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Comment by vasco | Hacker News Reader

The fact that over 60% of people like to live in a country where birth defines a family's worth as higher than everyone else is mind boggling. I understand at a fundamental level the worship of rich people, since it gives everyone something to work towards, "billionaires aren't so bad because I may be one some day". I cannot understand supporting the monarchy. Are any of the 60% around that could explain their thoughts? I come from a country with over 100 years of republic so maybe I lack perspective.

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How would you say democracy has been performing lately in the English speaking world? Yes, the royal family is wealthy by birth but it's a tiny fraction of national wealth and the country gets something in return e.g. stability, some shared identity, soft power, tourism. I think British people mainly want to avoid another grubby scramble for political power by the unfit who then proceed to try and push ideology and fill their own pockets.

I'll take the royals, who have been raised to have sense of duty and know they need to project the impression of service, over president Blair/Boris any day.

But as a fellow Brit I there's parts of this I really can't understand. How could anyone not see the royals as filling their own pockets, given their ludicrous wealth?

As for the sense of duty and noblesse oblige, well, I think Prince Andrew explodes a lot of those refined notions. As far as I know, the royal family hasn't sanctioned him in any serious way.

By "fill their pockets" I mean actively engage in political corruption. The royal families relatively static wealth makes little difference in the grand scheme. The £85m figure from the crown estate mentioned in this article is 0.1% of government spending.

I didn't mean to suggest the royal family are unimpeachable beacons of virtue but that their primary motivations are different to politicians in a way that benefits the country.

> By "fill their pockets" I mean actively engage in political corruption.

But they do. For example, the Queen used her power to get an exemption from transparency laws with regards to her own personal wealth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-que..., and her son Charles did the same to ban his tenants from purchasing freeholds: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/09/prince-charl....

(replying to sibbling)

By political corruption I mean activities that are obviously detrimental at societal level. That sucks if you are Charles's Tennant and you want to by the freehold but I'm think more of funnelling contracts to your unqualified friends like the PPE scandals. Again I'm not suggesting the royals are perfect just that the alternative is worse.

One story I remember is some corruption is okay when there is enough to go around.

If I told you that the janitors responsible for changing the light bulbs didn’t wait for the lights to burn out and replaced light bulbs with a few weeks worth of life left (when replacing other light bulbs) and took them home to use them you probably wouldn’t bat an eye. It isn’t even worth spending time thinking about it in developed countries.

However, imagine you are in a developing country and corruption is rampant. I think you would justifiably be less charitable toward the janitor even though you know it is the same act but the pie is smaller so every bit counts.

The royals being corrupt in the UK (I hope it becomes just England and Wales within my lifetime, preferably with NI and Scotland withdrawing) is ok but the royals being corrupt in Swaziland is a big problem.

The monarchy is an old institution, a bit like an old historic city, cathedral or museum. The British are very distrustful of knocking down old things to replace them with new because once they're gone they cannot be brought back instead we just generally tweak/evolve them to suit the modern age without completely replacing them.

Would getting rid of the monarchy actually really change anything other than being change for the sake of change? Not really, so what would be the point?

Agree.

As a German, it's cringe-worthy to me that a German state-run media outlet runs such a piece. The Crown Enstate Entity isn't "mysterious" at all if you engage with a country's history. But I think this is the spirit of our relations going forward since the Brits decided to not go with the program.

Also: The gap in housing affordability isn't driven by a palace outside of London, or some sea-floor property. It is driven by city governments and their "Highwaymaning" via zoning and more.

I sincerley beleive that the monarchy are one of the best defenders against the rise of nationalism in Britain, not just in recent times but going back to the start of Elizabeth's reign.

There are plenty of examples throughout history of movements coming to power by adopting marches, uniforms, ralies, ceremonies, symbols etc and co-opting them to their cause and calling themselves 'true patriots'. But in Britain, that's almost exclusively the relm of the Royal Family, so it's effectively impossible for any political movement to offer any of that in any meaningful way, because it's not really possible to be 'more patriotic' than the actual royal family. So yeah, if you want to feel patriotic you wave a flag an watch the queen do something quite harmless, as opposed to march with a, potentially quite nasty, group of politicians.

