Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013

passive_fist

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

That question is kinda obvious. Thanks for pointing it out.

From what I remember from my History classes, monarchies worked pretty okay with an enlightened autocrat who made benefiting the state and the populace as his or her prime goal. But the problem there was that they didn't stay in power and they had no real way of making absolutely sure their children had the same values. All it takes to mess things up is one oldest son (or daughter if you do away with the Salic law) who cares more about their own lives than those of the population.

So I don't think technology level plays a decisive factor. It probably will improve things for the monarchy, since famines are a good way to start a revolution, but giving absolute power to people without a good fail-safe when you've got a bad ruler seems like a good way to rot a system from the inside.

I was in a Chinese university around Geoge W. Bush's second election and afterwards, which didn't make it easy to convince Chinese students that Democracy was a particularly good system for picking competent leaders (Chinese leaders are often graduates from prestigious universities like Tsinghua (where I was), which is more like MIT than like Yale, and they are generally very serious and competent, though not particularly telegenic). On the other hand, the Chinese system gets you people like Mao.

7jaime200012y

Bullets 5 and 6 of this MoreRight article point out some reactionary ideas to assuage your concerns. Like Mr. Anissimov notes, it is necessary not only to consider the harm such a failure mode might cause, but also to compare it to failure modes that are likely to arise in demotist systems. Reactionary thought also includes the idea that good systems of government align their incentives such that the well-being of their ruler coincides with that of their people, so a perfectly selfish son should not be nearly as much of a concern as an stupid or evil one. Picture an alternative Earth Prime where monarchies dominated the political landscape and democracies were seen as inconsequential political curiosities. In this Earth Prime, can you not imagine that textbooks and teachers might instead point out equally plausible-sounding problems with democracy, such as the fact that politicians face selection pressures to cut off their time horizons around the time of their next election? Can you not imagine pointing to small democracies in their world with failures analogous to failures of democracies in our world, and declaring "Q.E.D."? How sure are you that what you are taught is a complete and unbiased analysis of political history, carried out by sufficiently smart and rational people that massive errors of interpretation are unlikely, and transmitted to you with high fidelity?

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Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013

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Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013

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