Yeah it was all fun in games until a round of bad weather let you play the fun "guess which of my children I get to watch starve to death" game.
Don't assume our ancestors were so dumb they couldn't make rational choices of what lifestyles they preferred. Heck you can go join the Amish now and enjoy the full farmer life if you want. Godspeed to you.
"Our ancestors?" Your ancestors' Founding Fathers wouldn't like democracy in the least. They wanted a republic where only the rich and wealthy landed elite could vote. Those whose fortunes are tied to the land were the only ones allowed to vote in early America. Essentially, they just wanted an Anglo version of Venice. If you told the Founding Fathers that you're letting all men and women vote, they'll laugh in your face and say that maybe the dogs should vote next.
Basically, the Founding Fathers' reaction to democracy would be this:
Yeah. I know that. I'm saying you're being just like them and trying to play a definition game of everything good that you like as X while all the bad stuff you don't as not-X. Which leads you to making really dumb arguments like a government which functions and acts like a monarchy, isn't one because of "labels."
Monarchs own the country, so if the country goes to shit, they're to blame. Down to the point where they could die because things went to shit in their reign. The Roman Praetorians would neck you if things went to shit and you're the Emperor, the Byzantines would lynch you if you were the Emperor and things went to hell. In China, things going to hell means that you've lost the Mandate of Heaven, and people will no longer consider you the Emperor, while in a Medieval Monarchy, the nobles gather around and either depose you and elect a new king, or they make you sign something like the Magna Carta which limits your royal power. In a democracy, when things go to shit, people just toss blame at each other. The right blames the left, the left blames the right, all the while, the banks print our money into inflation while politicians and CEOs walk away with golden parachutes as veterans and citizens starve in the streets.
The last time a Republic had something like this, it was Rome at the tail end of the Republic era. And if things keep going like this, you can kiss your republic goodbye. God knows both sides would prefer it if their man stayed in power forever as Emperor. The Right would love it if Trump was Emperor, the Left would love it if Obama was Emperor. Neither side profits from Democracy-every four years, there's an election, and both sides are accused of doing hijinks, whether it be Russian interference or Dominion voting machines, and we see nowadays that neither side can accept the other winning. The Right wins, and the Left screams "Russian Collusion!" The Left wins, and the Right screams "Dominion voting machines!" Neither side is responsible enough for a democracy, and both sides would prefer it if their man stayed in power for life. That doesn't sound like a society that would value democracy, if you ask me.
Women, children, elderly. Not all of a population is viable as a fighting force. (have you like... been around people? at all?)
Yeah, and even if those groups outnumbered fit, able-bodied men by a factor of 5 to 1, you'd still have 1 million people, or 500K soldiers, if the sides were split evenly between the two.
Also, you can screw your logistics sending all the farmers out to go fight and leaving nobody to grow your food.
Take the scenario I just presented, and remove half the men because they're growing the food. You could still end up with a quarter million men on both sides.
lol sure dude - way to paper over a whoooooooole lot of nuance and inconvenient fact there.
Like all the other monarchies in history who have instituted drafts (*cough WW2 japan*)
WW2 Japan's monarchy was a puppet of the generals. They had more in common with a military republic like those in Latin America. The two times the Emperor got to speak, the first was when he proposed to make peace with the Americans prior to Pearl Harbor so they could expand in peace, that was shot down by the generals. The second time he spoke was when he wanted the country to surrender to avoid becoming a glass crater, and the generals almost knocked him off to stop that. If they actually listened to the guy, Japan would have never attacked Pearl Harbor.
And yet other monarchies all over the world did not come up with it. It's like an idea that developed over time and in a specific location.
So let's see here you've got...
1 monarchy which had it.
VS
100000000 (rough estimate) of monarchies which did not have it.
A specific location? Are you for real? Habeas Corpus wasn't an exclusively English concept, and neither was the Magna Carta. England at the time was ruled by a bunch of French-speaking Vikings called Normans, who brought over French culture and ideas to England and ruled the land in the same style the nobles of France did. Just as the nobles had power over the Capetian dynasty during its birth, so too did the Norman nobility had its stranglehold on the monarch of Britain. And in other parts of Europe, the ideas of trial by jury (which was innovated by the Inquisition bringing in "bon viri" or "good men" to judge a particular defendant) and limited powers of the crown was all over in Medieval European society, not just England. Kings from France, Aragon, Poland, and even the Holy Roman Empire had to share power with landed nobles and gentry who in many cases, elected the ruler from amongst them. The Aragonese nobility even openly told the monarch that if he doesn't protect their rights and privileges, then they won't recognize him as king at all:
"We, who are as good as you, swear to you, who are no better than us, to accept you as our king and sovereign, provided you observe all our liberties and laws, but if not, no."
