Tomorrow Curtis Yarvin and Richard Hanania will debate each other on the topic “Monarchy vs. Democracy”. I want to make use of the opportunity to share some of my thoughts on the topic, which I believe to be relevant and interesting. Like many young libertarian-minded men, I took Yarvin’s Red-Pill, some 7 years ago. Unlike most of these other men however, I walked the talk and left home to work for a foreign monarchy. My experiences disillusioned me – while I am still sympathetic to my host country and want them to succeed, I have become far more aware of the pitfalls of real existing monarchism and would now oppose my native country becoming one. Here are 3 of my observations:
1. In monarchies, everyone lies.
There is no incentive to tell the truth. His Royal Highness wants good news, he wants to know his magnificent vison is crystallizing. His minister will give him good news, you will give the minister good news. Simple as that. There is no employee protection to fall back on, no complaint procedures. You will gain no prestige by shaking the tree. Even if HRH would, in principle, be recipient to critical and honest feedback, the risk-averse option will always be to lay low. Beyond the civil service, this logic applies to external consultants (don’t bite the hand that feeds you) and the media. To give you some semi-concrete examples (don’t want to go to jail, sorry):
a. Major cities which reach pollution levels of 3 times Delhi, but no one protects themselves because no one knows – the newspapers only write happy news!
b. Infrastructure projects that account with lower inflation rates for costs than for revenues, thereby massively blowing up long-term profits.
c. Not only fake GDP figures (we all know about that), but even a fake census
d. Massively oversized infrastructure everywhere as the result of overestimated projections, making entire cities eerie and weird
The idea that monarchies are somehow more incentivized to act upon the truth, strikes me now as absurd. I’ve also worked for Western governments, and while there is a lot of ideology, bullshit, and inefficiency there, there are less blatant lies. The one redeeming factor in a monarchy is that at least everyone on the ground knows it’s all smoke and mirrors, which is refreshing compared to wokeness, which runs on true believers. However, this sober nihilism has also its downsides, which brings me to my next point.
2. Court culture is bad for your character and intelligence
A historian friend of mine once told me that 18th century republicans portrayed monarchies as effeminate and weak. This still holds true. Working for the Royal Court, I encountered a certain type of human that I had never met before. Dishonest, manipulative, lazy, arrogant, snitchy, cowardly, and cruel. This is widely portrayed in literature, fantasy, and kids’ movies: Iago, Grima Wormtongue, Jafar. I believe it is the result of a lack of social dynamism. In a static and predictable social environment, it is easy to map social interactions, and therefore easy to keep up appearances and prevent lies from coming true. Furthermore, if hierarchies are set in stone, bootlicking is always the dominant strategy. It are the nebulous and ever-shifting hierarchies of liberal society that make “niceness”, “honesty”, “friendliness” and “integrity” feasible.
At some point, I found that I myself had adapted to this. Not only is this sad, for concern for the truth brings depth to life, it’s also intellectually stultifying. You lose the habit of critically assessing documents, caring solely for their messaging and superficial convincingness. This might be the cause of the intellectual shallowness of most monarchies. Despite the so-called “soft totalitarianism” and “shrinking Overton window” of liberal democracies, most if not all monarchist thinkers live in free countries. Yarvin can fill debate venues in the U.S., not in the Gulf. This has always been the case: Yarvin’s favorite reactionary thinker, Thomas Carlyle, lived in liberal England, the greatest critics of democracy in ancient Greece were Athenians, not Spartans.
3. Civil society is good, actually
Yarvin argues that democracy leads to “priestly oligarchy” by leaking power. This power gets absorbed by universities, journalists, NGOs, cultural institutes, a.k.a. “The Cathedral”. These institutes yield power, without being formally part of the government, without accountability. Power without accountability leads to overreach and bad results. I am not denying that this effect exists, but it should be compared to its alternatives. “The Cathedral”, or as most would call it, “civil society”, creates valuable social goods in this process of power leakage. Even apart from arguments about “checks and balances” or a presumed intrinsic goodness that comes from civil participation, its main function is the creation and dissemination of information. This information is biased, sure. But it is often a genuine attempt at saying true and important things, out of private initiative, at no or little cost to the government. The authoritarian alternative to this biased information machine is not a perfect information machine, but no information machine at all. I often had to guide decision-makers with no materials to work with. No think tank reports, no public data-bases, no scientific reviews, no NGO-drafted policy proposals, nothing. Authoritarian governments are not only largely blind to the realities of their own country - to know anything at all, they are reliant on their ministries (who lie), their intelligence agencies (who lie, and are a political threat) and external consultants (who lie and are costly) - they also have little analytical tools, solutions and evaluation mechanisms at hand. Civil society offers these, continuously, spontaneously, affordably. I used to joke that by giving my opinion in a democratic state, I was providing consultancy services free of charge. Now I realize I was doing precisely that, and so are millions of others, often in relatively functional institutions, creating billions worth of useful data and analysis.
I understand that this might be less convincing to most than a public-data driven, outside-in perspective. But perhaps it can be enriching to understand “how a monarchy feels like from the inside”. Alas, those were my two cents.
Yarvin's vision of "monarchy" is more aptly described as "CEOism"; that is, a chief executive officer presides over the country (or corporation, or social group, or church, or non-profit), subject to a oversight by a board of directors (which has the power to remove the CEO). To mix it with democracy---and since salus populi suprema lex esto---it's a good idea to have a periodic "approve or disapprove" election, a plebiscite on the CEO/(King). The board of directors would be obligated to replace the CEO if the plebiscite yielded a thumbs-down decision by the people. This is the type of system Russia appears to have now, as does El Salvador. There are other examples out there.