[OTU] "The Imperium rules *space*"... um, how?
- Thread starter EDG
- Start date
ninthcouncil
Mongoose
cbrunish said:When it comes down to it-Monarchy is the natural form of government.
Traveller doesn't agree. The median result (i.e. the most "natural") gained from the Population/Government generation process is 5, Feudal Technocracy; a form of government that is both nebulously defined and unknown in the real world. :wink:
ninthcouncil said:cbrunish said:When it comes down to it-Monarchy is the natural form of government.
Traveller doesn't agree. The median result (i.e. the most "natural") gained from the Population/Government generation process is 5, Feudal Technocracy; a form of government that is both nebulously defined and unknown in the real world. :wink:
Feudal Technocracy... might be similar to the Guilds of medieval european cities...
Majestic7 said:
I think so, that's pretty astute.
That's a difefrent case because as you point out later there is no imperium-wide culture other than among 'Travellers' and the vast majority of Imperial citizens have no particular allegiance to the imeprium. The Zhodani on the other hand appear to have a common culture across the Consulate.
Democracy is actual an extremely stable form of government, it's main weakness is that it relies on the population - the electorate - having a common culture and wanting to be ruled democraticaly. If you have a country where there are two or more significant sub-groups with different cultures and values then of course you have problems because maybe those groups don't want to have anything to do with each other, or want to oppress each other. In such cases authoritarianism may be the only way to maintain unity and controll at the cost of liberty.
Simon Hibbs
Hey didn't mean to get anybody riled up. I am a monarchist, thats it. Too me, its the most stable goverment in history (and I just happen to have a degree in both History and Political Science). But there is nothing stating that a monarchy doesn't have to have progessive thought. The Bill of Rights in the US Constitution was actually a "new" idea. Why not a monarchy with a bill of rights? That actually sounds similar to the idea of the 3I.
Just some thoughts.
Just some thoughts.
cbrunish said:
While I would agree that monarchies are quite long-lived, I really do not
consider them as being in any way stable.
Taking a look at the history of my own country and all the neighbouring
countries, it seems to me that the most stable country in Europe for ma-
ny centuries has been Switzerland, which is a democracy, and that in
many other cases the monarchies with elements of democracy (for ex-
ample in Scandinavia) have been far more stable than other monarchies.
And thinking of all the nasty wars of succession the European monarchies
have caused (and which all seem to have been fought right where I live
- you can hardly move a few miles without crossing a former battlefield
here), stability is almost the last thing that comes to my mind in connec-
tion with monarchies.
Believe me, there were many excellent reasons to abolish them or turn
them into figurehead institutions. And their inherent instability was one
of those reasons.
GhostWolf69
Mongoose
I somehow find it hard to take this thread seriously.
Can't we all go out, have a few beers and continue the debate at the pub? Usually that is when debates like this seem really important to me.
8)
/wolf
Can't we all go out, have a few beers and continue the debate at the pub? Usually that is when debates like this seem really important to me.
8)
/wolf
GhostWolf69
Mongoose
...got mine... 
/wolf
/wolf
cbrunish said:
Heh. I don't think anyone's "riled"
We just don't agree with ya.Me too, in that I support the institution of the monarchy in the UK. Not that our personal biases should get in the way of rationally discussing political theory
I think, then, that we may have a different definition of the word "stable". Certainly, up til the middle of the 20th Century, there were more monarchies than democracies, and monarchy was "the way things were done" across the face of most of the world. I'd hesitate to call them any more stable than the post-colonial crop of democracies, though. One King may have replaced another, but until the power of the Crown in the UK, for example was finally broken roughly around the time of the decapitation of Charlie-one, we had a civil war of some kind pretty much every century since the "core" nation of England crystallised around the turn of the second millenium. While the type of government was stable, the government it provided was anything but.
I think the succeeding centuries with no general civil war (I'd characterise the Irish Question as a colonial or post-colonial conflict, rather than as a civil war) show that democracy is more stable.
It's no coincidence that the rise of the democracy coincides with the Enlightenment, when people started seeking "justice for all", rather than accepting that the way their fathers had done it was inherently best.
Nor is there anything to say that it *must*. By definition, democracy is a more progressive form of government...
It does, indeed.