Translation: You're only the king so long as you follow the law and protect our freedoms. The moment you stop doing that, we'll find some other schmuck to put the crown on.
Poland had the Golden Bull, which meant that nobles can curtail the power of the king. The Holy Roman Emperors had to share power with the Pope and the German nobles, and if they overstepped their boundaries, the Pope and the nobles will find some other jackass to crown. The Venetian Republic had a ruler for life called the Doge, who was elected by the city-state's most prominent citizens. Hugh Capet became king because the nobles voted him in. It was only after centuries of intrigue, war, and marriage did France and Spain emerge as absolute monarchies in the 1500s, while other parts of Europe had their own governments that had limits to the crown's power in the form of constitutions, laws, and ancient rights that the kings swore to uphold.
Only an idiotic, anglo-centric view of the world would state that only one place had Habeas Corpus, Magna Carta, or limits on kingly power. One that obviously didn't study how monarchs had to deal with nobles and other limits to their power. Or the fact that there were only two absolute monarchies on Europe by the time of the Renaissance, France and Spain. Britain wasn't alone in having a parliament that limited the king's power. Shit, the Holy Roman Emperors and Polish kings had more limits on their power, while the Italian City-states were outright self-governing republics during the Early Renaissance.
AND ODDITY? lolololololol The Aztecs were the fucking norm of history. What do you think the other tribes were doing in ancient Palestine that pissed God off so badly he sent in Joshua with the Jews to clean their clocks?
Notice how God didn't order the same for other monarchies like the Persians or the Egyptians. Also, the Romans eradicated the Carthaginians for child sacrifice, among other things.
Also, "norm of history"? I suppose Ancient China, Japan, the Hebrew monarchs, the Persians, the Egyptians, and all the Christian monarchies that lasted for centuries were also killing kids for their gods on a daily basis, eh?
Hell how do you think Christianity took over? Romans kept leaving their extra kids outside to die of exposure (a common practice since abortion wasn't quite a viable medical procedure) so the early Christians went around saving them (leading to the first orphanages). Guess what? Saving and raising a bunch of a population the wider society is throwing away is a great way to raise up your numbers until you win by sheer natural selection. It wouldn't have happened if it wasn't really popular in the monarchy of Rome.
The Romans who did such things were doing that because they were too poor to raise kids on their own. Whereas rich and well-to-do families, as well as commoner families that could raise girls, did. There's a reason why it took centuries for Christianity to take over, and that's because pagan families had sons and daughters that passed on their ways to the next generations.
Christianity took over because Constantine legalized it after he won a civil war against a pagan Emperor who disapproved of his Christian-loving ways. So you kind of have to thank a monarch for the fact that Christianity was legalized in the first place. God didn't use some republican general who wanted to restore the Roman Republic, He used an Emperor, and He continued using Emperors for generations. Without Constantine's victory, Rome would have kept on going pagan, and all those Christian ladies would just get executed for apostasy against the cult of the God-Emperor of Rome and his Olympian kin. Also, the Romans stopped leaving girls to die after the Christians took over, and yet you had a shit ton of Christian Emperors and Christian kings after them who all frowned on human sacrifice, down to the point where the Spanish genocided the Aztecs for that kind of behavior.
This isn't saying modern society doesn't have problems, but for America to be as bad as the Aztecs, we would have to be invading mexico and canada to take their citizens and drag them back to Washington DC to be killed alive on TV. You can gussy it up all you want with stretched to hell metaphors but we still have a bit further to go.
Er, no. We're worse than the Aztecs. At least the Aztecs sacrificed foreigners. We throw our own babies in the dumpster despite there being a massive welfare state that tosses money like crazy to poor people and single mothers. Our own flesh and blood, and we treat them as disposable meat bags.
And that's not even getting into China and North Korea.
China under the Ancient Emperors was a wealthy state that the west envied and wanted to trade with. Communist China was brought about by republican means, with the populace supporting them against the "corrupt" Guomindang. Red China came to power with popular support, and they had the people round up landowners, Tibetans, right-wingers, and any dissenting parties. Then they went off the deep end during the Cultural Revolution.
North Korea is a puppet state of China that is also a republic that went off the deep end.
Funny how republics also have a tendency to breed tyrannies that would make Philip II of Spain look like George Washington in comparison, eh?
I uh... I have news for you.
If you don't have factories? Kids still work. On farms. Again - see Amish.
