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[Leafsnail]

I do sometimes wonder what would happen if they did get their little pet policies enforced and passed. I bet they'd go down the drain financially very, very quickly.

Well, it probably wouldn't impact them negatively financially except removing their main excuse for decreasing profit margins.

[jc6036]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQosI9jZjwQ

A general mix of creepy, sad, and WTF?!

[Flying Dice]

Or just turn Democratic, since that seems to be most asshole resistant when it comes to governments.

Less that they're resistant and more that you have to spend less time looking at each individual asshole, and each asshole has less time and power to use crapping all over your life. So it isn't that they're better, just that the shit gets spread to more people and it comes in a bunch of different colors and odors, and I've taken this much too far. Really, a benevolent dictatorship would probably be the most asshole-resistant form of government; if you've got a leader with the desire, ability, power, and knowledge to govern effectively in the service of the people, they can also perform the service of firing of all the little problem-people. Shame that'll never happen, anywhere, ever.

[Leafsnail]

It's because the kind of person who would try to take over a country and seize absolute power isn't the kind of person who would create a benevolent dictatorship.  Assuming that there even exists a kind of person who can create a benevolent dictatorship.

[Korbac]

I'm pretty sure you can have a benevolent dictatorship. Whether the dictator's son would be benevolent, however... 

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That's why you generally only see benevolent despots in monarchical systems. The power falls to the heir, and the heir could grow up to be any kind of person.

And monarchs with any kind of power are a rarity these days.

[ChairmanPoo]

Any dictatorship seems benevolent if you are not in the receiving end. 

[Flying Dice]

Yep, as a U.S. citizen, I can agree that Stalin was a kind, benevolent leader.


Is this not the image of a loving, generous man doting on his daughter?

[xdarkcodex]

I think he has a dark look in his eyes.

[Leafsnail]

That's why you generally only see benevolent despots in monarchical systems. The power falls to the heir, and the heir could grow up to be any kind of person.

And I guess theoretically you could try and teach them to be benevolent as they're growing up, although I'm not entirely sure that'd ever work.

I dunno, the issue would seem to be competence.  It's not enough to be a nice person - you could nevertheless be a horrible leader if you aren't good at it.  The only way to be a benevolent dictator is to effectively step back and not be a dictator.

[Angel Of Death]

Ok, forgive me for not reading a decent amount of the previous posts, but how'd Stalin end up in the WTF thread?

[xdarkcodex]

Ok, forgive me for not reading a decent amount of the previous posts, but how'd Stalin end up in the WTF thread?

I avoided all the reading as well so I have no idea either. 

[Flying Dice]

Ok, forgive me for not reading a decent amount of the previous posts, but how'd Stalin end up in the WTF thread?

Any dictatorship seems benevolent if you are not in the receiving end. 

That's how.



Anyhow, the whole problem is that the only people qualified to hold absolute power would never voluntarily take it. If you force them into it via royal duty, that can create resentment (not to mention the unfortunate results of heavy inbreeding quite possibly making it not worth it). So if you've got a system in place to ensure that monarchs always marry far from family lines, that you can easily and swiftly remove incompetents and the insane from the throne, that all monarchs will have multiple children, that secondary, tertiary, etc. heirs can be prevented from seeking to ursurp the primary heir, and have an educational system for royal children that emphasizes duty to the people and a benevolent rule, you might do okay, until some other bloke invades you.

[Korbac]

"Finally, we have created an uber productive, utopian society! What? What do you mean the neighbours want some of it?"

[FearfulJesuit]

Unfortunately, any real-life Reinhard von Lohengramm is probably going to suffer motive decay within a few years. You would need to be a man with a hell of a moral compass, have the heart of a scientist so as never to subvert research for political aims and accept the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and- and perhaps this is paramount- you would have to have next to no personal ambition.

In other words, the very best man to rule the world is a quiet, unassuming academic who's on the ethics committee of the biology department of some university. Here we run into Douglas Adams's paradox: that, as we have established, the people who should rule the world shouldn't want to rule the world, and conversely that nobody can rule the world who wants to, and either the academic will resign on day 1 or he was not the right man for the job and we'll have to fire him anyway.