State Funeral For The Queen

[mistermack]

oh, they are safely mothballed, I don't think any guillotine extent has been willfully destroyed since the Revolution.

but, you already had a revolution, it was even called Glorious, back in 1688 when you ousted your legitimate kings to call on those damn huns.

and why use nerve gas or the like when you can get polonium?

Kings have never been legitimate. We had an even better revolution in 1649, when they chopped off another Charlie's head with an axe.

If Oliver Cromwell had had a bit of foresight, he could easily have made it permanent, by fashioning a working government system that included a regular election and a clear succession system of democratic power. It was his lack of leadership that let the royals back in. And his puritan shite.

[Svartalf]

elected governments are shit, unless the electorate are themselves well educated and knowledgeable about what's good for the state, no modern democracy has been like that... maybe the Athenian democracy was, I'm not sure... even the Icelandic republic wasn't, the people were too centered on their personal problems and there was a massive problem with powerful people building clienteles and trying to advance themselves rather than maintain the state, that's why it ended with the Kings of Norway being called to help and turning the island into a colony.

[Rum]

Succession seems to be the key, whatever the system. Monarchies take care of that and so do democracies. Most other forms of government seem to result in turmoil as one leader is replaced following a highly disruptive struggle, by another. It almost brought Rome down several times.

[Svartalf]

Well, I do guess it was contributive to the gradual weakening of the Western Empire, I don't know what factors mattered in the decline of the Byzantine one... besides every faction around them, from the Turks to the Venitian nibbling them to death to get a little bit of power here or there... that and the continual arrival of wave after wave of Turkic invaders, Seljuks, Mongols, Timurids, Ottomans.... when Constantinople fell, its empire was a tiny shadow of what it had once been.

[mistermack]

A truly secret ballot makes a lot of difference. It takes the fear out of voting, which has been the problem historically.

[Svartalf]

it helps to an extent, but it also enables the morons to vote for whatever demagogue is striking their fancy, and that's how you get trumps into power.

[laklak]

Benign Reptilian Overlords are the answer.

[Svartalf]

benign reptilian overlords

contradiction in terms, does not compute, please correct input

[laklak]

The cows look at us as benign, right up to the slaughterhouse door.

[Rum]

Benign colonization works too in some places. Hong Kong was made a free port, taxes were virtually nil and the place boomed more than any other place on the planet other than a few spots in the Gulf between 1960 and 2000.

Sadly one can't rely on the colonists being consistent.

[mistermack]

it helps to an extent, but it also enables the morons to vote for whatever demagogue is striking their fancy, and that's how you get trumps into power.

It's Hilarys that enable Trumps.

[Svartalf]

Benign colonization works too in some places. Hong Kong was made a free port, taxes were virtually nil and the place boomed more than any other place on the planet other than a few spots in the Gulf between 1960 and 2000.

Sadly one can't rely on the colonists being consistent.

well, the dutch were most consistent, everything was geared to maximize profit, even those breakaway dutch, the Belgians did the same in their bit of the congo.

That shows the Dutch were the best at colonizing, like in everything else.