Jump to content

oligarchy is inefficient, change my mind.


The Soviet Union_
 Share

Recommended Posts

Yea, oligarchy would be inefficient and prone to corruption just for the reason that the country is essentially ruled by an aristocracy. I believe that eventually the oligarchy would fall and one individual would rise to power. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, The Soviet Union_ said:

Yea, oligarchy would be inefficient and prone to corruption just for the reason that the country is essentially ruled by an aristocracy. I believe that eventually the oligarchy would fall and one individual would rise to power. 

That's probably fine.

I'm pretty disillusioned with politics in the United States. I don't think our Republic has worked. I would be fine with experimenting with an honest-to-God monarchy for a while. 

Remove all the corrupts bastards in the federal government and install a Christian, virtuous, patriotic King. Probably wouldn't be worse than what we have now.

new_forum_sig_2.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/25/2020 at 5:19 PM, The Soviet Union_ said:

Yea, oligarchy would be inefficient and prone to corruption just for the reason that the country is essentially ruled by an aristocracy. I believe that eventually the oligarchy would fall and one individual would rise to power. 

While i am not a great fan of oligarchies either, i am up for playing the devil's advocate here. For oligarchies i do believe what you just said is true, or atleast for the oligarchies that is pretending to be a different type of government. For open, honest oligarchies who's system is built up around the fact that the rich rules you can get a different result. 

Most prominent example is the Republic of Venice, who holds record of the longest-lived form of government ever. 
By me bringing them up in a discussion about oligarchy, you can well guess what type of goveremnt they where. 

Venice is a 1300 year old city, that was founded not soon after the collapsed of the westen roman empire, where a bunch of citizens from former roman cities had gotten tried of always being invaded, so they decided to all get up and move out into the middle of a lagon. 
Where they first settled on a bunch of small unstable islands, that had habbit of disappearing and reappearing when tides happens. It didn't take the Venetians long before they decide they needed something more stable to build on so they started to burry long wooden pilings deep into the swampy ground. 
And with some amazing luck, the wooden pillars instead of rotting, became petrified, turning the wood into stone over time. Which is still what is holding up the marble covered buildings of Venice to this day.
Ups went a bit of course there, but as much as Venice itself was built out of necessity, so was it government. Being smack in the middle between two massive empires, byzantine(easten roman empire) and the Franks(what would become France) the early Venice struggled with securing it independence and security. 
As different factions within the cities wanted to turn towards one of the two empires, with another faction wanting to persevere Venice neutrality at all cost. 
These three factions did everything they could to stop the other two from gaining an upper hand. The result was the ground works of an inconceivably well balanced government that ruled with almost no hiccups for over 1,000 years. 
Venice became an republic, who elect it leader, the Doge. Who did serve for a lifetime, with only aristocrats and a bit later on the merchants class being able to vote. 
And while Doge was just one individual, he wasen't all powerfull, he was overseen by tribunes with veto power Assisted by an assembly of noble citizenry and several small councils to help with legislation and administration.
For a medieval government this amount of civic engagement not to mention thorough checks and balances is nothing short of jaw-dropping, that made the Republic of Venice
able to last from the 8th to the 19th century surrounded by seemingly endless war. Yet it maintained one stable and Independent government until it's end. 

And it did more then just survive, it thrived, the marble didn't come out of nowhere afterall. 
The answer to this was of course trade, Venice created one greatest trade empires ever. And it's goverment had a large hand in making that possible, as every aspect of maritime trade from routes and cruise to ship construction and cargo was all being governed by goverment councils, called Signoria. 

And it worked because the Signoria was made up of merchants. Additionally, the State Treasury itself acted as a bank providing loans and even commerce insurance to support merchants as well as publicly funding the construction of ships in the artisan alley, which fun fact
Developed mass production techniques that went unmatched until the Industrial Revolution. The artisan alley could turn out one full ship in a day. 
The adjective of Venetian was practically a synonym for efficiency in the late Middle Ages, something the city held onto until the arrival of Napoleon several centuries later. 

Edited by Zim
  • Like 1

tenor (1).gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and the Guidelines of the game and community.