In a message dated 12/7/98 11:01:25 PM Eastern Standard Time,
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu writes:

<< 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.   >>
	Has anybody heard the old Russian comment on government?  Well, for those
that haven't, it's rather simple (as in very easy to grasp) and it covers a
lot: "Good government, good tzar.  Bad government, bad tzar."
	The advantage of democracy is that, if the democracy is a true democracy (in
other words, voting is 'one person, one vote' -- cover why later) it is easier
to get rid of bad government.  With a monarchy or a dictatorship, it will take
several years and quite a bit of deaths to get rid of a bad, insane, or just
plain incompetent monarch.

	Okay, first I'll cover the likelihood that a monarch will be insane or
otherwise shouldn't be ruling:
	Anybody here know about inbreeding?
	Oh good, I see some hands.  Now, anybody here ever heard of the Hapsburgs?
	...hmmm...see some hands here, too.  And I thought that our schools had
forgot that they had ever existed.
	Well, anyway, they first managed to get into power by marring power.  After a
while, they *were* power, and they wanted to keep it.  So, in a move that
makes Genma look quite bright, the head of the family decreed that family must
marry family...
	Three guesses what happened when a family that was, frankly, already inbred
decided to take it up a notch.

	Second, how a minority can rule in a democracy:
	Very simple.  Give all one vote per canadate/party.  Most people would spread
out their votes.  ("Let's see...I'll give John Doe here one vote, Mr. Smith
two votes, and forget about Mr. Brown.")  However, if 33.3% casts all their
votes for Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown will win even if nobody who wasn't a member of
that 33.3% voted for him.  (Of course, this is assuming that the other 66.6%
has no group of sufficient size that decides to cast their votes as a
block...)
	And, when the majority is not in charge and the minority that is in charge is
radical, the government will collapse.

	I think I've covered two very important subjects (the probability that a
monarch will not be capable and why many so-called democracies collapse) that
got passed over completely by the others who are debating this but I won't
mind if anyone decides that I missed something important or decides to fill
some in.


		--Ryo Hoshi, hoping that Tybalt-sama won't take offense to this post and
temp ban me, that we'll stop wondering why they keep putting monarchies in
charge of empires in anime & manga, and that we'll get back to writing and
reading fics...