History Western Civilization, Rome and Cyclical History

[Simonbob]

So, I'm not sure I agree with Skellagrim about Democracy, but I am going to say something on the matter.

I like at least the theory of Democracy, but I can say, right now, in Australia? It's not really working.


For Democracy to function, there has to be buy in from both top and bottom, and both parts have to be willing to play by the rules. That translates to having enough people of various factions watching elections, making it very difficult to cheat, and the elite have to be willing to support this, punishing the cheaters. That's just the elections themselves. In Australia, this doesn't happen. Cheating happens often, and there isn't enough people who beleve to watch it all. In part, that's because you need dammed near perfect evidence to get even an arrest, let alone a conviction, and because there's a lot of tricks that aren't illegal that can be used. (The 2 biggest Parties in Aust politics are Liberal and Labour, and there was a election a while back where a minor party called the Liberal Democrats went from 1% to 10% of the vote, because they were placed first on the ballot, and a bunch of folks thought they were the Liberals! That's how Australia got a Libertarian party up to 10% of the Senate. Didn't last though.)


However, there's a bigger issue. That's that no matter who you vote for, they all do pretty much the same thing. I'm not bothering to vote, because there's no point.

 

[Bassoe]

Your applying your own bias rather than knowledge of the facts on the ground.

a) The comparison isn't for an extremely corrupt and parasitical Tory party with Blair - who was basically a Thatcher-lite - or Corbyn - who was very hard left. Its more with pre-1979 leaders on either side of the divide, the Health's and Callaghan's and their predecessors. There was no need for Britain, relatively much weaker than in its 1850 version to return to a version of the same dead end other than personal greed and short sighted interests.

b) In ~1850 Britain was the most advanced economy in the world. Inertia keep things going well for a while but the stupidity of the government regime, especially under the Liberal Party for the 1st ~60 years steadily undermined this. Without government support - such as tariffs or realistic education systems - as in most other developed states Britain increasingly dropped behind. It wasn't in the interest of owners or the fiscal section to invest in British industries in the face of subsidized competition. A classic example was the steel industry where faced with such an unbalanced playing field existing stock - in which capital had already been invested - was run into the ground and the workforce squeezed as much as possible rather than big spending on new more modern and efficient plants.

Lets be clear. There was no way Britain would maintain a position as workshop of the world because as Disraeli said and history showed the rest of the world wouldn't allow it. However it could have had a much stronger position with a more rational and responsible policy. Larger states such as the US and a unified and centralised German were always likely to overtake us in absolute terms but we could have had a qualitative equivalence per capita with them by say 1914.

You live in a strange world if you think Britain's economic and technological position in 1914-30 relative to its primary rivals was better than it was in 1950.

You describe the empire that arose out of the chaos of the Napoleonic wars and boomed economically. The empire that conquered a quarter of the planet. The political, economic and military superpower of the age. The naval leader so well-positioned that it could out-produce Germany by three-to-one without major upset, while the German effort ruined the German economy. You decribe all this, and you imagine that it constitutes a failure.

I think this is missing the point. Yeah, free trade and empire made England strong, but did said strength and the costs required to maintain it benefit the average Englishman?

Or to put it another way, empire's a trap. As an average lower- or middle-class citizen of an empire, you get:

• You're the cannon fodder fighting to conquer and maintain the empire.
• By making free trade possible by subjugating foreigners and keeping shipping lanes open, your job is forced to compete with foreign slave labor and a global market.
• When subjugated foreigners are inevitably upset about being conquered and turn to guerrilla warfare/terrorism, they'll attack weak targets, IE, citizens like you rather than the ruling classes and rich who've got expensive bodyguards and security measures.
• When the empire inevitably falls, the descendants of the people it conquered will use it as blood libel against your descendants. With the assistance of your leadership.

an actual American Empire wouldn't benefit the people making the tactical decisions.

Imagine that upon invading third world countries and toppling their dictators, instead of setting up local 'democracies' which inevitably collapsed the millisecond that the American military occupation stopped propping them up or failed because it turned out that over fifty percent of the population genuinely wanted a theocratic hellhole and voted accordingly, America adopted the roman model of 'give the legionaries a share of the land they fought to conquer.' This would mean the possibility of upward societal mobility for plebeians. Join the army and attack weaker foreigners, become a landowner, then either exploit said land yourself or sell it to an oil company. The wealthy and powerful would hate that, they want their debt slaves. Furthermore, it'd mean that there'd be a motive to end the war, people wouldn't want their land being attacked, so they'd make rules of engagement optimized to end the war, rather than to prolong it indefinitely. This would mean the end of the perpetual marketing campaign for the military-industry complex and supply of foreigners radicalized by having their homes invaded and families killed to carry out terrorist attacks against American military and citizens, allowing American politicians to justify increased domestic spying and authoritarianism.

Either do imperialism properly or go home.