The British Union of Fascists was quite happy to have uniformed marches, rallies, etc. until the Public Order Act 1936 banned political uniforms.

Could you tie that to the royal family?

Nothing in history is absolute - and the fact that the UK went to war against fascists shortly after that time probably also contributed to their demise, but actually yes I would consider their failure to gain a major foothold an example of this.

I’m not saying their are no marches and uniforms at all, even nowadays - but that they’re just going to have a bloody great struggle to try and upstage the ceremony and popularity of a Royal event - particularly if one of their claims is patriotism.

> in Britain

In Great Britain, as opposed to Northern Ireland...

As one of the 60%, its not about deity worship, but more about a sense of stability. Especially where the monarchy has effectively zero involvement in daily life. When looked at from a P&L basis the crown is pretty good value. Certainly compared to all the alternatives that have been tried.

I'm not in the 60% but I don't care enough to want to rock the boat either - an unelected figurehead head of state has some benefits.

If I could snap my fingers and remove the royal family at no cost I would but otherwise there are bigger problems we need to address first.

Indeed. Replace the House of Lords with something proportionally elected, for example.

Replace the commons with PR (STV on constituencies c. 6 times the size), replace the lords with people who have been in the commons for 20 years. Ensures fresh blood in the commons and removes the need to pander to the short term elections in the lords.

I think there's value in having an unelected second chamber, because the lords are freer to broach unpopular but important subjects. Nevertheless imo it would be much better to have them randomly chosen from society.

Under the monarchy the UK has had peaceful transitions of power for 360 years. The system we have works and so most people here are happy with it.

Alternatives like the US presidential republic system (currently at 0 years of peaceful transitions of power) don't seem more attractive to most people here.

> peaceful transitions of power for 360 years

This is a myth we like to tell ourselves, like the destroyed colonial records.

360 years ago is 1661. Shouldn't you count from at least 1688 "Glorious Revolution", when the current monarchy of Dutch ancestry invaded?

Or, if you mean the UK, count from the Act of Union 1707, before which the UK did not exist as such?

Or, counting "peaceful", from the end of the suppression of the Stuart monarchy in 1746?

Or, counting "UK" again, the distinctly non-peaceful transition of power of part of the UK to Dublin in 1922? The consequent violence of which only ended in 1998?

(especially if you're going to try to count the US Jan 6 incident as "not peaceful transition of power"! You have to overlook a lot of UK electoral violence if that's your threshold)

The monarchy have largely managed to steer clear of this in the 20th century, although there was a near miss when Edward married a fascist spy and had to be forced out. Undoubtedly the influence of Prince Philip whose family were indeed exiled from Greece at gunpoint made a difference. The Queen has been very cautious.

Compared to what went on on the Continent from around 1790 to 1950, the UK (and it's predecessors) has been an absolute beacon of stability and continued governance, even if there's been some issues.

How peaceful was the transition of power in Ireland?

Under the monarchy the UK has not been attacked by trolls for 360 years. If we get rid of the monarchy, are we doomed to be invaded by trolls?

If you can't measure a system of government by the relative peace and stability maintained while it is in place, what do you want to measure it by instead?

I'd attack the premise of the question. There is no single measure.

That doesn't make peace and stability a good measure. North Korea has managed a few decades of that, are they much better governed than the USA (for all its faults)?

Look closely at your measure, the UK has fought 2 Iraq wars, an afghan one, one in the Falklands, another in Yeman, Lebanon, Kosovo, Bosnia, Libya and Sierra Leone all on my short lifetime. So the claim UK Gov provides peace doesn't look great does it? Not compared to say Germany or France (republics).

The truth is, there is no strong justification for any one given form of government or for the House of Windsor.

You asked why we weren't being attacked by trolls and you want to attack the premise of my question?

I think the French have gone through five republics in less than the last 500 years for example if you want to compare to them. Also been occupied.

And I’m not sure comparing to Germany is a great idea…

Fundamentally the reason we have a monarchy is because most people like it. It reigns with consent. That's in extremely sharp contrast to the leaders of almost all other countries. 50% of Americans will by design always detest their president.

