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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6415 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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The only contemporary counter example. Both the German Empire and Imperial Japan performed respectably in the late 18th and early 19th century, both economically and militarily.

Why is there only one good contemporary example? If it's such a great and effective strategy, we should see it more. It's like with evolution, we don't have to theorize about what works in nature, we can simply see what exists and know that must be pretty good by the very fact it exists and is succeeding.

There might be some imperial niches that work fine, but they do seem to be a niche.

Would have been interesting how far those centralized monarchies could have taken their people (in absentia of a catastrophic loss in a World War they started putting an end to the experiment)

Exactly, they lost. There was a real world test and they lost it. The empires flunked the exam. Maybe the allies didn't get an A+, but they did get a passing grade.

Why is there only one good contemporary example? If it's such a great and effective strategy, we should see it more. It's like with evolution, we don't have to theorize about what works in nature, we can simply see what exists and know that must be pretty good by the very fact it exists and is succeeding.

It's more complicated than that, right? By that logic, you could pick 1985 and argue that communism was better for Eastern Germany than centralized monarchy and market economy. Which is wrong, in my opinion - even a bumbling idiot as the King of Prussia would have done his people better than the commies ever did. Same for Belgian Congo - just because they don't have a King and his Governor anymore doesn't mean that... whatever the fuck it is they are doing there today is better for the Congolese than monarchy was (not saying that the monarchy was working out particularly well for the Congolese, either, but life was certainly better in the '50s than it is today). Just because you can destroy something doesn't mean what comes after is actually necessarily working better. And sure, eventually the commies failed in Eastern Germany and something more effective took over. But that doesn't just happen automatically.

Exactly, they lost. There was a real world test and they lost it.

I'm not a fan of single shot experiments. Wilhelm II was an idiot. Run the story again with Bismark as emperor, and western civilization might be speaking German for the next 400 years. And of course, democracy doesn't automatically select for the most effective leaders for the majority of voters. American voters elected and reelected G.W. Bush, which arguably was both unnecessary and a strict loss for the majority of Americans.

The empires flunked the exam.

Perhaps it's a little bit more complicated than this, given how many of the successful Western European states are literal monarchies?

In a technical sense sure, but it's hard to say countries like Sweden or Canada or the UK now are meaningfully a monarchy. Just like with the dictatorships, that the most successful examples are drastically different from the archetype is not a coincidence.

Just like with the dictatorships, that the most successful examples are drastically different from the archetype is not a coincidence.

Isn't this also true of democracies?

Not that I am a fan of dictatorships or monarchies. But there is a lot of bad governance out there to go around, and the fact that democracies eclipsed monarchies once doesn't, in my mind, assume that the question is settled forever for all time (my own sense is that democracies and monarchies decay in different ways and thus can feed into each other.) The fact that a lot of those democracies are still functioning monarchies in at least a nominal sense can definitely be interpreted as a L for monarchies...but I think it could also be taken as a W.

All of them are liberal constitutional democracies, however.

Does that make them not a monarchy? (Does a democracy that is not liberal become not a democracy?)

If the first goal of a state is to perpetuate itself, then perhaps monarchies are more successful than commonly believed.

The unreasonable success of constitutional monarchies is under-studied - probably because increasingly many of the people who might study it are either Americans or trying to get jobs in American universities, where it is taken for granted that the American system is superior because it produced America.

[FWIW, America is an outlier and parliamentary democracy has a much better track record than presidential democracy. I suspect the overperformance of constitutional monarchies is driven by them all being parliamentary]

Yeah I've been noodling on that a bit - I don't have a ranking of all countries best to worst, but it seems to me you could argue that constitutional monarchies outperform the average democracy, at least in certain respects, which would be interesting.

Germany performed respectably during the war and lost because it was facing multiple peer adversaries simultaneously+the British naval blockade.

There are also multiple contemporary examples; aside from Singapore there's Liechtenstein(the only country in the world to vote to go back to an absolute monarchy, outcomes very similar to neighboring Switzerland), the gulf monarchies(and if you insist on saying resource wealth is cheating, I will point out that the UAE does not make most of its money from oil), and partially Andorra(which is technically a Catholic theocracy, although in practice that mostly comes into play in setting its abortion policy). Monarchies generally are places to live that are pretty average for their neighborhood; life in Morocco is a lot like life in Algeria. They hate each other, but that's also pretty normal for the neighborhood. In the recent past there were a number of other examples, most notably South Korea.

Germany performed respectably during the war and lost because it was facing multiple peer adversaries simultaneously+the British naval blockade.

Ah so one notable disadvantage here is the tendency to make multiple enemies.

Monarchies generally are places to live that are pretty average for their neighborhood; life in Morocco is a lot like life in Algeria. They hate each other, but that's also pretty normal for the neighborhood. In the recent past there were a number of other examples, most notably South Korea.

So they're not particularly stand out compared to the other shit systems in their local area. Like aside from Singapore, would you want to live in Andorra or the Gulf monachies, or would you want Germany/France/Nordic Countries/US/Canada etc?

That the immigration issue is towards the West and not from the west is a pretty big sign of what people's preference is.

I think you are ignoring a large part of war competency if your definition excludes the lead up to wars such as the when, how, who, and why you are starting a war. A competent country does not start wars against multiple peers at opposite ends of its country at the same time. Same reason I wouldn't consider someone a great fighter if they keep picking fights with opponents that outnumber or outmatch them then get thrashed. Doesn't matter if they can throw a perfect right hook, they are not good fighters.

Germany performed respectably during the war and lost because it was facing multiple peer adversaries simultaneously+the British naval blockade.

Why did Germany end up facing multiple peer adversaries, including the world's greatest naval and industrial powers?

I don't think you can shrug it off as mere coincidence. The German approach to diplomacy in the decades leading up to WWI was aggressive and confrontational, they very much set this strategic situation up for themselves.

I think this is a more general pattern. I would, only slightly snarkily, say that the greatest weakness of countries ran entirely by warriors is that they have a persistent tendency to underestimate the threat posed by Anglosphere countries and start wars of choice in which we have no choice but to wipe the floor with them.

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