 

[Yinko]

For Democracy to function, there has to be buy in from both top and bottom, and both parts have to be willing to play by the rules. That translates to having enough people of various factions watching elections, making it very difficult to cheat, and the elite have to be willing to support this, punishing the cheaters.

There was a YouTube channel called NotJustBikes that did a video on how road design subconsciously causes different driver behaviors. Wide/straight streets make people drive faster, narrow/windy streets make people drive slower. My point is that causes and outcomes are not always linked in obvious ways.

Fans of democratic systems tend to promote systematic proposals for solving or preventing political corruption and inefficiencies. What we see from these behaviors though is that simple systems get exploited and complex systems get ignored (or simplified so that they can be exploited). Assuming good faith on the part of politicians and assuming engagement on the part of the electorate are equally short-sighted.

Like with the example of the roads, a viable political system should achieve its aim through exploiting innate human psychology, not by making rules and then hoping that people choose to follow them. I know of no example of representational government that have ever done this.

 

[stevep]

I think this is missing the point. Yeah, free trade and empire made England strong, but did said strength and the costs required to maintain it benefit the average Englishman?

Or to put it another way, empire's a trap. As an average lower- or middle-class citizen of an empire, you get:

• You're the cannon fodder fighting to conquer and maintain the empire.
• By making free trade possible by subjugating foreigners and keeping shipping lanes open, your job is forced to compete with foreign slave labor and a global market.
• When subjugated foreigners are inevitably upset about being conquered and turn to guerrilla warfare/terrorism, they'll attack weak targets, IE, citizens like you rather than the ruling classes and rich who've got expensive bodyguards and security measures.
• When the empire inevitably falls, the descendants of the people it conquered will use it as blood libel against your descendants. With the assistance of your leadership.

I see two points here.
a) Free trade seemed to make Britain more prosperous and possibly did so in the short term - plus an argument against tariffs was that it would make bread for the ordinary man more expensive. Despite the fact proposals for counter tariffs in the latter part of the 19thC was on industrial imports to give British industry a more even 'playing-ground'.

However because the rest of the world was protectionist that left Britain with a significant disadvantage. As Disrali said the world wouldn't allow Britain to continue as its workshop so some attempt to build up industry elsewhere was inevitable. However that Britain continued to ignore the problems this imbalance caused coupled with the laissez faire attitude that stopped support for British economic activity - both direct support and indirect through lack of adequate infrastructure - both human and physical - made for a pretty much impossible position for British manufacturers especially. There were other problems with a shift from developers and inventors to 'managers' being increasingly in charge of businesses and with Britain's initial domination of so many world markets meaning that workers were seen as solely as a cost rather than also a resource and possible market but the poisonous combination of free trade in a protectionist world and laissez faire policies were the primary issues.

b) I would agree that overall the empire, especially as it developed from ~1870 onward was largely a drain on British resources. Many small areas were strategically important and some regions such as Malaya economically so while the large settler dominions in N America and Australia/New Zealand also gave benefits as long as Britain was in a position to provide the primary protection for them. However much of the territory in Africa and parts of ME last were simply a burden.

Steve

 

[stevep]

There was a YouTube channel called NotJustBikes that did a video on how road design subconsciously causes different driver behaviors. Wide/straight streets make people drive faster, narrow/windy streets make people drive slower. My point is that causes and outcomes are not always linked in obvious ways.

Fans of democratic systems tend to promote systematic proposals for solving or preventing political corruption and inefficiencies. What we see from these behaviors though is that simple systems get exploited and complex systems get ignored (or simplified so that they can be exploited). Assuming good faith on the part of politicians and assuming engagement on the part of the electorate are equally short-sighted.

Like with the example of the roads, a viable political system should achieve its aim through exploiting innate human psychology, not by making rules and then hoping that people choose to follow them. I know of no example of representational government that have ever done this.

The problem is that the same applies to the sort of elitist systems being proposed by people like Skallagrim. Their a bit simplier as they have fewer parts that are considered - at least by those elites - to matter but the same basic rules apply that any system will only work as long as there are enough people willing to commit to defend it. All systems will tend to decay over time as their taken for granted when they work so people are less willing to commit to them. Its whether you just shugle your shoulders and accept decay, allowing it to happen faster, or are willing to seek to prevent it.

 

[stevep]

On the contrary: nothing is easier to rile up than a mob, and what you understand by "broadly based" means what we call a mass-democracy (i.e. universal franchise). The system that ostensibly caters to the whims of the large masses... and in reality functions by dividing the masses into competing mobs and playing them off against each other (thus ensuring the ever-further entrenchment in power of a rigid oligarchy. One that merely maintains several "fronts", such as political factions.)

In reality, it's very hard to fix such a society when it goes bad. (Which it inevitably does, and more rapidly than any other, ceteris paribus.)

I think your perception is skewed because a key part of what I've just decribed is the act of deceiving the mob(s) into believing that things are going far better than is actually the case. This, for a time, creates an illusion of great prosperity. An example of this is the present-day "wealth" of the modern world, which is actualy based on a series of inter-locking ponzi schemes, expanding supplies of worthless money (only useful as long as the illusion is maintained), and a mountain of debt.

