Monarchy and Democracy

Thanks Con.First, I must point out that my opponent is under the misguided assumption that I advocate authoritarianism from a King; while in fact the opposite is true. One of my fundamental points of contention is that Princely rulers are, on balance, less oppressive and omnipresent in their subjects lives than Democracies are today. Cons attempted turn is thus flawed. Secondly, my opponent is skewing the burden of proof (which has already been acknowledged to be shared). By his advocation of a system that (to my knowledge) has yet to be implemented, he must only defend his governmental system from theoretical objections, not practical objections that come from such a systems implementation. By defending a system that has been previously been used (monarchy) I must defend mine from both practical AND theoretical objections. Such a burden is unequal, and violates the rules of the debate. Third, my opponent is not advocating a democracy in any true form. The Democracy Index (which is the standard for measuring how democratic states are) uses the following criteria to assess democracy[1]: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture. Most significant are those in bold, where his system is in clear violation of these democratic ideals. For one, a lack of elections is considered undemocratic, consider that North Korea, perhaps the nation closest to his ideal, is ranked at dead last[2] for democracy. Even modern monarchies are more democratic. A lack of voting obviously violates political participation, and civil liberties under the Hobbesian ideal he's arguing for are practically non-existent. The Hobbesian system fails to meet Hoppes criteria as well. Clearly, voting is implied. It was also stated clearly that my opponent had to defend a representative or direct democracy. His system, despite his rhetoric, is fundamentally NOT a representative democracy. For one, in representative democracies elected representatives from an "independent ruling body (for an election period) charged with the responsibility of acting in the people's interest"[3] which is not present in my opponents argument. Thus, for the reasons elaborated on above, I feel justified in implementing an entire case turn on my opponent: what he is advoacting is much more similar to an oppressive elective monarchy[4], which have historically existed than it is to a democracy. Any advantages he seems to have flow to my side. My opponent only argued one principle inherent advantage to his system over mine, and that is that: "no person can be proven to "naturally" be in such a position, but heredity, as a formal measure or principle for determining "absolute authority," makes no substantive claims for the superiority of that ruler....an authority chosen by people (or the formal legal framework instituted by said people) will more closely resemble the plural and always changing will and interests of the people." First off, Turn: refer to my case--election by "the people" ensures corruption. I fully agree that heredity is not a legitimate way to measure ability, however that does not make coming into power by popular election any better. Getting elected in a democracy rests in telling lies to the mob (always insane) in order to satisfy their desires. Coming to power in a monarchy rests in where a person is born. While monarchs are generally sane, mobs are always incompotent and insane. Thus while heredity may be an innaccurate way to measure ability, it does not preclude that the King might be a good ruler, or a god person. Democratic elections however, DO prevent this. Secondly, he hasn't argued any impact. Why is reflecting the "will and interests of the people", good? Again, satisfying the mob is not nessecarily good, we can see all too clearly the il-liberal results that come from democratic "progression". How have we fared from departing the monarchial age, and entering the demoratic one? Over one billion people dead, killed by their governments or fighting for their governments in the 20th century[5] (age of democracy). Wars are now ideological conflicts, and genocides are now far more common because the prejudgices and ignorance of "the people" seeps into legistlation. You can therefore see that my opponent has no grounds to claim that his "Hobbesian democracy" is superior to Monarchy.I'll deconstruct what Hoppe calls "Hobbesian myth" anyway. The idea that we need a strong government to "keep us in line" is fundamentally flawed. For one, the idea of "collective security" where the government takes care of us inherently fails. To be sure, no sane individual would sign a contract giving his servicer (in this case providing the service of protection) giving the servicer the unilateral power to not only decide how much he will pay for the service, AND the quality of said service. Indeed, the collective defense experiment has failed anyway: just look at the U.S. for an example. Hoppe writes[6]:"In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on 'social' security and 'public' safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth." It's economic law that once a single entity gains a monopoly of a good/service, the price of that good will rise, and its quality will fall. The same can be said for security, which explains the continual decline in freedom that we've experienced under democracy. Further, one cannot opt out of the governmental social contract, and are physically harmed when they try, take for example the US civil war which gave the U.S. "has the distinction of having had a government that declared war against a large portion of its own population and engaged in the wanton murder of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens"[7]. The collective security myth is nothing but an idyllic fantasy. My Opponent also attempts to justify his unject governmental form with the ssocial contract theory, writing: " Hobbes proposes as a solution, to generate a "social contract," the "artificial mechanism" of a "common Power to keep them all in awe" (185), to "conferre all . . . power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men . . . and therein to submit their Wills, every one to his Will, and their Judgements to his judgment" "The social contract theory, quite simply, is a failure. For one thing, a contract is a voluntary agreement between two parties, so unless the contract is amended for each citizen (will not happen.), than forcing someone into a "contract" is a contradiction of terms, and fundamentally unjust. Recall that in order to assess the legitimacy of the social contract theory, we need to look at places where such a "contract" is already implemented. You can see from my round two that these limitied governments are impossible. My opponent did not adequetly address any of my arguments (although he was not obligated to do so in round 2), but I will answer his attacks with my remaining characters (~800).WarMy opponent makes objections that are proven empirically false in my case. So extend empirics, this overrides his analytics. Secondly, he again argues that there is "no reason" to believe my war argument, but has not disputed the logic or empirics. Obviously monarchs can fight for ideals, but considering self interest they are less liekly to. DiplomacyHis only response to this argument is a condemnation of assassination and an attempted turn. The fact of the matter is that ineffective monarchs are more likely to be disposed of than ineffective democrats, and he made no reply to this impact. It makes monarchy superior if ineffective rulers are taken out, instead of left to ruin their country. His objection is not impactful enough to negate this.http://tinyurl.com...