16679086
>Dodging the question a little, but one of the flaws of democracy is that it is easily co-opted and becomes plutocracy and/or mob rule. The people holding power have it because they actively seek it out, either for the power itself or for all the side benefits. Monarchy hardly has a monopoly on bad rulers.
Yeah but the point is that in Democracy you can change the ruler if the majority of the population agrees he is doing a shit job. Monarchy has no built-in way to do this besides all-in violent revolution.
>I worked with a self-avowed monarchist way back in the 90's, his views were super outlandish then. He argued that overall kings had less power in ye olden times than our centralized "democratic" government has now. An incompetent ruler had less scope for causing trouble, fwiw.
Well I think he is actually right about that, but it has more to do with superior communication/transportation technology rather than the political system itself. I am not sure if this is necessarily a good thing though.

>>16679195
>Yeah but the point is that in Democracy you can change the ruler if the majority of the population agrees he is doing a shit job.
First, can you? What if the mechanisms of replacement are co-opted? Also, what if the ruler *isn't* doing a shit job but someone has whipped up a large enough mob to demand his replacement?

The tech vs. political system point is interesting and I don't pretend to have an answer. How much are they intertwined? Is democracy inherently better for advancing science? Does that advanced science lead to centralization and death of the democracy at the hands of technocracy?

>>16679359
>First, can you?
Sure, look at Trump. Even the most powerful man in the world can't maintain his power if the people don't like him.
>What if the mechanisms of replacement are co-opted?
like what
>Also, what if the ruler *isn't* doing a shit job but someone has whipped up a large enough mob to demand his replacement?
A "large enough mob" is not enough, you need to get the majority of the population on your side. If the majority of the people think you are doing a shit job, you get replaced. That doesn't mean that the people will always make the right choice, but it provides a way to remove shit leaders and it gives them an incentive to care to about the people by tying the nation's well being to their electability.
>The tech vs. political system point is interesting and I don't pretend to have an answer. How much are they intertwined? Is democracy inherently better for advancing science?
Democracy isn't really inherently better for advancing science, you just need to make sure the state doesn't interfere with "problematic" scientific research and you have some state funding for the research that can't be monetized.
>Does that advanced science lead to centralization and death of the democracy at the hands of technocracy?
Centralization is not inherently anti-Democratic in any way, the dilemma is more about limited vs big government, whether you want a central authority to have a lot of influence in local matters or to leave that to the local authorities. I think I lean towards (moderate) centralization but I am not sure, maybe the Americans have a point with their state rights thing.

>>16676294
>not anonymous
>exclamation mark
Reddit moment!