A variation upon that theme is always the inevitable doom of a mass democracy. The lie cannot be maintained forever. Which is why I call democracy unstable and temporary. Everything good about it is fake. It's a rotten apple coated in a shiny veneer. Future historians won't refer to the late 19th century when they speak of the "gilded age", but to our present time. This is the true gilded age; the time of the deceptive false-face and of the utter decay festering beneath it.




You express a belief in a systemic solution. There is none, for the reasons I've already outlined. "Belief" in democracy is belief in a lie, and that's exactly what enables the continuation of the very corruption and oligarchy that you fear. The "merchants" -- actually hyper-oligarchs -- already control the system. The opinions of the masses are less meaningful than they have ever been. That's not to say that the masses were typically heeded in historic times, of course! The truth is rather more interesting: the masses weren't considered relevant, as you say-- and thus generally ignored.

But now, the goverments of our age are not so benevolent as to ignore you. Rather, they seek to turn you into a worker drone. You have less freedom than the average serf, in practice, because the intrusion of government into your life has increased a thousand-fold. Again: this is the gilded age, and we live in gilded cages built by the state. But we're running out of gilt, and the reality of the tiny, restrictive cage in which the modern world has trapped us all is becoming increasingly hard to ignore. It's very... oppressive.




Regarding this one in particular: you describe this as a danger or evil of the vast non-democratic part of history. I'd like to point out that demagogues, by definition, rise to power by appealing to the demos. They ascend by exploiting, precisely, the democratic impulse. The existence of demagogues is not an argument against my position, but rather in its favour.




You are the one formulating it dismissively as "some checks", again painting your own interpretation onto the matter. My position is that a balance of truly competing interests tends to create the strongest and most natural checks on any power that can exist.

Note that the massive expansion of government goes hand-in-hand with the evolution of mass democracy. These two impulses feed into each other. By the mechanism I've described above, the ruling elite caters to various competing interest groups, promising them favours at the expense of others. Each of these expands the scope of the government, and increases the tax burden (the share of the economy that the government gobbles up). Since the "democratic" process involves the various major parties (all different masks of the establishment) succeeding each other in power, they all get to cater to their voting base from time to time. Which means that democracy is not a choice between various possible increases in government power, but a sum of all those options, all added up over time. None ever truly rescinded.

This is furthered by the fact that the establishment, periodically looking for new supporters as they so often betray (and thus lose) old ones, will increasingly expand the franchise. This is presented as a good thing ("power to the people"), but is the opposite in truth. It's a race to the bottom (qua performance), and a race to an ever bigger government at the same time.

I do think we're better off with a small -- even tiny -- government. And the best way to achieve that is to end mass democracy, which is the foremost instrument of creating a massively out-sized goverment.

Thankfully, as I've previously argued, the death of mass democracy is inevitable. Which means there's not only hope, but the certainty of improvement. Regrettably, things will get worse before they get better. Not because people don't "believe in democracy", as you argue, but rather because there's still far too many people who do.




Yes, definitions are varied. So it's important that we stay honest about it. Going by the descriptions of (the supposed benefits of) democracy that you have offered, the Roman Republic was not a democracy for most of its existence. Which seems plausible. Certainly for the first stretch of its history, the Republic was a purely aristocratic state. It did gradually become something more of an "open aristocracy", but not to any extent that is more relevant than burghers and free cities having a voice in the Holy Roman Empire, for instance. If you would agree with me that those latter examples didn't make the Holy Roman Empire a democracy, then you'll also agree that the first secessions of the Plebs likewise didn't render Rome a democracy.

The turning point, I daresay, was the famous fifth and last secession. (Last, precisely because it succeeded.) This created the Lex Hortensia. You might recall that I've previously drawn a comparision between that social conflict (the old aristocracy versus the 'new men') and the American Civil War. And that I compare the Lex Hortensia to the post-Civil War constitutional amendments. Both were at their core about significantly expanding the franchise and the ranks of the citizenry.

This is where Rome, and America, started their real journey into the land of... democracy. It's a journey that occupied (and in the current event, will occupy) some 240 years. Hence my statement: "a few centuries".

Of course, the process was gradual. Rome continued to have underlying trouble with its conflict of the social classes, and in America (and by extension the modern West), the expansion of the franchise was also a troubled and gradual process. Universal franchise in the USA was only fully established a century after the Civil War. And in Rome, a century after the Lex Hortensia, the citizen-veterans of the wars against Hannibal and Philippos also formed the rump of a "post-war consensus" that led to decades of internal stability... on the surface. Beneath that veneer, the voice of the people became marginalised, and the elite asserted itself within the existing system.

