Why isn't it a good idea? Whatever qualities or services performed by the original person probably didn't pass to the children
Why isn't it a good idea? Whatever qualities or services performed by the original person probably didn't pass to the children
> Whatever qualities or services performed by the original person probably didn't pass to the children
IMO the quality they have is not being career politicians or business people.
The same goes for the remaining bishops and other representatives of religious groups.
They are also not under the control of party whips as the house of commons is.
You could probably do better by appointing a bunch of random people instead, but what we have is better than an elected second chamber that would just replicate the Commons.
> Why isn't it a good idea?
I had the same question.
> Whatever qualities or services performed by the original person probably didn't pass to the children
Maybe if you subscribe to the hard times theory. There’s plenty of reason to suspect that certain aptitudes can be genetically heritable, and that doesn’t even address the issue of skills transferring by osmosis or deliberate instruction in the household.
The aptitude for having one of your daughters be the King's mistress may not be of particular value as a legislator.
That isn’t what is being discussed here. An inept man could conceivably have a sexually attractive daughter. From a meritocratic perspective, it would be a mistake for a king to install the inept man as an advisor simply to gain access to the man’s daughter.
What we are discussing, however, is the existence of a man who has been identified as possessing some competency, and his office passing to his offspring on his death, on the basis that his children may have inherited the competency genetically or via an informal education. Heredity isn’t as simple as that, but at the same time, it isn’t clear that competencies “probably” do not pass between parent and child.
> Heredity isn’t as simple as that, but at the same time, it isn’t clear that competencies “probably” do not pass between parent and child.
We have several thousand years of history recorded where people tried this and the failures vastly outweigh the successes.
> We have several thousand years of history recorded where people tried this and the failures vastly outweigh the successes.
Tried what?
Selecting children for leadership positions becausr of their parents.
The majority of all successful civilizations on earth have done this and even those that did not have the usual patrilineal inheritance we associate with European cultures usually had a mechanism for the inheritance of land, title, and status. The idea that this would have bad outcomes only really emerges during the Enlightenment Era, and it only became a mainstream cultural attitude in the last hundred years. Even today, after 60 some-odd years of civil rights legislation, meritocracy is more of an idea than a reality. It conflicts with a cultural imperative to build legacy through one’s children, and the institution of private property that facilitates building this legacy. You could theoretically do away with these norms as they are not culturally universal, but then you probably are looking at living in the paleolithic era (which will also not be meritocratic) or utopian ideologies like communism.
Well that is the question, isn't it. What qualities are passed on to their children? It is actually fairly common to see ideological continuity between parent and child (eg, most members of a religion had parents from that religion). So there is a case to be made that if you have a subgroup of society with unusually clear governing principles it makes sense to put them in change and have their children continue to be in charge because it has a chance of preserving the principles. In the optomistic case they can propagate for generations. That does actually appear to be what happens historically in successful countries where a hereditary or semi-hereditary ruling elite form with strong capabilities and shepherd everyone to success for a few generations before their abilities mean revert.
That being said it is comparatively a terrible way of doing things vs a more mathematically and psychologically sound system. Electing people really is the way to go, all these "stable" political systems are stable at being worse than just letting people vote for everything. As the saying goes, dead is stable. Stable isn't great if unstable means the capacity to rapidly improve.
I always chuckle (or squirm) when someone suggests “picking a random person to be the president” rather than our current broken campaigning system.
Far better than that option, would be for a random family to inherit that power forever, than for a different random family be chosen every 4 years. Because at least then the “royal” family has some accountability to govern for long-term success, lest their descendants be dragged into the street and hung by an unhappy mob with pitchforks.
> lest their descendants be dragged into the street and hung by an unhappy mob with pitchforks.
The idea that a monarchy sees itself as accountable to the people is hilarious. They have a record of ruling with an iron fist and killing opposition.
It’s hard to grasp in a post-Westphalian world but killing opposition and governing with accountability to the people were not always considered opposing ideas. Loyalty to the king was a two-way street, noblesse oblige, etc
So if we are after accountability, in what way is a monarchy superior to a democracy?
I wasn’t making that argument. I’m rather inclined to Jefferson’s ideas (himself a severe anti-monarchist) of promoting individual human dignity and capability; the critical role of moral virtue and education; “small republics” and self-government:
“ When people witnessed our first struggles in the war of independence, they little calculated, more than we did, on the rapid growth and prosperity of this country; on the practical demonstration it was about to exhibit, of the happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrants.”
Thanks for that quote. It almost sounds Libertarian.
Well, your way means there's a succession unpredictably every ~20 years instead of predictably every 4.
Whether that's a point for or against depends on whether you think policy thrashing every 4 years is a good idea.
The generational succession is VASTLY more predictable than a random one, considering the successor comes from the same house and has literally spent his entire life being groomed and prepared to rule.
We, humanity, have literally ALREADY TRIED THIS.
This isn't some kind of super hypothetical what-if scenario. We have historical records.
It went poorly.
We tried the random thing?
> The generational succession is VASTLY more predictable than a random one
Is it? Plenty of wars have been fought over succession.
Imagine a system whereby you could pole everyone and get a dud leader removed, rather than keep them until they die.
There have been a fair few elections with orderly transitions between governments.
What counterexamples do we have of the random method, to compare? I can’t think of when it’s been tried by a consenting people