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Or to a slave in a Republic (whether that's the Confederacy, Rome or Athens).
by Ichthypresbyter 2y ago
Or to a slave in a Republic (whether that's the Confederacy, Rome or Athens).
- crowselect 2y agoWhat does that have to do with monarchy?
- Ichthypresbyter 2y agoThe same thing that serfdom has to do with monarchy. In other words, nothing.
- crowselect 2y agoMonarchy does not prevent enslavement. In fact, serfdom is a relatively common feature of monarchy. That’s what those two things have to do with each other.
- defrost 2y agoThe UK, under a monarch, abolished slavery and set the Royal Navy to blockade slave ships. Meanwhile, the USofA pre civil war under a President with no offical monarch (other than the Little King for a term arrangement) had extensive slave plantations.
- crowselect 2y agoThe UK abolished slavery by an act of parliament. A parliamentary monarchy is a historical quirk that does not need the monarchy to function.
- defrost 2y agoGood that you agree slavery was abolished by a country with a monarch ... you skipped over the second point; the country most associated with industrial scale slavery in the world had no monarch. It's a loose correlation you're making here, very much a "let's build this skyscraper with wet noodles instead of steel" approach.
- crowselect 2y agoSlavery was “abolished” in the UK while that same nation continued to traffic and profit from enslavement for quite a long time it’s “abolition”. Is your point that monarchy is good, or that slavery is associated with all forms of government?
- quink 2y agoThere’s no serfdom anywhere in the world currently. There are plenty of monarchies in the world. Meanwhile, currently, slavery is far more common in non-monarchies than monarchies. Your “relatively common” is literally zero in the current reality, unless there’s countries you’re aware of that the rest of us aren’t.
- crowselect 2y agoRelatively common in history.
- fc417fc802 2y agoIt's almost as though the global political landscape has varied significantly over these thousands of years and various societal features (including monarchy, serfdom, slavery, etc) aren't inherently linked to one another. My original point was that a monarchy permits both the best and worst possible outcomes because a single individual has maximal power to enact a unified vision. The observation could obviously apply in degrees to any dictatorship though, regardless of the official classification.
- crowselect 2y agoYeah, that’s the ol’ philosopher-king argument. I get it, but I don’t really buy into it. I.e. if the next monarch is a despot, their rule is a part of the previous monarch’s actions… so even a truly good king will inevitably harm the people under them.
- fc417fc802 2y agoYou don't actually seem like you're disagreeing with me though? I spoke only to the form of government as it pertains to end results, not to how we should attribute "points" to a given ruler or politician. Credit assignment is similarly difficult when it comes to voters and elected leaders. The end result is higher variance over a long period of time as a dictatorship switches between good and bad leadership. Meanwhile democracies consistently fail to execute on large scale visions. There's a reason corporate structure generally resembles a dictatorship, and that same reason is what eventually leads many of them to fail.