This lasted until the simmering and growing discontent manifested in the ascent of the Gracchi. And that marks the beginning of the decay of Roman "democracy" (such as it was): things thereafter escalated into a renewed (and ever more bitter and bloody) conflict between the elite and the enraged masses. Like-wise, in the modern West, the hey-day of our own democracy (...such as it is...) was also the period that began in the 1960s (Kennedy! Optimism! Camelot!) and ended when Trump was elected, as a modern-day reviled populist demagogue "Gracchus". (Which is all fitting, because Kennedy and Obama were both idolised "pop star" leaders who embodied the ideal of ""Modernity", and underneath it all, were mostly hollow.)

So. In truth, the "triumph" of a democracy lasts about half a century. Before that, it's finding its feet for a century, and after that, it's decaying for about a century. I wouldn't define that as a paragon of stability and longevity. Rather, as I already did, I'd call it a brief flash; an experiment that burns out quickly.




Was for almost all of its history not a democracy by the description you've given of democracy's supposed virtues. Indeed, the Swiss resisted giving women the vote until the 1970s. Good for them. Might be a reason why they're doing relatively well. (Not because women are inherently dumb or anything, but because -- as I've said -- the more people you allow to vote, the faster things go horribly wrong.)




Regarding this in particular: you are confusing "monarchy" and "dynasty". I'll assume it was accidental. If you want to talk about how long dynasties last, the only valid comparison is to how long major political parties retain a majority. If you want to compare a monarchy to the longevity of a democracy itself, the only valid comparison is how long the actual monarchy lasted, regardless of which dynasty was in charge at any given point.

I assure you that most countries were monarchies for far longer than they were democracies.




No, you don't. You live in an oligarchic state that retains a figure-head for PR reasons.




As I've argued in some detail, your assertion is incorrect. A "broad base" is merely a tool of obfuscation, used by the exact small elite that you think it'll keep from power. (But which is, in reality, already in power. Which means, regrettably, that you've been fooled. I've explained this to you, but as has been observed: it's often very hard to convince a man that he's been bamboozled.)

A system that uses a more selective method for deciding who gets to have a say in governance -- that is, a stake-holder system -- is infinitely preferable. This is best kept stable and lasting by letting competing factions with truly diverging interest balance the power between them. The crown, the aristocracy, the church, the burghers, the merchants, the yeomen...

That gives you stability. And pretty damn lasting stability. Far more so than any democracy you might care to name.




You're making the typical whiggish error here: conflating technological progress (which has always existed, and which has created all the increases in available resources) with supposed social "progress" (which in actuality leeches off the former, and doesn't create it).

A world in which the age of revolutions fizzled out would, by and large, be just as scientifically and technologically advanced as our own. And just as abundant in its available resources. These things are not a product of democracy.




In other words: you engage in magical thinking, whereas I'm pretty sure that "wishing won't make it so".

My stance is not fatalistic, though. People can make a profound change in their own lives, and the lives of those around them. That has great meaning. But you are akin to the child playing on the beach, who thinks that if he just builds a sand-wall strong enough, it'll hold back the tide.

The tide doesn't care what you think. Neither does history.




It's a basic rule that anything that takes more energy to maintain is going to be less durable and less stable than the basic alternatives. As I mentioned with the tides: your sand-wall won't hold the water back, no matter how much energy you expend. You're wasting your energy on a pointless endeavour.

As I've explained as well: you're also wrong about the degree of success. That's simply not backed up by the facts. Democracy is, overall, an expensive failure whose supposed benefits are either not its own, or merely "gilded" lies with little substance. (Which doesn't mean that democracy, at its best, is bad to live in. It's pretty good! It just doesn't last, and the bloody hang-over simply isn't worth the all-too-brief high.)






As the Spartans said to Philippos II:

"If."

(Philippos was wise enough to heed the scathing rebuke.)




Again, a baffling case where you paint your own preconceived notions onto the matter. The fact is: modern democracies are the most centralised states to have ever existed in history. And corruption is now more entrenched, and more well-hidden, than for most of history. (I've outlined before that most developed nations merely pretend to be "very not-corrupt!" by formalising and legally organising things that would be called "corruption" elsewhere. So in truth: these developed countries are very corrupt. They're so good at corruption that they can hide it from the masses effectively.)




I don't assume people have no moral values. Indeed, the fact that many people have morals is one reason why mass democracy is doomed. It's too immoral to be suffered for too long. The people, ironically, won't stand for it. (What won't they stand for, you ask? Well, they won't stand for what every mass democracy inevitably and quickly becomes: a shield for the elites to carry on doing anything they wish without check.)

