On Mon, 7 Dec 1998, JOHN-PAUL LAGUATAN wrote:

     I was wondering if anyone could write a short fic or even possible
hypothesis as to how the Jurai empire, with it's fully functioning
monarchy with manifest powers could exist within the galactically advanced
civilization portrayed in the Tenchi Universe - particularly the T.V.
continuity.

According to the 101 Secrets book, Jurai evolved from a sort of Pirate's
guild which eventually started taking over worlds as an empire.  

     Is it democratic? What role do servants play? There is mention of
money and banks, does that mean an advanced society would maintain
capitalism as its fundamental ideology or do galactic citizens have a
system of social welfare?  Maybe I'm getting too political but as someone
on this mailing list pointed out earlier, it seems that a great deal of
Science Fiction settings are centered around a kind of monarchy. This
tends to make some works perhaps more fanciful than probable - especially
when dealing with a civilization that's supposedly more advanced. It would

This is only if one assumes that an advanced society must be democratic.
States like Nazi Germany tell another story (The Nazis only fell because
they over extended themselves; Nazism left to itself would have lasted a
long time).  Democracy is hideously inefficient because you gain office
based on popularity and the ability to tell people what they want rather
than competence, and even if you are competent, you still have to argue
things out with far too many other people.  It's not for nothing that
businesses are not democracies.

Capitalism and science don't dictate democracy; indeed, both have created
structures fully capable of being used for repression rather than greater
freedom.  A modern dictator can monitor your life far more effectively
than any medieval monarch.  

Democracy only flourishes in the right cultural context, and there's no
reason to necessarily believe that alien races with different mental
patterns would automatically develop that context.  It's the hardest form
of government to maintain and the easiest to collapse (see what happened
to the democracies of the twenties).  

So the idea of Space Monarchies doesn't surprise me at all; for some
purposes, monarchies work better than democracies.  The reason we
abandoned them wasn't that monarchy wasn't viable; it was that people who
didn't have power increasingly came to want it, and those who did, either
had to yield to demands or themselves came to see it as a good idea.  

And Monarchy and capitalism are quite compatible with each other, IF the
monarchy is willing to support such an economic system.  

For those who are interested, I've been working on a 'Galactic
Encyclopedia' for my Dance of Shiva/BMR/Etc. continuity; it's at
http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/GE/encfram.html.  I won't post the Jurai
article and spam everyone, but it details how I envision Jurai working.


John Walter Biles :  MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas         
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu       
rhea@tass.org              http://www.tass.org/~rhea/falcon.html
rhea@maison-otaku.net      http://www.maison-otaku.net/~rhea/

If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that
was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and if any change shall come and the
Marring be amended, Manwe and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it,
and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.
--Final Line of The Silmarillion