The difference is, farm work wasn't as deadly as getting caught in a machine and losing your limbs. Or having the factory burn down and kill you. And you were given more than just enough to eat, you worked at home, lived with a roof over your head, with your own family. Factory workers would be lucky if they had their own apartment buildings. Most of them shared apartments with total strangers who shat on the floor and died without people noticing.
Child labor stops when a society gets rich enough that it can afford to not work its children - which always happens when the country gains a free market.
Tell that to the sweatshop countries that make the cheap goods for your free market, where little girls are worked for pennies on the dime making T-shirts about girl power.
Here's a little secret: Throughout history, humans everywhere lived on less than $3 a day. ALL of history - EVERYWHERE even where your beloved monarchs reigned.
There's no proof of that. In fact, most of history, people had a better quality of life than in the Industrial Revolution. They lived at home, worked at home, and in the case of the Medieval era, close to two-thirds of the year was vacation time. The worst they had to deal with was wars or famine, but barring those things, they lived far better than factory workers who would drop dead without the factory boss noticing. At least a feudal lord would arrange for his serfs' funerals.
You wanna know when that began to change? You wanna know when that increased?
Right there during that time which you have described with all the nuance and accuracy of a political cartoon.
Food production increased, but quality of life decreased, to the point where political dissent also shot up like a volcano. When back then, peasants only rebelled against cruel lords or kings once every few centuries, you suddenly had socialist parties and bomb-throwing anarchists springing up every Tuesday. And it's not like they had the freedom to speak either-they were mostly shot dead by the cops, by the Pinkertons, by the KKK, and whatever groups the business owners and their political puppets can scrape up.
The funny thing was that the mafias and the criminal bosses like Boss Tweed wound up being the good guys. They provided welfare for the poor at a time when most people could barely afford to eat, which explains why such corrupt figures like Mafia Dons get so much support and even admiration from members of the public. They were the closest thing to a responsible authority figure that era had.
Actually it started increasing around 1700s but I guess Bob isn't the only one who just expects utopia to be an immediate leap instead of a gradual climb.
Is that the same utopian nonsense that the libertarians preach? I suppose Stockholm Syndrome really is a thing on the right as well, if they thought the era of the robber barons was a golden age. The 1700s were mostly still an age of monarchies, where the big players were France, Spain, and Britain, and it wasn't because of any "fight for freedom" bullshit that things were getting better-things were just getting more stable and people were getting more prosperous under the British, French, and Spanish empires. The revolutions happened near the tail end of the 1700s, and they gave way to the 1800s, where so much suffering for the lower classes happened, that the 1900s ended up being full of idiots trying all sorts of crazy socialist ideals out. Because when people get mistreated so badly, they will sign on with just about anyone, even crazy godless idiots who will literally kill millions to get their workers' utopia.
LOL *objects to cliche depictions of serfs*
*completely buys into cliche depictions of turn of the century America*
People who read history books and tomes based on the lives of both would object to the cliche depictions of serfs while buying into the cliche depictions of 1800s America. Cliche depictions of serfs came from pop culture and years of brainwashing about how evil monarchs were. Cliche depictions of turn of the century America comes from personal testimonies and histories that happened not that long ago.
Aren't you a bundle of laughs. Gell-Mann Amnesia on steroids is what we got here.
Yeah those robber barons were so awful lowering the price of resources so more of the lower class could afford them. Things were so much better when only the kings and nobles could afford luxuries and the serfs were stuck in subsistence living. Oh yeah THAT was more fair. /sarc
They would lower prices on products to kill competition, then jack them up when the competition's dead. That's why people backed reform movements like Theodore Roosevelt and his progressives who targeted robber barons, while many joined socialist sects or became bomb-throwing anarchists just to strike at their bad working conditions. Also, many monarchies had prosperous times when some farmers grew rich and a new class of rich townsfolk was beginning to appear, so dismissing monarchies as all having people stuck in subsistence living is completely bullshit. It's clear that you never even opened a book on the Medieval era, let alone read history about the 1800s that wasn't written by some robber baron apologist. I suppose all those socialists and bomb-throwing anarchists just came out of nowhere, huh?
You really are getting to be about as dishonest as Bob. "Nuance for me but not for thee" eh?
If you think farming peasants had half a year off I know one things is for certain: You have never been on a farm. Or even seen a farm. Or even talked to anybody who has worked on a farm.
You clearly never studied Medieval history or culture, then. Two thirds of the year were Saints' holidays. Work during Saints' holidays were FORBIDDEN. As in, HERETICAL. You weren't just given 2/3rds of the year off, you were MANDATED to have it by the Church, which would literally burn you for heresy if you disobeyed.