Well there's quote a wadge of a post there and most of it misses the point to what I was saying or drawing wrong assumptions as you have before. Try and reply to some of the key points but not going to wad through it all.

a) Actually its far from impossible to correct a faltering system if there is the will.

b) I'm not believing in a system, at least any more than you do. I believe that the methods that work best are those than can draw broad support. You believe that methods that work best are those controlled by small elites - ignoring that those work best only for those elites. Also its as easy to deceive some of those privileged factions in your proposal as it is the broader masses in a democracy.

c) Your wrong to say that the increased power of a centralized state is due to the rise of democracy. That's obviously untrue as the most centralized powers in recent history have not been democratic at all. Its because technology has enabled all states to have more power than earlier versions could only dream of. Stalin or Mao had a level of control that previous Russian or Chinese emperors could never match.

d) Your using the uncertainty of the definition of democracies to twist the argument in support of your case as I thought you might. By the argument your posting we have no real democracies to 'test' your theories on before ~1920-45 period, during which despite your arguments about the level of corruption they have produced massive improvements in living standards - although they have started to falter in recent decades because your precious elites have gained too much power. [Frankly it doesn't matter whether such people call themselves kings, popes, nobles or oligarchs the problem is too much power being too centralized into too few hands - which is actually your preferred answer!!]

e) I think the clash on size of governments is whether a very small government can be a very strong government without massive intrusions into the life of ordinary people. Your argument is it can because it simply replaces centralized government with direct rule by the oligarchs. Which I don't think would be an improvement for common people simply because those same oligarchs would be able to do pretty much anything they want without having to hide their excesses. I know you don't want to admit that but it is the case.

f) Actually I do live in a monarch. That's the formal definition of the word. It isn't the centralized powerful monarch you prefer but its still a monarchy. There is too much power in the hands of privileged self-proclaimed elites but your solution is only to given them even more power and avoid them having to hide their abuses.

g) It is idiotic to claim that someone in the modern west has less freedom that a serf in medieval times. However your gone for wild fantasies like that before so I don't expect you will change your viewpoint. There is too much corruption and abuse because too much power has been concentrated into too few hands - just as you wish to have happen more generally - and because too many people are unwilling to oppose that.

h) You make a strange final statement was denying you assume that people have no moral values when your repeatedly call for a system that gives such people a monopoly of power.

 

[Marduk]

I think this is missing the point. Yeah, free trade and empire made England strong, but did said strength and the costs required to maintain it benefit the average Englishman?

Or to put it another way, empire's a trap. As an average lower- or middle-class citizen of an empire, you get:

• You're the cannon fodder fighting to conquer and maintain the empire.
• By making free trade possible by subjugating foreigners and keeping shipping lanes open, your job is forced to compete with foreign slave labor and a global market.
• When subjugated foreigners are inevitably upset about being conquered and turn to guerrilla warfare/terrorism, they'll attack weak targets, IE, citizens like you rather than the ruling classes and rich who've got expensive bodyguards and security measures.
• When the empire inevitably falls, the descendants of the people it conquered will use it as blood libel against your descendants. With the assistance of your leadership.

You are projecting the schizophrenic principles of clown world post-empires onto empires of the past.
1. Empires whose armies become infamous for being cannon fodder aren't empires who are doing well, quite the opposite.
2. Roman middle class didn't compete with foreign slave labor. It owned the foreign slave labor literally.

Slavery in the Roman World

Slavery was an ever-present feature of the Roman world. Slaves served in households, agriculture, mines, the military, workshops, construction and many services. As many as 1 in 3 of the population...

www.worldhistory.org

The Status of Slaves

The number and proportion of slaves in society varied over time and place, for example, in Augustan Italy the figure was as high as 30% whilst in Roman Egypt slaves made up only 10% of the total population. Although slave ownership was wider than in the Greek world, it remained a prerogative of the reasonably well-off. A more modest Roman business owner, artisan or military veteran might own one or two slaves whilst for the very wealthy, the number of slaves owned could run into the hundreds. For example, in the 1st century CE, the prefect L. Pedanius Secundus had 400 slaves merely for his private residence.

Also free trade without clown world limits does not create many of the problems escalating now - internal restriction of business with various socialist and ideological limits, which foreign competition is not limited by is a large part of what makes free trade look bad. But it's not free trade that has this problem inherently, it's these schizo policies pricing domestic labor out of the market while also insisting on free competition with foreign lands not bound by these regulations or outright pointlessly stupid virtue signalling that is completely separate aka green policy.

3. Rebellions of slaves or other subjugated people were historically violently crushed with extreme prejudice. What you are alluding to is clown world schizo policy where foreign cheap labor can freely operate in the imperial homelands in some sort of blurred status between criminality, legality and outright special protections going beyond those of proper citizens, something unthinkable before the age of clown world. Meanwhile imperial countries that actually openly subjugate certain ethnic groups do not seem to have huge terrorism problems, nevermind wide low level violence problems like no-go zones in the clown world. Does China have Uyghur and Tibetan criminal underclass controlled no-go districts in Beijing? Absolutely not.

4. Again, clown world/commie leadership problem. Does Japan lose any sleep over its past imperial adventures? The lesson here is, don't let commies who hate your country and everything it stands for into your leadership, ever, whether you're a current empire, former empire or not an empire.

 

[stevep]

Even in highly aristocratic republics or monarchies it wasn’t like the masses had no say at all. Petitions of grievance, Tribunes of Plebs, etc, have been methods the lower orders have used to shout very loudly in the ears of the powerful. Outright ignoring them was not a very good idea.

