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> That’s why authoritarian governments are never stable long term. Authoritarian governments counter this issue with hereditary monarchy. The current leader ca

> That’s why authoritarian governments are never stable long term. Authoritarian governments counter this issue with hereditary monarchy. The current leader can impart their knowledge and mindset on their next of kin, and having a clear successor removes power struggles and provides predictability. Even if the successor has different views this is often known far in advance, which allows people to take this into consideration. It's by no means perfect and has lots of opportunities to go wrong, but over the last 1000 years or so hereditary monarchies have a much better track record of stability than democracies.

vt85 2y ago
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dragontamer 2y ago
There's this little war called "World War 1" which resulted in the absolute collapse of the final world-power level monarchies. As it turns out: the problems of monarchies is innate. Hereditary Monarchies lead to a separation into "Noble" vs "Peasant" classes, where Nobles have a genetic line to the throne. The Nobles believe themselves to be superior and start putting themselves into various sections of government, when in actuality many Peasants are actually better than the Nobles. So when it comes to War (the only time societies can directly compare against each other), the side that has a bigger recruitment pool (ie: Peasant commanders, aka Napoleon's secret sauce), tends to win. This is also true of sciences, research, production, etc. etc. Every part of society, there are likely peasant leaders who are best at the job. Peasants win not necessarily because Peasants are smarter, but because peasants are at "sometimes" smarter, and this "sometimes" happens in a large enough degree that anyone who cuts off their leadership pool into "Family members of the Monarch only" innately hampers their abilities to lead over time. ----------- Now colonial rule by far-away foreign powers is clearly a bad situation as well (as Britain's control over its former colonies can likely attest). But that's not "Democracy" either. Hereditary monarchy may be an improvement over UAE's position (ie: better than foreign colonialism), but lets not get ahead of ourselves. The world gave up on monarchies over a century ago for a good damn reason.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  I absolutely agree that monarchies have a lot of downsides. Democracies not only provide a bigger pool of potential talent but also align incentives between population and government much better. This seems to also be reflected in economic growth, where democracies typically perform much better. Still, I think it's important to acknowledge that authoritarian governments have seen a lot of refinement over thousands of years, while democracies are historically the exception and only became popular 300 years ago. Expecting authoritarian governments to just implode without external influence seems unfounded.
mistrial9 2y ago
accelerated world change has made examples from 1000 years ago, less relevant

vt85 2y ago

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dragontamer 2y ago

There's this little war called "World War 1" which resulted in the absolute collapse of the final world-power level monarchies. As it turns out: the problems of monarchies is innate. Hereditary Monarchies lead to a separation into "Noble" vs "Peasant" classes, where Nobles have a genetic line to the throne. The Nobles believe themselves to be superior and start putting themselves into various sections of government, when in actuality many Peasants are actually better than the Nobles. So when it comes to War (the only time societies can directly compare against each other), the side that has a bigger recruitment pool (ie: Peasant commanders, aka Napoleon's secret sauce), tends to win. This is also true of sciences, research, production, etc. etc. Every part of society, there are likely peasant leaders who are best at the job. Peasants win not necessarily because Peasants are smarter, but because peasants are at "sometimes" smarter, and this "sometimes" happens in a large enough degree that anyone who cuts off their leadership pool into "Family members of the Monarch only" innately hampers their abilities to lead over time. ----------- Now colonial rule by far-away foreign powers is clearly a bad situation as well (as Britain's control over its former colonies can likely attest). But that's not "Democracy" either. Hereditary monarchy may be an improvement over UAE's position (ie: better than foreign colonialism), but lets not get ahead of ourselves. The world gave up on monarchies over a century ago for a good damn reason.

wongarsu 2y ago
I absolutely agree that monarchies have a lot of downsides. Democracies not only provide a bigger pool of potential talent but also align incentives between population and government much better. This seems to also be reflected in economic growth, where democracies typically perform much better. Still, I think it's important to acknowledge that authoritarian governments have seen a lot of refinement over thousands of years, while democracies are historically the exception and only became popular 300 years ago. Expecting authoritarian governments to just implode without external influence seems unfounded.

mistrial9 2y ago

accelerated world change has made examples from 1000 years ago, less relevant