Kino's Journey Episode 5

[Rocketboy1313]

You know guys, you could just write a constitution with a percentage threshold on referendums. Usually 60% or more is necessary. Throw in things like a parliament or city council with a rotating minister/mayor/doge position. You could even do more complicated systems of oversight utilizing past decisions/decrees by the king as a guide post. Select a couple people who worked as barristers to argue the merits of each significant past ruling and decide on passing them into law or abolishing them based on the 60% threshold.

I think simple mala in se laws could be a useful bedrock for the law, a flat tax of 15% to fund a police fire and hospital arrangement, and some basic licensing laws for marriage, heavy vehicle operation, and zoning should keep things from getting out of hand.

I do have multiple graduate degrees in this stuff though, I am guessing the despot king did not have too many people with Poli-Sci specializations, they would have too quickly called for a Republic and been hanged.

[CrypticMirror]

You know guys, you could just write a constitution with a percentage threshold on referendums. Usually 60% or more is necessary. Throw in things like a parliament or city council with a rotating minister/mayor/doge position. You could even do more complicated systems of oversight utilizing past decisions/decrees by the king as a guide post. Select a couple people who worked as barristers to argue the merits of each significant past ruling and decide on passing them into law or abolishing them based on the 60% threshold.

I think simple mala in se laws could be a useful bedrock for the law, a flat tax of 15% to fund a police fire and hospital arrangement, and some basic licensing laws for marriage, heavy vehicle operation, and zoning should keep things from getting out of hand.

I do have multiple graduate degrees in this stuff though, I am guessing the despot king did not have too many people with Poli-Sci specializations, they would have too quickly called for a Republic and been hanged.

Yup. Minimum turnout requirements, and minimum voting thresholds would solve a lot of problems. Just on a simple majority you could end up with a situation where an angry and shortsighted impulse could crash a major world economy if a referendum was held like that. No sensible or sane world leader would risk that, of course, but I suppose even if they did then a cooler and smarter head would step in and find a way to set it aside. Maybe if a referendum was purely advisory rather than prescriptive.

[Rocketboy1313]

Seriously, this is less about the dangers of Democracy and more about the dangers of psychopaths running a government regardless of the methodology.

Maybe the king was a despot only because he kept people from randomly forming mobs and lynching each other in the streets.
"What a tyrant. He thinks we should treat minorities like people!"
"Yeah! How are we supposed to protect the culture of our ethnostate if we aren't allowed to purge and persecute those seditionist minorities?"
"I bet he is a secret member of the religion I hate."
"I bet he secretly hates members of the ethno majority."
"I bet he wasn't even born in this country."
"Yeah! Where is the decree of his birth!"
"Um, here."
"Fake Proclamations!"

[Sabre]

Oh hey, fellow polisci degree-holder.

All three parts of the tale feel strangely topical today. The first two in economics, where the prospect of automation and market hypercentralization taking jobs is causing worries of this exact sort: the potential for unprecedented productivity of goods and services, against the disappearance of production jobs to earn the money buy said goods and services.

The last in politics, and the long-known but still sobering realization that democracy and rule of law are necessary complements that will, at times, come into conflict with each other--sometimes disastrously so. I'm not so sure that it's about the danger of psychopaths per se running government, as it is the lack of agreed "rules of the games" and the subsequent escalation to violence--basically, Chuck's conclusion.