Hey, I just pointed out there is no hard evidence linking peaceful power transfer to the house of Windsor (or their previous equivalents). Plenty of monarchies fall apart, plenty of republics don't.

“ Imprisoning trolls: the rise of hate crimes in the UK and the increasing measures to tackle them ”

https://sociable.co/social-media/hatea-crimes-uk/

The UK-style constitutional monarchy can be argued as being in reality (rather than on paper) more democratic than the US-style republic:

Although the "I may be one some day" point is true, its also very unrealistic to the point of being near-impossible; and in the UK case we aren't talking about a small percentage of the population (as in, eg. the US) that has the dreamed of status that won't ever be attained, just a handful of individuals who have it. That's just the ultra-billionaires and celebrities and doesn't take into account the clear familial traditions of those who are elected to run the country and their senior staff (Kennedys, Bushes, Trumps etc.).

So its kind of comparing 10 people in the entire country (UK) who have a status that you know will never have vs several hundred (US) who have it; just the latter has a smaller-than-lottery (?) chance of the average Joe getting there compared to next-to-zero (revolution or massive constitutional change) of the former.

Having established that the former set are "different", we then unify and either venerate them or revolt against them according to personal preference.

When you then add in the regal mystique, charisma and authority granted to holders of office with actual power like, say, [fill in your bogeyman President here], having a separate unelected, symbolic but powerless national figurehead - who genuinely represents all of us - starts to look like a much more attractive - and democratic - proposition.

> The UK-style constitutional monarchy can be argued as being in reality (rather than on paper) more democratic than the US-style republic:

I always find it amusing that 7 of the top 10 democratic countries are constitutional monarchies:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#By_country

More generally, it seems that countries with ceremonial heads of state seem to score better.

> The fact that over 60% of people like to live in a country where birth defines a family's worth as higher than everyone else is mind boggling.

On a more uplifting note, polls indicate that this support has been slowly declining in recent years, particularly amongst the younger age groups: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/0...

I'm British and not part of that 60%, and am fervently hoping this support declines more rapidly when the current monarch dies in the next few years or so. I think a lot of the respect for the monarchy here is driven by a personal respect for the Queen. The rest being our deep-seated cultural problem of class deference.

My personal opinion is that in addition to abolishing the monarchy, the state should seize all of their private assets, and every member of the royal family should be exiled. This is probably an even less popular opinion, but I think it's the only proper way to rid Britain of this parasitic family.

> Are any of the 60% around that could explain their thoughts?

If you ask a monarchist, they'll usually lean on one of two arguments: the financial and the traditional.

The former is the flawed belief that the monarchy is a money-maker for the UK and that it would be financially imprudent to abolish them. Usually this argument is based on the Crown Estate providing income for the Treasury, and the implied assumption that if the monarchy were abolished then that income would be gone, even though the lands are still there and there's no reason why the new republican government couldn't just seize the Estate as part of this abolishment. There's also the tourism income conjecture, but plenty of ex-monarchies have a strong tourism sector, and presumably there'd be a Royal Family Museum for tourists to visit in the new republic.

The latter is driven by cultural inertia and tends to be what monarchists lean on when the financial argument has been demolished. The talking points usually revolve around who would be the next head of state then, how could Britain possibly function without the monarchy, and so on.

Perhaps some monarchists would disagree with this characterisation of their beliefs, but having argued with many of them, these are my observations.

> and there's no reason why the new republican government couldn't just seize the Estate as part of this abolishment.

once the precedent has been set, how about they seize your family's assets too?

This proposed seizure would be conditional on such assets belonging to the royal family.

So it would only be a precedent for any additional monarchical assets discovered after the initial transfer of ownership.

but... we want your stuff too

so why can't we have it?

An ancient and hereditary monarchy devoid of political power is the easiest way of providing an apolitical head of state.

In the terms of the UK, the monarchy is interwoven with the national identity; it is its link to its past in human form. Most British people don't despise everything that has been done in the name of their country, and hence see the pragmatism of the constitutional settlement the UK landed on as the acceptable adjustment required to maintain something resembling a democracy.

