For over 40 years now I’ve pointed out that for an ethical, morally-sound government, a monarchy is just as good as a republic because it doesn’t have enough power over ordinary people’s lives for the identity of the “rulers” to matter. In fact, for a proper, minimal government which protects the rights of individuals and enforces contracts, but stays out of most everything else, monarchy might actually be better because it consumes far fewer valuable resources and far less irreplaceable time. Also, one person is simply not capable of sticking his nose into as many other people’s business as a vaste horde of politicians is, thus better for liberty. The entire reason people care so much about how the rulers get chosen is that they are far too powerful; everyone wants to have a say in who gets to stick their noses into other peoples’ business and send unaccountable goon squads to inflict violence upon innocent people who simply want to be left alone. But if nobody gets to pry into affairs that are none of their business and unccountable goon squads are constitutionally prohibited, what damn difference does it make who gets to wear the Grand Exalted Poobah hat and spend his days dealing with tedious administrative paperwork?
Minarchy, Monarchy
January 19, 2024 by Maggie McNeill
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Boring but necessary legal stuff
Love your writing Maggie. The El Presidente would still need the power to declare wars on other nations/entities and that in itself will imply plenty of resources appropriated by the central gubmint. Generally I agree with you I’m for minimal gubmint too. All the Western countries have gone way overboard in expanding gubmints to just stupid size, take Khanada for instance. Please.
If it were just a monarch and small hierarchy of royals, that might be the case. Unfortunately, most monarchs today are just figureheads and the same intrusive administrative bureaucracies as exist here exist in those monarchies. The UK is a prime example, and is one more former democracy that has flushed itself down the toilet with over-governance and restrictions on peoples’ freedom. Many of its laws and its administrative state are even more intrusive than ours in the US.
There is no question that our government has grown beyond all reasonable limits and needs to be pared back. The more money that is poured into it the more inefficient and useless and intrusive it becomes. I’ve always been a proponent of Thoreau’s admonition (often, though incorrectly, attributed to Jefferson), “The government is best which governs least.”
Can we ever get back to that standard? As much as I’d like to think it’s possible, there are simply too many vested interests and too much money at stake to be hopeful we can ever go back to even a somewhat reduced government, much less limited government intrusion, into our lives.
No no no, I mean an ACTUAL constitutional monarchy- the monarch and whatever few deputies he can personally appoint – not a top-heavy constitution-abrogating bureaucratic republic festooned with an extra layer of parasites. I meant what I described in the essay, not something totally different wrongfully given its name.
You’re also assuming I mean some mythical backward-ratchet which does not and cannot exist; those with power only give up that power in one, very bloody, way. No, I meant this as something to think about for those founding a new government on the ashes of an old one or on some new world never yet cursed with the toxic fungus called “government”.