The trouble with a monarchy is threefold - there is the inevitable corruption, the high chance of incompetent rulers (heh, not that democracy would be immune to this) and the question of class society. In theory, monarchy might be a good way to govern just like a benevolent dictatorship is, with a leader that has been grown from early childhood to become a good head of state. In practice, problems tend to mount and grow on each other untill they detonate in a civil war between the nobility, a coup or a popular uprising, much like in dictatorships.
Let's take a look at the Roman Empire, which was not a typical monarchy in the European sense of the word, but close enough. When there were good..no, not "good" but competent and ruthless emperors like Augustus and the five good emperors, things went pretty fine. But when incompetent maniacs had the throne, things detoriarated fast. My personal opinion is that Commodus was one of the main reasons for the destruction of the Empire, as he actively encouraged corruption and sold many important government posts to his completely incompetent friends, as well as ruining Roman economy for decades to come. Charlemagne is another good example. He almost started Renaissance centuries "too early", but pretty much all was lost by the squabbling of his (grand)children, especially the cultural advances.
The third question, that of an inequal society, is of course relevant only if one finds that to be undesirable or unethical for some reason. That is what monarchies lead in to, unarguably - at their heart is the idea of rulership passed from parent to a child, which will inevitably form an idea of some bloodlines being more worthy than others. It doesn't matter if it is based on a divine will or something else in its arguments, the end result is a system of privileges and special rules. This in turn highly increases the chances of corruption and incompetency at high places. Of course, if we take this in to a science fiction setting, this special caste of people might be genetically engineered to really be superior to anyone else. They might even be completely different species than their subjects..but that takes the discussion to another direction.
One good question to ask to illustrate my point is - are there any kind of special ills and mistfortunes that are only possible in a monarchy or a similar authoritarian system? On the other hand, are there any special good, useful things that are only possible in a monarchy? (When I say "monarchy" in this post, I mean a real, authoritarian government like feudal or absolute monarchy or some variation of them, not a system where the monarch is a glorified symbol of the nation with little real power.) Just look at Saudi Arabia for a real, modern monarchy and how well it is working for everyone... Benevolent dictatorship is a nice idea, but not very likely to work to anyones advantage but the dictators. Unless of course you want to make ME the Absolute Emperor of the Universe, I promise everything will become just wonderful then.
What comes to progress and governments, elitistic governmental forms with rigid social structure tend to stagnate. The upper classes have what they want and need - they are all for status quo so that they can keep being the top dogs. If they want something, it is to hit someone else on the head with it. If there is no competition, there is no need for advancement. A bit like how the Chinese hit a technological and cultural plateau that lasted for a long time. The Roman Empire had the same problem towards the end of its reign. I think the nature of the Third Imperium as a class society where the nobility and the megacorporations have the power and the needs to defend their interests extremely efficiently is one good reason why technology has not been advancing significantly for some time. Nobles don't want anything that would upset social balance while the megacorporations want to keep the markets stable. Thus together with the trouble of a huge scale (thousands of member worlds!) political inertia and economical pressure are strongly against genuine innovation.
Let's take a look at the Roman Empire, which was not a typical monarchy in the European sense of the word, but close enough. When there were good..no, not "good" but competent and ruthless emperors like Augustus and the five good emperors, things went pretty fine. But when incompetent maniacs had the throne, things detoriarated fast. My personal opinion is that Commodus was one of the main reasons for the destruction of the Empire, as he actively encouraged corruption and sold many important government posts to his completely incompetent friends, as well as ruining Roman economy for decades to come. Charlemagne is another good example. He almost started Renaissance centuries "too early", but pretty much all was lost by the squabbling of his (grand)children, especially the cultural advances.
The third question, that of an inequal society, is of course relevant only if one finds that to be undesirable or unethical for some reason. That is what monarchies lead in to, unarguably - at their heart is the idea of rulership passed from parent to a child, which will inevitably form an idea of some bloodlines being more worthy than others. It doesn't matter if it is based on a divine will or something else in its arguments, the end result is a system of privileges and special rules. This in turn highly increases the chances of corruption and incompetency at high places. Of course, if we take this in to a science fiction setting, this special caste of people might be genetically engineered to really be superior to anyone else. They might even be completely different species than their subjects..but that takes the discussion to another direction.