Indeed, this is what England’s House of Commons starts out life as: a way for the tax paying public to have the King’s ear.

Also, aristocrats have that strange ”noblisse obligee”, where they seem to give something of a damn from time to time.

True but they were often ignored except in times where they could pose a threat to the established orders because their plight was so bad. Then the attitude was also as often further repression as listening to them.

Also there is the concept of "noblisse obligee but was it actually performed as much as the general contempt for and abuse of the common people that also occurred?

 

[Skallagrim]

For Democracy to function, there has to be buy in from both top and bottom, and both parts have to be willing to play by the rules. That translates to having enough people of various factions watching elections, making it very difficult to cheat, and the elite have to be willing to support this, punishing the cheaters. That's just the elections themselves. In Australia, this doesn't happen. Cheating happens often, and there isn't enough people who beleve to watch it all. In part, that's because you need dammed near perfect evidence to get even an arrest, let alone a conviction, and because there's a lot of tricks that aren't illegal that can be used. (The 2 biggest Parties in Aust politics are Liberal and Labour, and there was a election a while back where a minor party called the Liberal Democrats went from 1% to 10% of the vote, because they were placed first on the ballot, and a bunch of folks thought they were the Liberals! That's how Australia got a Libertarian party up to 10% of the Senate. Didn't last though.)

For democracy (or at least mass-democracy, which is what most self-described proponents of democracy see as the only "real democracy") to work as intended, you'd have to make a world of saints. Or rather: it can work, roughly as intended, for a few decades. But it deteriorates very quickly.

If you safe-guard it to have a stake-holder system (meaning any variation on: "those who put something into the system get a vote in how it's run, the free-loaders don't get a vote"), stability and durability will increase.

Unfortunately, in a system where your personal success as a politician is based on convincing the largest mass to vote for you, the easiest way to power is to expand the franchise to include more people. That is: people whose vote you can secure by promising them free stuff, and/or other benefits.

For this reason, even basically functional stake-holder systems tend to gradually deteriorate into mass-democracies, which inevitably collapse into internal conflict when the "free goodies" run out. (Which they always do, because the whole thing's based on legalised plunder.)

So then the elite loses the support of the "voting cattle", and they impose ever more restrictive means to retain their own power. So the very elite that created the mass-democracy then murders it when it turns against them. On the flip-side, the discarded masses turn to a faction of militant demagogues, who eventually succeed in overthrowing the old elite in a bloody conflict.

On a civilisational scale, that's the advent of Caesarism. Which is what we have to look forward to. We now live in the early days of the last eight decades (or so) of "modernity". And what we call democracy will not make it to the end of that period. What will replace it won't be mch better either, because this "Caesarism" is simply the continuation of the tradition that has initiated modernity (Napoleon!), has appeared in the middle of the period as well (Hitler!), and will finally dominate the end of the period in similar fashion.

But when those violent days of retribution are behind us as well, when we arrive in "the world after modernity", things will get a lot calmer again. In some part because there will no longer be a democracy as we commonly understand it nowadays. (Meaning that if there are representaive bodies, they'll be local, and the vote will not just be given to anyone.)

However, there's a bigger issue. That's that no matter who you vote for, they all do pretty much the same thing. I'm not bothering to vote, because there's no point.

That's because all the established parties are just different masks worn by the same elite. Democracy is a puppet-show, and we live in the time where the masks begin to slip, and the deception is revealed.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Or to put it another way, empire's a trap.

An excellent post! (I'm just quoting the above bit because your posr includes a big quote, and trying to quote the whole thing in turn doesn't seem to work.)

I'd like to add that what you describe really captures the mechanisms by which the "national empire" fails. There are variations, of course; your analysis is mostly about Britain, whereas (for instance) the French case was similar in the basis, but obviously different in the specifics. We do need to keep in mind that the universal empire functions by different rules, because its premises are different. You compare Britain -- and current America -- to Rome, but at some level, this is unfair, because they are both national entities, not civilisation-encompassing ones. They can't be Rome, unless they transform themselves in the way Rome transformed itself. (After all, the Republic became the Empire in the way it did, in paet because the Republic was unable to oversee the emerging Imperium properly.)

On the plus side for the Americans; the situation they're in is much like that of Republican Rome in its last century, so there's plenty of time and incentive to become the Empire. And as I've argued here: that's something I expect to happen.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was a YouTube channel called NotJustBikes that did a video on how road design subconsciously causes different driver behaviors. Wide/straight streets make people drive faster, narrow/windy streets make people drive slower. My point is that causes and outcomes are not always linked in obvious ways.

Fans of democratic systems tend to promote systematic proposals for solving or preventing political corruption and inefficiencies. What we see from these behaviors though is that simple systems get exploited and complex systems get ignored (or simplified so that they can be exploited). Assuming good faith on the part of politicians and assuming engagement on the part of the electorate are equally short-sighted.

Like with the example of the roads, a viable political system should achieve its aim through exploiting innate human psychology, not by making rules and then hoping that people choose to follow them. I know of no example of representational government that have ever done this.