Is not that the 60% are in favor of the monarchy; it’s that the 60% are in favor of no change... they are conservative, and any significant change scares them.

A very important, stabilising segment of every society. Don't know what the optimal amount is, but clearly history teaches us that too many or too few of such conservatives can lead to disaster. The British system's incredible staying power (especially for a country of some note, and not a tiny state on the periphery of history) suggests theirs is something like an optimal percentage.

It could be just a coincidence that one of the most stable and longest democracies also has a monarchy.

Probably not. Monarchies usually aren't abolished spontaneously but due to revolutions and similar crisis. Since the UK hasn't had one in a while, there just was no opportunity to abolish the monarchy.

Also the UK has only been a democracy since 1928. A democracy without universal suffrage isn't one.

Yes, of course a democracy without universal suffrage can be one. In fact, the UK was more of a democracy before universal suffrage than many formally democratic states with universal suffrage today. This is because democracy is not solely, or even approximately defined by the mere act of casting a ballot.

Of course not, universal suffrage is merely a necessary condition for democracy. Many formally democratic states of today arguably aren't democratic either.

By the standards of its time, I'm sure the UK was already democratic back then. But not by today's.

That is such a great point about universal suffrage, a point completely overlooked far too often (by people including myself).

People who know they have no merit don't support a meritocracy. They like a nice hard hierarchy and a birth lottery. This is one of the unspoken truths of the British system.

>a country where birth defines a family's worth as higher than everyone else

Doesn't that apply to every country on earth? Even under communism I imagine the offspring of the dear leaders do better than the average.

It's not, nor it really is in the UK itself. Certainly those who are titled as "upper class" as accepted by their peers, are nearly purely hereditary, but these people don't hold the bulk of money even there. Most cash in UK is in the hands of foreigners (many naturalised), i.e. earned abroad - the proverbial Russian oligarchs and Arab oil sheikhs.

And there's no problem about the Crown Estate. Profits from it go to the government, apart from the small part which is spent to maintain the royal household (those amounts are not exorbitant by any measure and it is amusing that the royals are able to do with so little, take literally every "person from TV" and they spend more). Only way in which Crown Estate is different from government property is that if in any case monarchy is abolished in the future, it will be returned to the royal family - now private citizens - to become their "normal" private property.

Only bad part about UK (and European in general) culture in that sense is that it's incredibly hard to "make it" locally. Indeed, most rich people either inherited their wealth, or just brought it from abroad having made it there (usually in some dirty ways). But this is a logical consequence of welfare state: in Europe, we don't let anyone fall through the cracks, social assistance system is truly comprehensive and there is not so much disparity in incomes. If you don't have any losers, you don't have any winners either: there is no way to have the cake and eat it too.

> If you don't have any losers, you don't have any winners either: there is no way to have the cake and eat it too.

The economy is not this zero-sum, fortunately.

I haven't claimed it is, but see: if we make taxes high enough, especially progressive taxes, we avoid poverty, but we also prevent accumulation of wealth.

If we have employment laws that make it difficult to fire people, we have job security, but we also don't have any startups (how do you hire people there if it can go bust and you can't easily fire them, and why would anyone go to work somewhere where job isn't secure while elsewhere it is?).

There are many ways in which it works, and bottom line is: you either have crowds of bums, piss and shit and needles in the street but also ways to get rich from nothing if you work hard, as in the US, or you have neither, as in Europe. It's about choices. Letting people win big means making many more people lose.

Cynical approach is to do business and invest money in the US, and live in Europe. Which is actually what i recommend and what i do myself. With full understanding that i am living in a dead end place which is about to become sort of a living museum already in my lifetime, a human zoo.

During the US's best period of economic growth in the 50s I don't think they had the crowds of bums thing.

They had ghettos of squat houses/shacks with literally rivers of shit, rampant prostitution and addictions, and gang rule though. And yes, legally and physically segregated.

And also, back then there weren't really any startups.

And they had it only because rest of the world nearly killed one another with US being the only country that managed to sit the WWII out.

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