And of course saying that hierarchies should be mitigated is far from unreal. It was the central message of the people who started America. They put a great deal of effort into checks and balances on power both at the federal level (between the 3 branches) and in having local, state, and federal governments, none of which have a hierarchical relationship. They put a strong emphasis on individual rights, which are counter-hierarchical as well. And let's not forget the freedoms of press and political speech, first among the Bill of Rights, which is very much a check on hierarchy.
I was under the impression that US federal law trumps state law. Is this not the case? And wouldn't that imply a hierarchical relationship?
From this system design, you can deduce that there _does_ exist a hierarchy in the theory of US government — the Constitution is the law of the land and all other actors and subsystems are subordinate to it. Modifying the Constitution requires significant effort at multiple levels of government usually including (by state law) extensive popular support and supermajorities of representatives.
Hierarchy is the rule of men, not of laws. So even if there were a hierarchical relationship between bodies of law, that doesn't require a hierarchical relationship between people.
In the US, federal law can supersede state law, and state law can supersede county and city law. It does have to be written that way of course. In practice, many laws are written to allow jurisdictions to self-regulate within broad limits. For example, in California it's legal to open a marijuana store. But localities get to decide whether it happens in their city. And it's technically illegal federally, but that's currently unenforced.
But the president has no direct authority over governors, and governors have no direct authority over mayors. However much Trump dislikes a variety of San Francisco policies, he cannot just order them changed. Instead he would have to persuade both the House and Senate to pass a law, and San Francisco could challenge that law in the courts.
How did that work out for them?
* The abolition of the English monarchy led to the brutal military dictatorship of Cromwell, which ended only with the reestablishment of the monarchy.
* The abolition of the French monarchy led to the military dictatorship of Napoleon, which ended in a cataclysmic continent-wide war and the reestablishment of the Bourbon monarchy.
* The abolition of the German and Austrian monarchies led to Hitler.
* The abolition of the Russian monarchy led to the Soviet Union and the mass murder of tens of millions.
* The abolition of the Chinese imperial monarchy led to a half-century-long civil war between Nationalist, Communist, and warlord factions, leading ultimately to a Communist dictatorship and the mass murder of tens of millions.
Hierarchical power is a human universal, and trying to abolish it without recognizing this fact only leads to its reemergence in even more violent forms within the space of a few years, decades if you're lucky.
Hirschman describes the reactionary narratives thus:
- According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy.
- The futility thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to "make a dent."
- Finally, the jeopardy thesis argues that the cost of the proposed change or reform is too high as it endangers some previous, precious accomplishment.
If we're going to talk about the abolition of monarchies, how is it that some of the freest and most prosperous countries in the world today are constitutional monarchies? Norway, Australia, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Japan, Luxembourg, and Spain all rank within the top 25 of countries by HDI as well as the top 25 of countries by Democracy Index. All of those countries are monarchies.
And you still haven't addressed the historical fact that the styles of radicalism that led to the abolition of monarchies in England, France, and Russia utterly failed to make things better and, in fact, largely made things worse. That doesn't mean it's futile or counterproductive to improve society, but merely removing the existing hierarchy and attempting to install something bespoke in its place has historically been a failing proposition, while reforming and improving an existing system has historically been much more successful.
If anything, they're a fine example of the kind of dealing realistically with our heritage I'm talking about. Actual monarchies have a track record I would generously call mixed, and perhaps more properly call horrific. But being half-evolved primates, humans seem to like having an officially recognized big monkey to rally around. So we keep the Queen of England around as something akin to a hood ornament on the car of that nation. It works, even if it's not particularly rational. But then, neither are we.
And now that monarchy has a lot less power than it did.
>* The abolition of the French monarchy led to the military dictatorship of Napoleon, which ended in a cataclysmic continent-wide war and the reestablishment of the Bourbon monarchy.
And now France is a roughly-democratic republic.
>* The abolition of the German and Austrian monarchies led to Hitler.
Same for Germany.
>* The abolition of the Russian monarchy led to the Soviet Union and the mass murder of tens of millions.
Not so much the same for Russia, but I'd take the Russian Federation or some parts of the USSR over the Tsarist dictatorship.
It's worth a strong mention that many countries which freed themselves of imperial control by the monarchy or republic of another country didn't end up in a disastrous state. The United States, Ireland and India are good examples.
>Hierarchical power is a human universal
Some kind may be, though it shouldn't be confused with monarchy. Hierarchy is not equal to a monarchy, and modern republics show that power can be distributed at least a little better, with success.
>its reemergence in even more violent forms within the space of a few years, decades if you're lucky.
And then the emergence of freedom, apparently - when most monarchy is abolished or minimized to the point of being powerless, we benefit. Arguably, the abolition of monarchy is not sufficient to do away with the unjust power of the state, but it is sufficient to do away with a certain unjustified power of man over another man.
As I explain elsewhere in this thread, one alternative of hierarchical authority is carefully limited, distributed power. There are historical examples of it working pretty well for hundreds of years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22415807
So it's as I said: we have to look at our natural heritage and decide which parts are good. Natural does not equal good.
I was more trying to say hierarchies are not always wrong, but I realize now that's not exactly what he was claiming. You're right they're often abused and should always be challenged. Nothing about nature is good or evil it just is.