From: ig25@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science,rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Industrial feudalism?
Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.science
Date: 23 Jan 93 22:59:15 GMT
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany
NNTP-Posting-Host: fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de

One thing which always disturbed me in quite a number of SF future
histories is the assumption that a technical society can be run
successfully with some kind of aristocratic system.

As a prime example, let's take the N/P "Mote" universe, as described
in "Building the Mote in God's Eye".

In that essay, Niven and Pournelle (mostly Pournelle) argue that 
armies need a focus of loyality and that personal leaders are
a very likely focus of such loyality.  They quote Winston Churchill as
an example during WWII for the British. They also argue that, since
leaders are born to a position of power, it is likeley that they will
be better educated to the task of leadership and therefore become better
leaders than elected politicians.  Pournelle, in one of his solo works
(King David's Spaceship) argues that the only way to get qualified
technicians to a colony world is to offer them and their children the
chance to become nobility.

The only counter- argument admitted in "Building..."  is that people may
have "advanced" so far in the meantime that such structures are
impossible, an argument clearly set up to be ridiculed.

One key problem interfering with a society's success which has
hereditary transfer of power ist that there is no easy way of getting
rid of the duds, which education alone cannot do.  A prime example for
this is Wilhelm II., the German emperor from 1889(?)  to 1918.  He was
superbly educated and a real catastrophe for Germany after he had
assumed the throne and taken control of policy.

The education argument may have counted in the days when only very
few people could afford any education at all.  A technological
society, such as ours or "Mote's", cannot afford to let talent go
to waste.

Another problem I see is that governing takes it out of people.
Usually, people in top positions of power are not much good after a
decade or so.  This is both because they tend to lose their working
ability with time, and because from time to time fresh ideas are needed.
Replacing the head of policy in for two, three or more decades (see
"Mote's" rejuvenation techniques) is hardly an option in a monarchy where
the monarch actually makes descisions.

Finally, provided we have a monarchy or equivalent, with a leader
appointed for life or until normal retierement age (which has indeed
been a very frequent occurence in our recent history, and still is
today), where does the N/P aristocracy come in?  To me, assigning a
"sector" to somebody like Rob Blaine's father, in which he obviously is
supreme military commander ("done some good work pacifying his sector",
quotation from Mote) sounds like a blueprint for rebellion to me.
Counting on ideology alone to keep someone in that postition loyal seems
a risky to me, much better to assign the job to some commander who'll
be on his next position a couple of years from then.
-- 
Thomas Koenig, ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@dkauni2.bitnet
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic
diagram.