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saberience ◴[] No.32769157[source]
It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all things pass in time, which makes my heart ache deeply.
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shadowgovt ◴[] No.32769977[source]
Royalty is interesting.

I think it's a very understandably human urge to hold up someone for emulation. The only odd thing about a noble class in that sense is that we decide the job of "role model and leader" should be hereditary.

But I think it's a very understandably human reaction to feel sorrow when someone who millions of people have invested so much energy into making the best person that can be is still mortal.

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nemo44x ◴[] No.32770300[source]
> The only odd thing about a noble class in that sense is that we decide the job of "role model and leader" should be hereditary.

I don't think it's odd at all, in fact it's pretty normal when you look at a long stretch of history. I'd wager that heredity based monarchy is probably the most common form of regime.

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shadowgovt ◴[] No.32770511[source]
Interesting! So I'd never really thought about this dimension before, but yes: at least among monarchies, hereditary monarchy is the most common form.

Whether it's the most common form of government is unclear. In modern times, democracy is most common. I think what was most common historically might be a complicated question and changes in terms of how it's asked (in terms of distinct governments, total territory controlled, or total population loyal to?).

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nemo44x ◴[] No.32770575[source]
Today yes. But until the 19th century, heredity based monarchy was the most common form of government historically.

Monarchy is still the most common form of organization as well. For instance, every corporation is a monarchy with a board that acts as the king/queens court and executives that represent the remaining nobility. Same with Military arrangements. It's probably a reason that these forms of organization tend to dominate others, like collectives, etc. Strong leadership from the top will always be optimal. Of course, weak leadership from the top is fatal.

I'll add:

Consider there are 3 forms of organization:

Rule by 1, Rule by some, and Rule by many. These can be broken into 6 implementations, 2 for each form. Monarch/Tyrant, Aristocracy/Oligarchy, Democracy/Populism. There's interesting relationships between these 6 and what some historians believe are natural transitions from 1 to another: Monarch->Aristocracy->Democracy->Oligarchy->Populist->Tyrant

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1. shadowgovt ◴[] No.32770631[source]
I like to expand the though "strong leadership from the top will always be optimal" with what it's optimizing for. It has benefits for speed and specificity; as long as the chains of communication are open and clear, what the group should be doing is easy to understand. That's much muddier in a distributed leadership system.

And, of course, that centralization carries good and ill. At different points in time, it can be detrimental to centralize authority so. But even countries like the United States, which generally pride themselves on decentralized democratic rule, have various emergency powers abilities for wartime consolidation of authority behind the Executive (and President specifically).

Apart from that note, I agree with everything here.