But at least give the Church some credit; they were an honest tyranny. They were tyrannical assholes, and they didn't pretend otherwise. Not like modern democracies where people claim freedom, yet the political elite tell you that you're evil because you like big anime tits, or they try to get you fired for saying the wrong thing, or throw you in jail during the 1900s because you like to have some booze and the puritans want all the booze banned. At least when the Church pulled that shit, they gave you a clear line of what to do and what not to do to avoid getting in trouble, and none of that was forbidding you from liking boobs or booze.
Oh yes because if there's one thing we know, it's that the kings and nobles were never rich no sir...
/sarc
Oh no, they were rich. But here's the difference: they didn't pretend to be humble politicians who were "just like us". There was none of this self-effacing bullshit where politicians like Bernie Sanders would read from the Caudillo playbook and pretend to be one of the poor, yet own mansions like crazy and make money off their political career and donations. At least when a king or emperor was rich, they were honest about it and even splurged on it to show everyone. That way, the people of that country would be proud to say that their nation has great cultural sites like grand churches, palaces, great pieces of art, things that people across the world would pay to see. At least propaganda back then was the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel, not CalArts cartoons or some nonsensical crap drummed up by the public schools about how the Puritans were poor, persecuted minorities who sought freedom in the New World, when they were one of the most tyrannical regimes in Europe, making even the frightful Spanish Inquisition look like pot-smoking hippies.
I mean... seriously do you even listen to yourself any more? What welfare do you think people had, BEFORE 1800? Before 1700? There's so much ignorance in your post it's getting close to moviebob levels. Like apparently Boss Tweed is awful, but hey if you throw a crown on him, suddenly a saint! Never mind all the examples history is replete with of kings and rulers every bit as thuggish as Boss Tweed. If anything the only reason we don't know about more of them is that there are so few records of the more ancient past than recent history.
The Church? The monarchical state, which paid taxes to the Church? I mean, come on man, the English-speaking world even used to make fun of Latin cultures for being lazy fucks, and that was mostly because the poor had little incentive to improve themselves outside of basic farming duties because the Church welfare fed them from cradle to grave. It's what stagnated the economic growth of Spain, where the middle to upper classes of the bourgeois had to pay for the poor bums and farmers living off the fat of the Church's open-door policy for the poor.
Boss Tweed was actually a saint compared to the likes of politicians and corporate bosses who let people starve and die. So to compare monarchs to him would actually be a plus, since Boss Tweed actually cared for the poor while the thugs who controlled the "democracies" and the factories couldn't care less if a whole gaggle of Irish or Italian immigrants burned to death because their cheap machinery had an "accident" and caused several deaths.
I mean I'll agree with you that the cliche, two-dimensional depiction of ancient societies is not fair and overlooks a lot of nuance. But that also doesn't make your two-dimensional depiction of recent history any more correct. All you're doing is committing the same sin as those who bash monarchies - you're just doing it against a different target.
Well it's still a bad tactic.
It's not a bad tactic if it's the truth. Even modern democracies openly admit that the 1800s were a bad time for the common man. Only insane republican apologists and pie-in-the-sky libertarian utopians would defend the practices and living conditions of the 1800s, or the blood and carnage of the French Revolution, which killed more people in less than a decade than the Spanish Inquisition did in 300 years. When even your paragons of democracy admit that the Industrial Era was a bad time to be alive, then yes, it was a bad time to be alive.
Meanwhile, if you studied actual medieval histories like those of Regine Pernoud, Anthony Esolen, or read first-hand accounts by people in those ages, you'd find out that A) the Middle Ages and the Renaissance had a healthy, vibrant middle class made up of farmers and city-folk who were doing well, B) it wasn't all subsistence living the way Milton Friedman would make it out to be, and C) there were more ways than one for a monarch acting out of line to get limited or even deposed. Shit, if Biden was a Medieval king, his barons would have deposed him by now or forced him to sign something that would limit his powers immensely. Mistreating the troops, destroying the jobs of people who voted for you, politicians in democracies today get away with the kind of shit that got monarchs killed or deposed in the past.
Emperor Flavius Maurice, for instance, conquered the Persians and made them a Roman satellite state, while making deals with the Franks for an alliance, which secured the Roman Empire's borders and made its influence even stronger, but just because he mistreated his troops in the Danube, he and his entire family got murdered by the army. Alexander Severus tries to make peace with the Empire's enemies, the Germanic barbarians instead of continuing the war with them, and his Roman Legions overthrow his ass. King John pisses off his noble supporters, and the barons make him sign the Magna Carta which limited his power. Biden mistreats his troops, destroys the jobs of his electorate, and tries to make nice with China, a country with literal concentration camps. And he's still the President of the United States of America. If this was Ancient China, he'd have lost the Mandate of Heaven by now.