This is an issue common to modernity: it tries to ignore or even erase the past and its traditions and lessons. The modern mind-set is based on the self-absorbed premise the the world can be re-made by the hands of man. This kind of arrogance if typically mis-placed. (In fact, you achieve more when you recognise your limits. As Bacon phrased it: "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.")

A system that only works if human beings change their nature to fit the system's assumptions is aways going to crash and burn.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

the sort of elitist systems being proposed by people like Skallagrim.

Will you not learn? Will you truly never learn?

I'm trying to explain to you that the mass-democracy that you defend is the mask of a highly elitist system. In reality, by defending this kind of thing, you are propping up the elite. Every single time that you fail to grasp this and keep whining about "the evil Tories!!!" that you imagine to be the most baddest of them all... every single time... you are perpetuating the very system that put them in power and keeps them in power. (Even if you rotate parties once in a while... Labour is just a different mask worn by the same elite.)

You serve the elite. I'm trying to break that elite, and I advocate for a system that will give the elite far less power than it enjoys today.

Well there's quote a wadge of a post there and most of it misses the point to what I was saying or drawing wrong assumptions as you have before. Try and reply to some of the key points but not going to wad through it all.

Yes, your refusal to engage with what others actually say is by now well-documented. Note that, as before, I have diligently answered every single point you raise. You, also as before, hypocritically refuse others the same courtesy, and answer only with straw-men 'arguments' and cherry-picking.

You'll have to be more intellectually honest, if you want your arguments to be in any way respectable.

However, as I said above: the core issue is that you are a servant of an elite without understanding it, and you simply cannot accept the truth of the situation because that would wipe away your whole world-view. It's pointless to argue further, if you're so bent on deceiving yourself.

But as before, I must request that you actually engage with what others say, if you insist on participating in a discussion. You clearly don't want to do that, so then please just go have some oher discussion elsewhere. Because at present, it's just an endless repetition of you straw-manning, others responding in detail, you explictly ignoring the response, and just deliberately straw-manning a bit more.

That's troll behaviour.

 

[Yinko]

A system that only works if human beings change their nature to fit the system's assumptions is always going to crash and burn.

Yeah, and I think we have very congruent opinions on what makes for good political leadership.

The thing is, systems are artificial, they are a social technology. It's unfortunately extremely difficult to talk about politics without using the term "system". I really want to though because I think that systematizing social governance is the wrong way to look at things.

Systems, in any field, are algorithmic they only ever describe reality or impose themselves but they never actually are a part of reality. If you look at something like that Krebs Cycle from biology and call it a "system" then that implies that it works in an entirely predictable manner. In reality what is happening is associations and relationships between enzymes which can only be described algorithmically on a mass scale.

The point of all this is, if you take a functional set of human associations and relationships, try to describe them as a system, and then turn around and impose that algorithmic system onto people it will eventually fail. The claim that stevep made about all systems failing is true, but there are political relationships which do not fail. Tribal leadership relationships are so innately human (often a secular leader and a religious leader) that they can't fail, and the monarchical relationship with a complimentary religious structure (which is just the logical extension of the tribal pattern) has also stood the test of time all over the world. Families come and go, but the underlying shape of human interactions stays the same.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

An excellent post! (I'm just quoting the above bit because your posr includes a big quote, and trying to quote the whole thing in turn doesn't seem to work.)

If Empire is a trap, then it is a trap you must make and fall into yourself, or else you’ll fall into someone else’s…

The game of empires is default geopolitics. Opting out of it varies from naivety to suicide.

On a civilisational scale, that's the advent of Caesarism. Which is what we have to look forward to. We now live in the early days of the last eight decades (or so) of "modernity". And what we call democracy will not make it to the end of that period. What will replace it won't be mch better either, because this "Caesarism" is simply the continuation of the tradition that has initiated modernity (Napoleon!), has appeared in the middle of the period as well (Hitler!), and will finally dominate the end of the period in similar fashion.

…the fuck are you putting Napoleon and Caesar in the same paragraph as Hitler for?

 

[Bassoe]

If Empire is a trap, then it is a trap you must make and fall into yourself, or else you’ll fall into someone else’s…

The game of empires is default geopolitics. Opting out of it varies from naivety to suicide.

Counterargument.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Counterargument.

Counterargument: You've got a hypothetical situation going up against all of recorded human history.

We're monkeys and we like fighting each other.

 

[Skallagrim]

…the fuck are you putting Napoleon and Caesar in the same paragraph as Hitler for?

Historical position, not moral judgement (and certainly not degree of skill!), is the intent behind the comparison.

If we compare to the classical world, Napoleon is analogous to Alexander, and our counterpart to Caesar has not yet been born. In that comparison, we're talking about the meteoric figures that appear at the violent beginning and the violent conclusion of this three-century period. In Chinese history, see Fuchai of Wu and Qin Shi Huangdi. In Egyptian history, compare Yakbim Sekhaenre (I follow Beckerath in identifying him with Salitis) and the famous Hatshepsut, respectively. There are other such 'counterparts' in other High Cultures: meteoric figures at the start and the end of the chaos period.

