The U.S. Goverment

[jorb]

You only come to the forums for this thread, jorb

No, but in terms of game development I'm entirely focused on Salem right now, and discussing ideas in C&I is useless as they will most likely not fit in our distant vision of a new H&H anyway. If there's something you'd like me to comment on feel free to point me to it.

[burgingham]

The difference then being that I take issue with a human system caused by human action(s) whereas you are complaining about a fact of life.

Excuse me, but that is nonsense. Capitalism is not a fact of life.

Of course not, but that's not what I claimed. Economic behavior is a fact of life. You said you regarded the economy as the root of all evil. Human beings need to consume in order to survive, and they need to produce in order to consume. That is what causes the economy to exist in the first place.

Ok, I should have said the current form of the economy. My bad.

I feel like this thread could use a new title...

[Endora]

I think your notions of Monarchy are a little romantic. This idea of the King being relegated to high politics - unconcerned and unmeddling in his subjects affairs is very much a western phenomena, and is probably due in part to the decline of kings and princes coinciding with the development of modern bureaucracy. I think your analysis of anarcho-capitalism is pretty spot on, it's a highly unstable system (Arvin's probably gonna chew my ass out in skype for this ), and I can see why you might then turn to monarchism. But really Monarchies can command intervene, govern, regulate every facet of human action to the degree a bureaucratic state can. Chinese emperors for example were only able to govern the huge swathes of lands they controlled through the use of highly developed systems of bureaucratic officials for a millennium and a half. Likewise a more modern example might be Saudi-Arabia, an absolute monarchy with a public education system and a social welfare system . Clearly you have a problem with your overlords not letting you pick and choose which services you'd like to enter into and which you'd not. In the case of a Monarchy, your overlords says that his testicles produce better sperm than any other mans testicles and therefore his kin is more competent than any other to govern. Anyone who has a problem with this must suck it up and deal with it. There is no option, liberty or freedom here, unless you'd be happy to fight a civil war every time you're unhappy with the status quo? No democracy isn't perfect, but it's a stable option that gives you some ounce of freedom to pick and choose. Unfortunately the problem with most freedoms begin with the existence of others, and these are the compromises we make as a member of society.

[longblacksocks]

NB. An apology in advance if anything has been covered already... I only came to this thread over the past few days and have not read all 38+ pages.

I too fail to see how a monarchy gives any freedom to the individual. All power into one individual who may or may not stuff his council with yes men (or indeed factions in court do that themselves) and decree anything he wishes. What checks and balances would you have? Where does the authority of this hypothetical line of rulers come from? God? If not God then where...?

Also, for a monarchy, you need an aristocracy. Where do they come from? And how would the monarch secure any loyalty from them now that landed wealth is largely gone... And why should these people be given any power based solely upon on accident of birth?

I am also intrigued about where the idea that monarchies are inherently stable comes from. Under the old European monarchies (not so sure about old HRE lands) peasant rebellions and general uprisings in reaction to levies were not really uncommon (monarchies still have taxation...). How exactly are the commoners in any way 'free'?

One thing I will say against our current system of democracy is that it promotes severly shortsighted thinking from the ruling classes. They need to secure thier positions with votes and therefore can only really 'see' one or two election cycles into the future. This inevitably means big long term problems are ignored, buried or given less attention that they need.

[ArvinJA]

peasant rebellions

Don't forget about the aristocratic rebellions that led to among other things the Magna Carta!

[Potjeh]

A man is free when he is allowed to act in accordance with his own volition and is not subjected to acts of physical compulsion. The fewer such acts the state commits the freer the society is.

What if my volition is to inflict violence on other men? What about theft? Conning? Where do you draw the line?

Also, how were monarchies better in this regard? How is taking from people to build Vasa any better than taking from people to help people in need? It's not like many kings were know for being fiscally conservative, and guess where the money they were burning through came from.

[Tonkyhonk]

to the point where most university graduates today cannot solve a simple trigonometry problem,

ouch

give a simple account of western history from Rome to Revolution or even know the names and order of the planets in the solar system,

ouch again

lots of "freedom" that we expected to appreciate have changed into "compulsories" for better lives in this material world, and we may blame that on the present systems, but i dont believe monarchies can solve it either.

been interested in Fishkin's Deliberative Poll if it is working well. have any of you experienced it?

@burg and Horatius, thanks for sharing your views on that (forgot to mention earlier)

[jorb]

A man is free when he is allowed to act in accordance with his own volition and is not subjected to acts of physical compulsion. The fewer such acts the state commits the freer the society is.

What if my volition is to inflict violence on other men? What about theft? Conning? Where do you draw the line?

In that case I wouldn't fault other men for defending themselves. The organization of such common defense is, indeed, the reason why governments are instituted in the first place. Fraud and the like I would consider instances of a particular form of theft, quite simply.

Also, how were monarchies better in this regard? How is taking from people to build Vasa any better than taking from people to help people in need? It's not like many kings were know for being fiscally conservative, and guess where the money they were burning through came from.

Ok, I'd like to point out again that a discussion like this kind of necessitates speaking about Monarchy... in a vaccuum, if you see what I mean. I don't think it's quite as simple as monarchy good and democracy bad. I would probably prefer Swiss democracy -- which I find quite interesting in that it seems to have been able to preserve much of its character of a local and non-anonymous institution, much like, say, a New England Town Hall meeting. In forms like that, preferably with rather restricted franchises, I believe that "democracy" (or perhaps rather voting) as a deliberative method can work quite OK. -- over the Chinese Emperor or even the Russian Emperor. Sweden used to be an elective Monarchy, and I don't necessarily think that that was a horrible order of things either. It is very reminiscent of a constitutional republic.

