Democracy and Monarchism: The Unexpected Winner

Democracy is considered by nearly every Westerner as far better than monarchy. The idea that every person gets a say in political matters as opposed to the few sounds like a great idea to limit power.

I disagree.

First, let me clarify that when most people refer to democracy they are referring to republicanism. Both political frameworks are horrible, but I will be specifically writing about republicanism.

As stated before, the idea of having a whole population, or at least a considerable portion of them, being a check on the power of the political class sounds fantastic. No more ruthless monarchs who make a decree with no checks and forces his opinion down the rest’s throat. Unfortunately, republicanism encourages more grabs of power in small intervals of time.

There are two points that make my case, trade and time. A representative’s time in an office is generally limited by terms; a king’s rule is over his lifespan. A representative does not have the power to sale many, if not any, goods of the country, besides his own personal goods, for personal gain, and does not expect to possibly sell the ruled land or pass it on in the future to an heir.

This contrasts with a monarch because they can sale the country’s goods, lands, and pass on both as well. He will care more about preserving the land and goods of his domain as a result of being able to profit from the trade of either. Additionally, he has his whole life to sale and trade these goods; he is not rushed by any term limits.

The time constraints and inability to profit off the nation’s lands and goods incentivizes the representative to grab power and profit as fast as they can and as much as they can. Of course, public opinion might keep them from profiting as much as they would otherwise because if they had too little of public support, then they possibly could be physically ejected or not re-elected.

In short, a monarch has a better incentive to care about the country’s goods because they can profit directly from much of it and they have their whole life to possibly profit from it, but a representative cannot directly make profit off as much of the country’s wealth and they only have a short time to gather as much profit as they can.

I am in no way endorsing monarchism. It is a type of statism, and all statism causes havoc and relatively impoverishes the territory ruled. More importantly, all types of statism, including monarchism, are not justifiable.