One good question to ask to illustrate my point is - are there any kind of special ills and mistfortunes that are only possible in a monarchy or a similar authoritarian system? On the other hand, are there any special good, useful things that are only possible in a monarchy? (When I say "monarchy" in this post, I mean a real, authoritarian government like feudal or absolute monarchy or some variation of them, not a system where the monarch is a glorified symbol of the nation with little real power.) Just look at Saudi Arabia for a real, modern monarchy and how well it is working for everyone... Benevolent dictatorship is a nice idea, but not very likely to work to anyones advantage but the dictators. Unless of course you want to make ME the Absolute Emperor of the Universe, I promise everything will become just wonderful then.
What comes to progress and governments, elitistic governmental forms with rigid social structure tend to stagnate. The upper classes have what they want and need - they are all for status quo so that they can keep being the top dogs. If they want something, it is to hit someone else on the head with it. If there is no competition, there is no need for advancement. A bit like how the Chinese hit a technological and cultural plateau that lasted for a long time. The Roman Empire had the same problem towards the end of its reign. I think the nature of the Third Imperium as a class society where the nobility and the megacorporations have the power and the needs to defend their interests extremely efficiently is one good reason why technology has not been advancing significantly for some time. Nobles don't want anything that would upset social balance while the megacorporations want to keep the markets stable. Thus together with the trouble of a huge scale (thousands of member worlds!) political inertia and economical pressure are strongly against genuine innovation.
GhostWolf69
Mongoose
EDG said:"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill, 11/11/47
Yeah but that man also prefered a good ciggar over a woman... so great men can say some realy daft things too.
/wolf
Twi'lekk_Den-keeper
Mongoose
You can chat about theories and what sounds nice in terms of government, but you have to remember two things: one, Marxism and all forms of it suck, two, in practice and throughout history, the best working government is a republic- not a democracy. The US, as many people fail to see, is NOT a democracy, not in the definition that "every one gets to have their say." The british government is like wise, NOT a complete democracy, and Winston Churchil is referring to britan's government, not the generic democracy. Athens is the only example in history of a complete democracy that worked for a time, but that is because Athens had a population of a couple hundred people.
GhostWolf69 said:
Actually, I think the recent elections in the US pretty much proved his point. Democracy fails completely when the vote is pretty much a 50/50 split. That way, the maximum possible number of people under the system are pissed off with the result - you don't have a small minority of people grumbling then, you have half the nation complaining.
Twi'lekk_Den-keeper said:
Athens was not "a complete democracy". Women had no vote (not to even mention slaves) and men had to be born from parents that were both from Athens. There were as well material restrictions, that is, wealth limits for voting. Situation fluxuated though - at some point only one original parent was enough and so worth. Towards end times of Athens as an independent state the definition of a citizen allowed to vote became so tight that they were a small minority of the population. Even at the high era of the system, at smaller decisions only 200 men were required to vote on something. (6000 was minimum at important matters of state) Majority of legislation was done by a parliament - the council of 500. 50 men were selected with lottery from 10 major local tribes each year to serve on the council. Each man could only serve twice during a lifetime.
Various "barbarian" tribes are better examples of democracy in the ancient times. During Roman imperial era, various Roman historians and poets actually admired German tribes for their democratic gatherings where even women were allowed to speak, even if they had no vote.
There are several examples of working, direct democracies during our time. Switzerland is good example. Anyone can just go door to door to collect a certain amount of names for a law proposal or referendum. If that limit is met and after inspection found valid, that will happen. Technological advances, especially electric communication, make light of the tyranny of distance, making even more direct democracy a realistic possibility. All that is lacking is the political will to make it happen. There is the matter of scale to consider, but it could work well on regional level even in huge countries with a lot of people. Established parties are not simply too keen to accept changes that might reduce their power.
The currently dominant form of democracy is parliamentary one, where people choose representatives to vote with their voice. So yes, by definition through law, every adult US citizen has a say by voting who gets to represent them. Whether this works or not in a such way is another things entirely. It is open to debate if two party systems like in Britain and USA are less democratic than systems with many political parties. I won't waste board space by blabbering about the arguments for and against both. Mentioning Marxism as a separate political motivation is pretty irrelevant, as in action is has differed little from all other authoritarian regimes intent on oppressing their own citizens. Only the execuses and terms in propaganda vary.
GhostWolf69 said:EDG said:"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill, 11/11/47
Yeah but that man also prefered a good ciggar over a woman... so great men can say some realy daft things too.
Dunno. At least cigars don't whine about wanting new fur coat!
After all, why do males ... especially married ones ... spend so much time in the pub :wink:
Phil
