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Comment by crowselect | Hacker News Reader

As someone who deeply loves LOTR - if you try to apply the rules of LOTR to this world, you will make this world worse. This is true. Inheritance and monarchy does not make for a good government, and we know this.

But LOTR is about vibes not facts. Friendship, loyalty, hope, doing the right thing with what power you have, appreciating what is good and green and gentle in the world, etc.

> the more seriously you take Middle Earth, the dumber you get about Roundworld

The more seriously you take the rules of LOTR, yes. But you can take LOTR seriously without taking the rules seriously - by taking the vibes seriously.

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> Inheritance and monarchy does not make for a good government, and we know this.

Monarchy makes for some of both the best and worst governments on record. The problem isn't that you can't get good results, but rather the extreme variance.

Which can be mitigated by making the monarch powerless.

I’m in Australia and the Trump presidency will be the thing for the next century that we can point to and say that this is why we are not going to ever, ever, ever get rid of the king or queen, in favour of a local president. I suspect that Canada and other countries feel much the same.

I agree that Monarchs are great if they realise their long term legacy is best served by doing very little-to-nothing but still bringing the Prime Minister to account once a week (the A/UK/CA/NZ evolutionary model). However, even the ceremonial power is proving problematic in a world where the government of UK wants King of UK to have Trump for tea and the government of CA wants King of CA to spit in it.

> Monarchy makes for some of both the best and worst governments on record.

The best monarchs were the ones deposed by the revolutionaries, or the ones who abdicated the real power. There are 2 problems:

1. _Nobody_ should be ruling for more than 8-10 years.

2. You can't have a real monarchy without feudalism. And feudalism _always_ sucks.

lol. I lived under the same monarch, QEII, who has ruled for seventy years, and I assure you that I and my compatriots feel far, far, freer in practice and guided more well than any single American ought to feel currently.

The UK monarchs don't rule. They are for show only.

> or the ones who abdicated the real power

Missed that part in your parent reply originally, you're right of course, cheers :)

They don't have power, but they do have influence. Every Prime Minister has a weekly meeting with the... King (still hard to type that, isn't it?), an off-the-record discussion of what they're doing and thinking, with someone who (theoretically, at least) has the long view interests of the nation in mind. Most have said it's immensely valuable.

That apart, the "show" function is important, too. It separates the Head of State and Head of Government functions, which makes it easier to dismiss the Head of Government, without disturbing the stability of the State. The US system fuses the two, which (in my view) is part of what makes the Congress reluctant to follow through on impeachment. (To avoid recent examples: had Bill Clinton been (treated like) a British Prime Minister in 1998 he'd have lost a no-confidence vote among his own party, and Al Gore would have served out his term. I think that would have been a better outcome than what actually happened, and followed.)

LOTR+universe was meant to be a mythology for Western Europe. Purposefully impractical/fantastical.

King Arthur vibes. Royalty, wizards, magical objects, heros and villains, destiny, romance, fealty, etc.

But obviously dispensing swords from lakes is no sound system basis for government.

It's also notably light on the "prosaic" aspects. It just says that elves "dwelt" here and made a kingdom there. But as GRRM said: what was Aragorn's tax policy?

At least in the Once and Future King, the only real King Arthur story that I've read, I got the impression that Arthur pulling the sword from the stone was more of a metaphor of him "being ready" to be king more than just genealogy or anything like that.

When Arthur pulled the sword out of the stone, he was remembering all the stuff that Merlyn taught him about the different ways that animals run their societies and how it informed how he would lead if he were in charge.

That might be TH White's flavoring to it though.

The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (Howard Pyle) is in my mind the most "classic" King Arthur telling. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_King_Arthur_and_H...

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