But in the middle of that period (marked by turmoil of various sorts, as my descriptor 'chaos period' implies), you will also typically find one or several highly notable figures. During the relevant period, we often see the ascendancy of a young, new "upstart" power (such as Qin, or Rome, or America). The old, established powers eventually begin to resist this vehemently. And so we see Philippos V of Macedon challenging Rome, or Wu Qi assuming command in Chu.

And in our own case, this impulse was embodied by the the two German-led attempts to revert the centre of power back to Europe. I'd argue that they lost on the first try, and Hitler was just a doomed second go at it, but he's the more recognisable figure, so I name-dropped him here. As one of his more loony admirers described him: "a man against time".

That's exactly what he was. That's what Philippos V and Wu Qi were, too. Men struggling against the current of history, trying desperately to turn it around-- and ultimately failing. Some of those who endeavour such things can be admired. Others... not.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

And in our own case, this impulse was embodied by the the two German-led attempts to revert the centre of power back to Europe. I'd argue that they lost on the first try, and Hitler was just a doomed second try, but he's the more recognisable figure, so I name-dropped him here. As one of his more loony admirers described him: "a man against time".

If anything, Hitler and the Great German Sperg Out were what crippled Europe nearly beyond repair.

But point taken. Just having read up on all three men, and having to stand back in admiration of Napoleon and Caesar (they are some of my historical heroes!), one feels a touch queasy seeing Hitler in the same sentence. The rise to power of this bitter, mediocre nobody, and his avoiding all assassination attempts, strike me as some kind of cosmic practical joke.

 

[Cherico]

If anything, Hitler and the Great German Sperg Out were what crippled Europe nearly beyond repair.

But point taken. Just having read up on all three men, and having to stand back in admiration of Napoleon and Caesar (they are some of my historical heroes!), one feels a touch queasy seeing Hitler in the same sentence. The rise to power of this bitter, mediocre nobody, and his avoiding all assassination attempts, strike me as some kind of cosmic practical joke.

For every great story you always get dozens of shitty copies.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

For every great story you always get dozens of shitty copies.

And Hitler was the shit that wouldn't flush.

 

[Skallagrim]

If anything, Hitler and the Great German Sperg Out were what crippled Europe nearly beyond repair.

Oh, absolutely. He was possibly the least qualified man to land in the position he did. But even if he'd breathed in a bit more gas in the trenches and croaked right there, someone else would have filled his jack-boots later. "An armistice for twenty years", indeed!

(Naturally, we may also note that the efforts of the infinitely more competent Philippos V did Macedon and Greece in general absolutely no favours in the long run, either. The problem with going hard against the current is that if it fails -- and it almost always does -- you fucking drown.)

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Oh, absolutely. He was possibly the least qualified man to land in the position he did. But even if he'd breathed in a bit more gas in the trenches and croaked right there, someone else would have filled his jack-boots later. "An armistice for twenty years", indeed!

Somehow that's both better and worse. Imagine someone like Generalissimo Franco getting access to the German war machine. No Final Solution, but oh shit you've got someone who actually knows what he's doing in charge of Blitzkrieg.

(Naturally, we may also note that the efforts of the infinitely more competent Philippos V did Macedon and Greece in general absolutely no favours in the long run, either. The problem with going hard against the current is that if it fails -- and it almost always does -- you fucking drown.)

It depends to my mind. You can put the Universal Empire in a massive struggle like Macedon did, or you could be like the Germanic tribes, punch well above your weight, and the Empire concludes "fuck this, you're way too much trouble." You can't go against the tide, but swimming for the shore isn't out of the question.

 

[Zyobot]

Oh, absolutely. He was possibly the least qualified man to land in the position he did. But even if he'd breathed in a bit more gas in the trenches and croaked right there, someone else would have filled his jack-boots later. "An armistice for twenty years", indeed!

(Naturally, we may also note that the efforts of the infintely more competent Philippos V did Macedon and Greece in general absolutely no favours in the long run, either. The problem with going hard against the current is that if it fails -- and it almost always does -- you fucking drown.)

So… what are the odds Neo-Caesar is the exact same type of guy, in your estimation?

I know I’ve brought that up ad nauseam, but at the same time, an End of Modernity in which the current order collapses and civil wars start raging still produces the conditions for such men to seize power.

And while Hitler may have been unusually bad (even among the Major Leagues of Horrible Despots), the precedent he set for being way worse than Philippos V or Wu Qi makes me wonder whether Neo-Caesar could also prove way worse than his past counterparts ever were. Can certainly elaborate later, though to be honest, I feel the West’s uniquely “Faustian” character makes swings all the way in the malevolent and bloodthirsty direction (thereby producing a more “Hitlerian Caesar”) more likely, once the bread and circuses keeping us relatively passive and humane right now finally stop coming.