Are you a monarchist or a republican (anti-monarchist)?
- Thread starter WolfBear
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Morphic Tide
Well-known member
Meanwhile, basically the exact instant communications caught up to making it possible, virtually every Monarchy of Europe tried its hand at becoming absolutists with an obvious and quite significant plurality of capacity for violence via standing armies belonging to the Crown or synonymous state alone.
The monarchy you idolize just straight-up cannot last in anything resembling the modern world because it's too damned easy to absolutely shred the constraints. You need formal laws specifically mandating devolution and separation of power for it to stick, leaving it to the historic unformal tug-of-war is just waiting for an oligarchy of one sort or another to win that.
What you seem to view as unique downsides of modern democracies are just the "modern" part of it. We can be tyrannical and intrusive in new ways, so states will try it, no different from the French monarchy centralizing as fast as they could remotely get away with and pull a bread-and-circuses on the previous higher nobility to get them out of the way.
Quite interesting that the excesses of French absolutism eventually paved the way for the French Reign of Terror. When you start with one extreme, you can often subsequently end up at the other extreme rather rapidly. Similar to Russia moving from an absolute monarchy pre-1905 to a totalitarian left-wing dictatorship post-1917.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
Not entirely true, and also much less significant than you appear to think. Firstly, even absolutist monarchy never actually had absolute power. If you look at even absolutist monarchies, they were, as a rule, more competent and less intrusive than modern democracies, offering both greater freedom and greater competence in handling various problems (just compare how Croatian democratic government handled Zagreb earthquake to how Habsburg government handled a similar problem). French monarchy specifically was ruined because nobility was too powerful and pushed the Third Estate out of the way - and also by the fact that everybody blamed the crown for the excesses of the First and Second estates. In fact, French revolution was caused by the fact that monarch was too weak to oppose the Estates. If French monarch really had been powerful enough to establish de-facto absolute rule, Revolution would not have happened because he would have been able to push through the necessary reforms. If you look at history, monarchs always looked to help lower classes so as to counterbalance influence of nobility.
Although you are correct that state always tries to centralize as much as possible for given technological level, monarchy still has major advantages. Modern democracy does not really have a separation of power, because all "elements" of the democracy serve the same masters. In fact, the formal separation of power you consider so important is essentially worthless - democracy is oligarchy, there is no way around that. Monarchy however usually has very pronounced separation of power - enabled, ironically, by the fact that the monarch serves as a unifying factor, which means that you can have a split "behind the scenes", so to speak. Although, as the French example shows, balance can be difficult to maintain. Politicians in democracy are, well, democratically elected. But the process of election, with its importance of self-marketing, virtually assures that the elected so-called "public servants" will be self-centered psychopaths (Trump was probably the most sane US president in last few decades). With a monarch, especially a hereditary one, you actually have a significant chance of him caring for people at the emotional level due to monarch being, essentially, pater familias - the head of a big family (one thing that everybody can agree about both Franz Joseph and Karl Franz is that they cared about the people of the monarchy, often even to the point of it being detrimental both to them personally and, ironically, to monarchy as a whole. And this is true even for Louis XVI, he was just to weak to actually do something about the problems people were facing).
As I explained, there were no "excesses of French absolutism" - excesses there were, but they were caused by the nobility. And nobility still exists, even in so-called democracies.
Floridaman
Well-known member
Anarchist.... I reject all masters regardless of what reason they pretend to have legitimacy .
Floridaman
Well-known member
More Rothbard. I respect Bakunin, but I disagree with his premise that property is agression. However, I fully admit the anarchists of his day helped set the stage.Following in the spirit of Mikhail Bakunin, eh?
VictortheMonarch
Victor the Crusader
The legitimacy is the lack of smoke and mirrors. If life is bad, cut the head of the monarch off, you don't have the trail hunting in democracy.
Floridaman
Well-known member
Except any leader monarch or elected have the incentive to use propoganda to pretend they are the answer rather than the problem.
VictortheMonarch
Victor the Crusader
that comes with any form of government. Do you really think an An-Cap governing body (as it is literally impossible not to have one) would not have the same problem? I would say it would be worse as any Anarchist governing body would have to have some form of government structure, and if anything would end up resembling a Soviet style as originally the soviet union was suppose to have an anarchist government until Lenin flipped switch. An-Cap means well, but is impossible, just like with Communism.
Floridaman
Well-known member
I would argue, that the answer is not to have large groups, in the modern era there really isn’t the need for big cities, with 3D printing and modern manufacturing techniques small towns are quite capable of being self sufficient, so why have a grouping with a large amount of land.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
So, basically, technologically uplifted versions of the Republic of Cospaia everywhere that freely trade and peaceably interact with one another? Sounds nice in theory, though in practice, I'm not sure how you'd establish those without the government clamping down hard and putting your well-intentioned enterprise to a bloody end. (Well, barring a collapse of the social order and violent Balkanization of the country, in which a bunch of libertarian types band together and carve out hamlet-sized communities for themselves in the margins. Or, y'know... something like that.)
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For a second there, I misread the Republic of Cospaia as the Republic of Cosplaia and wondered if there was actually some kind of republic exclusively for cosplayers lol!
For a second there, I misread the Republic of Cospaia as the Republic of Cosplaia and wondered if there was actually some kind of republic exclusively for cosplayers lol!
Maybe there is lol
:
Cosplay Republic (@cosplayrepublic) • Instagram photos and videos
495 Followers, 2,885 Following, 53 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Cosplay Republic (@cosplayrepublic)
www.instagram.com
A real life Republic of Cosplaia!
Floridaman
Well-known member
Make no mistake I agree that for the idea to ever come to fruition, the current order must collapse. However, the governments of the world seem to be working overtime to that end. However, we are talking ideals, in life I am also content if government is crippled which again they seem to be working towards.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Maybe, though given how "domesticated" people are—which is to say, trained from day one to depend on government for key amenities and "guidance" when it comes to running society—any collapse will be absolute pandemonium to live through, assuming we survive it at all. Human civilization may not have ended with the Fall of Rome or the World Wars, but considering how nukes are a thing—and that lots of them would go missing in the chaos, if the peaceful breakup of the USSR is any indication—I have significant reservations about our odds of rebuilding from a repeat of either, regardless of political ideals.
Floridaman
Well-known member
The USSR collapsed and none of its nukes were used, unless you are arguing American officials are significantly more corrupt than the Soviet officials, why would the result be different.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
I’m talking about if the collapse is violent rather than peaceful, and given how miraculous it was that Soviet dissolution didn’t swing the other way, I question whether we can really get that lucky twice? Plus, it’s not like the US imploding is the only way the current system could crater, since World War III is still on the table.
It's worth noting that the Soviet collapse actually did end up becoming extremely violent--it simply took 20+ years. Hence the Donbass War and the current Russo-Ukrainian War. Russia initially expected Ukraine and the other SSRs to return to it once it recovered and revived its economy, but this didn't really happen (other than sort-of for Belarus), so Russia felt compelled to use force to "solve" this "problem" instead 20+ years down the line.
Zyobot
Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
Yeah, but not quite as bloody or chaotic as I’m getting at. As in, a Soviet Civil War in which Russia is set ablaze and becomes a nuke-ridden Yugoslavia writ large (which would likely drawn in NATO, too), though given how things are over there right now, such a fate may still be in the cards. 😦
At any rate, we’ve derailed quite a bit here, so I suppose we should circle back to the whole “Republic Vs. Monarchy” debate this thread was made for.