Is republic better than monarchy?

[teo123]

So, a few months ago, Aemilia and I had a debate on Discord about whether a republic is better than monarchy. Aemilia and me have a lot in common. Both of us are Latin language lovers, both of us struggle with a psychotic disorder and take Risperidone for it, and both of us are anarchists. Aemilia is an anarcho-syndicalist while I am an anarcho-capitalist. So we agree that anarchy would be better than both republic and monarchy. However, which is better, republic or a monarchy?

My arguments for monarchy being better than a republic are:
1. Short-term rulers in a republic do not tend to be aware of, or at least do not tend to care about, the long-term consequences of their policies. Monarchs would be on power their whole life, and their children will also be on power, so they would probably be aware of and care about long-term consequences of their policies.

Hmm... I am not sure that's [republicanism] a good idea. Short-term rulers in republic do not tend to care about long-term results of their policies.

2. Empirically, we see that life in monarchies is better than life in republics.

And yet many people here [in Croatia] would kill to be able to move to Norway [Norway being a monarchy, and Croatia being a republic].

Free speech seems to really be quite good in Nordic countries [which are mostly monarchies, rather than republics]. I mean, the Danish Study arguing that masks do not work probably could not be published in the midst of a pandemic in most countries [Denmark being a monarchy].

But Norway was one of the countries that did the best in COVID-19. It had no excess mortality in 2020 at all, if I am not mistaken. A lot better than Croatia, which had 17% excess mortality.
Sweden also did pretty well. It had only around 2% excess mortality, if I am not mistaken.
All Nordic countries did well [primarily because they were investing heavily in healthcare before the pandemic, unlike Croatia where hospitals were already overwhelmed before the pandemic].

Aemilia's argument against monarchy is that rulers in monarchy do not actually care about the results of their policies as long as they do not cause a violent revolution. Rulers in a republic have to care about something other than just a violent revolution.

And yet they are better than monarchs, who only care about their policies as far as it doesn’t get them beheaded. The president must also be afraid of a bad electoral turnout, not just a violent revolution (though, of course, that too)

I was wondering what you think.

[Red]

teo, you've been warned about name dropping people that we don't know. Unless it's some sort of notable person or someone we should be expected to know, don't reveal full names of people here for people to see. It's doxxing, and I don't think your friend would appreciate it.

If that isn't her real name but just a pseudonym, you oughta clarify that in your post.

I have a feeling that you're trying to bait us into another COVID debate (which we've had several times), so I'm not going to retread this. I'm really not interested in gettting roped into a debate with you at all, but I think you both should watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Your friend is right in that in a republic, there is incentive to keep the people happy since when people vote for their leaders, keeping people happy is what keeps the rulers/presidents in power.

[brimstoneSalad]

@Red I removed the apparent last name. Yes, Teo, don't do that. The only way it's OK is if it's a username and the person is on the forum, or it's a notable public figure. Like "I had a chat with Barack Obama yesterday and..."

Most modern monarchies are nothing like historical ones, and have constitutions and parliaments and such. They function like republics.

It's an interesting case that often the monarchy is a sort of fallback in case the government goes wrong. It was said that if Boris Johnson didn't step down that the Queen would dissolve the government or something and ask the parliament to form a new one, or however that works.

The fact of that may be a feature or a bug, depending on if you ever get an activist monarch in charge, but then monarchs may be more aware of the sword of Damocles that hangs over them. I think it's more of a question of the psychology of rulers than anything else. The fact that modern monarchs remain in cushy ceremonial roles as long as they don't rock the boat too much could make them different than corrupt autocrats who rise from republics based on cult of personality.

I think we'd have to chalk this up to an unknown in politics, since such monarchies are very few and pretty new.

[TelepathyConspiracy]

What a joke, you've been warned teo, they're going to micromanage your conversation and state it publicly instead of a private message....

Hey we should continue this debate somewhere else, add me on Facebook? @PoliticalVegan