When I speak of Monarchy I generally think of the totality of the broader European political system as it appeared from, say, after 1400 and up until the first world war. Notice that I am not saying that there wasn't plenty of things to dislike in those days -- mercantilism, ffs -- but I am saying that the decentralized and largely monarchical character of the European continent as a whole was rather well suited to preserve liberty. Institutional competition between the hundreds of countries that then existed in Europe was of course a huge part of that. No one princely state in Germany could, for example, institute too oppressive tax rates, as that would simply have caused people to move away from his country. The case, for example, of Voltaire alternating between living in France, Switzerland and Prussia, depending a bit on where he had made himself impopular at the time.

The system was better in that it had a far lower degree of *petty tyranny*. If Louis XIV had tried to prohibit alcohol, or institute a tax rate of 60% of net income (not that that is very petty, but oh well), or mandate bicycle helmets, or ban smoking in bars, or regulate the precise minutes of what can and cannot be printed on a bottle of water for sale, he would have had a revolution on his hands. Only a state that is in some sense totalitarian can force through such tyrannical edicts. It is worth noticing that Lenin & the Bolsheviks very much considered themselves to be in some sense democrats, as did the national socialists. People in Monarchies understand that the interests of the King and their own interests tend to diverge, thus Monarchy inoculates the people with a very healthy distrust of government. Such distinctions become very blurred in a democracy, where people to a far larger extent come to identify with the state. Modern democratic parliaments wield a power over their subjects that would have made the most autocratic Monarch green with envy.

(As a complete side-note: Fascism in Italy was a far less oppressive regime than national socialism in Germany as it had to deal with both the Italian King and the Catholic Church. It is worth noticing how Hitler hated/was deeply suspicious of German nobility, the Hohenzollerns and other "reactionaries". It is also worth noticing how nigh on everyone implicated in the von Stauffenberg bomb-plot against Hitler came from precisely such backgrounds.)

Yes, not all Monarchs were fiscally conservative, but the system has several characteristics which serve to curtail excessive spending. Most notably, perhaps, the King doesn't have to run around the countryside promising people bread and circuses to be reelected. Also, when the King does spend money it is usually his own money he's spending -- his appanage if you will -- and not strictly speaking the money of the state.

Also, I'm not enough of a utopian to believe that one can get rid of taxation completely. What I am trying to identify is a political system which can minimize the intrusive effects that the state has. The state is by definition a monopoly on the use of force, and such extreme coercive power *necessitates* that the power be wielded in a very responsible manner or things will inevitably end in bloodshed. Modern democracies strike me as being completely irresponsible in their use of that power, and thus I seek to formulate an alternative. Coercive power should only be used when it is *absolutely* necessary, and regulating how people can and cannot advertise water, or what they should and should not read in school, or eat, or watch on television, is as unnecessary as it gets.

Monarchy seems to be the most natural sort of government, for whatever nature produces with more than one head is esteemed monstrous.

Frankly, I'm rather surprised that you -- with your rather open cynicisms about mankind in general -- can be so seemingly unconcerned with putting people in charge of a completely unrestricted violence machine without any sort of real checks on their use of it, and with all the institutional incentives in the world to use it for bad ends.

[Potjeh]

In that case I wouldn't fault other men for defending themselves. The organization of such common defense is, indeed, the reason why governments are instituted in the first place. Fraud and the like I would consider instances of a particular form of theft, quite simply.

And this is where the line gets blurry. I would classify exploitative deals as a form of fraud. You on the other hand seem to reject the very notion of exploitative deal, and think that *any* deal that both sides agree to is fair, no matter the difference in strength of negotiating positions of the involved parties (so the Versailles Treaty would be fair, as well as purchase of Native American lands for glass beads). Frankly, I don't see much room for discussion here, as our starting axioms are fundamentally different.

No one princely state in Germany could, for example, institute too oppressive tax rates, as that would simply have caused people to move away from his country.

In the age we're talking about serfdom was still very much alive and kicking. A defining characteristic of a serf is that he *can't* move away. Hell, not only did kings extort ridiculously high taxes in money from them, but also in blood (Ottoman empire's janissaries for example).

People in Monarchies understand that the interests of the King and their own interests tend to diverge, thus Monarchy inoculates the people with a very healthy distrust of government. Such distinctions become very blurred in a democracy, where people to a far larger extent come to identify with the state. Modern democratic parliaments wield a power over their subjects that would have made the most autocratic Monarch green with envy.

Uhm, didn't openly speaking against one's king usually lead to a very short haircut?

Also, when the King does spend money it is usually his own money he's spending -- his appanage if you will -- and not strictly speaking the money of the state.

The distinction between king's money and state's money was a bit blurry in the age of absolutist monarchies. Besides, how is it *his* money? Did he work for it? No, he extorted it from people to use on things that will bring them no benefit.

Coercive power should only be used when it is *absolutely* necessary, and regulating how people can and cannot advertise water

False advertising is a form of fraud, I thought we're both opposed to that.

or what they should and should not read in school

It's physically impossible to include *everything* in a curriculum.

or eat, or watch on television

Do governments actually control that?

[jorb]

Regulating concrete practices is simply poor law design, though. Laws should be general and negative, not specific and positive. The system brings nothing to the table except complexity that, again, a general system of tort law couldn't accomplish just as well. Regulating the concrete instances is what we have a judiciary for, and making those kinds of specific laws is very nearly the same as passing judgment in individual cases, which in turn is an abrogation of the separation of powers.

I've studied a fair amount of law. I understand perfectly well that there are plenty of imaginable cases where the distinction between a false, a fraudulent or a general statement can be hard to draw. The point being that making those distinctions isn't the task of a legislative body.