
Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries - davidgerard
http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/
======
anonymousexcn
“To an observer from the medieval or Renaissance world of monarchies and
empires, the stability of democracies would seem utterly supernatural,” he
wrote. “Imagine telling Queen Elizabeth I – whom as we saw above suffered six
rebellions just in her family’s two generations of rule up to that point –
that Britain has been three hundred years without a non-colonial-related civil
war. She would think either that you were putting her on, or that God Himself
had sent a host of angels to personally maintain order.”

Ergo why the elite love democracies - they hold the power and keys while the
people think they're the ones in control.

Privatize the gains, publicize the losses.

Divide and conquer the people through the illusory red team versus blue team
paradigm, all the while everyone is robbed blind with nary a hope for real
change.

~~~
djur
Life for the average person worldwide has improved substantially more in the
liberal era (1700-now, roughly) than in any other span of time in recorded
history. I have yet to hear any reactionary explain what suffering or harm
people are suffering now that will be solved by their alternative systems.
Instead, I just see blanket claims that we are obviously being duped, abused
and robbed.

------
sobkas
The rise of Neomorons. People that don't know anything about monarchy, want to
be a new aristocracy.

------
znowi
> You may have seen them crop-up on tech hangouts like Hacker News

I hang out on HN fairly often and haven't seen a single royalist.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Here is one I responded to just over a week ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6729736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6729736)

So they exist. Not sure how widespread it is, but I would also imagine that
it's a larger group than would be apparent simply because most folks don't
want to out themselves as "anti-democratic" the most ultimate of sins.

~~~
gojomo
Not quite fair to label someone a 'royalist' who self-describes as:

"I've settled on parvumianism (to coin a neologisim): in favor of small
political units in which the appropriate political mechanism can be chosen and
meaningfully consented to."

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Well since the poster advocated reading "Democracy the God that failed" which
specifically posits that monarchy is a better system (Based on it's incentive
structure), I would say that is about as close as you can get. Only when I
disagreed with the extremity did the poster make up his new term.

I think you are right though that it would be incorrect to label anyone as
anything unless they explicitly stated as such.

~~~
gojomo
Many people read and recommend books that they don't fully endorse. The book
might just be interesting, based on the current topic of conversation.

------
1337biz
Surprised to see some techcrunch article that appears to be more substantive
than just another rewritten fluff piece. But it seems to pushing very much the
narrative towards the "racists" angle.

~~~
rollo_tommasi
If the jackboot fits...

~~~
Chen77
We identify the biodiversity in other species. Don't see why it's a surprise
to see the same curiosity in relation to humans. Especially when you see a
number of social policies based on ignorance.

------
JoeAltmaier
Yes, they want a monarchy, as long as they get to be peers. I don't see them
saying "working as a wage-slave is fondest goal" \- that would be for the
other people.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I can't speak for any neo-monarchists but the thing I see the most is the
theory of eliminating the wage slave all together through automation and a
basic income. I don't think those goals are by virtue in conflict with
democracy but I can see how they could be.

Whether you agree with it's plausibility or not, I think that in and of itself
is a worthy goal.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
With automation and a basic income, why does it matter what government you
have? Economic system is independent.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Agreed to some extent. I think certain types of governments would not allow
that level of disengagement.

------
tgb
Even if you're not that interested in neoreactionary stuff, reading the linked
anti-reactionary FAQ by Scott Alexander [1] is quite interesting. Fair warning
though - it's huge.

[1] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-
fa...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/)

------
WalterSear
So the organizers and crowd behind Singularitarian movement got bored, so they
moved on to Sea-steading, life extension through 'that one crazy trick' and
other Paleotarian claptrap. And now, they've jumped that shark too.

What a circus.

~~~
JamesArgo
Michael Anissimov was quietly dismissed from MIRI - I imagine it had something
to do with his political views, that or his complete lack of technical
expertise.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
MIRI has quite the history of shape shifting and hiring inexperienced CEOs -
the list of which you can't find unless you know the history, so here it is:
Michael Vassar, Michael Anissimov, Luke Muehlhauser. None of them have
anything close to management experience.

Peter Thiel is behind a good proportion of anything these individuals want to
do which is interesting in and of itself to me.

~~~
davidgerard
To his credit, Luke is pretty much kicking arse now he's in the job. I've seen
what not-so-great charity CEOs are like (I have many decades' experience in
sub-competent charities of various varieties) and Luke's sheer energy is just
what MIRI needed.

------
gaius
Starts well, then perhaps facing a looming deadline, concludes, actually
they're just racists, the end. Weak article about an interesting subculture.

~~~
dhoe
Do you believe they're not? It may not be the primary motive, but from all
I've read, most are indeed racist and would not deny it.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
That's essentially true but if you don't discuss the views in greater depth
"racist" is just used as a conversation stopping epithet. Affirmative Action
is racist, but I don't think Tech Crunch would write about that by sneering
"racist" and dismissing AA measures.

~~~
Ygg2
You are correct assuming ,that in regular speech one uses racism as set of
beliefs that people are divided into races.

However, in normal speech racism is defined as believing that human are
separated into different races and that there is a hierarchy of superiority,
usually with your own race being on top of it.

There is nothing wrong with helping usual target and/or victims of racial or
other hate to offset the potential effects said hate. Unless you of course
believe safe shelters for women are inherently sexist. In which case you are
just old fashioned rasist slash chauvinist.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
By that definition the "neo-reactionaries" or HBD advocates under discussion
are not racist. The understanding that many differences in group outcomes and
metrics in varied dimensions and directions are rooted in DNA, well that says
nothing about superiority or inferiority. It can be without value judgment and
is empirically falsifiable.

Really, I think your definition is in practice useless. The reality of the
word is that when identity politics are involved and people hear something
they don't like, they scream "racist".

~~~
davidgerard
You can say they don't come up with a hierarchy only by ignoring that they're
just fine with the present one and use their racism as the explanation for why
it's right and natural.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
The salient policy question is really whether or not literally hundreds of
billions of dollars should be spent trying to change certain things that
probably can barely be changed by spending money. It's not so vicious and mean
a thing as you seem to imagine. It's about efficiently dealing with reality.

~~~
djur
What are we spending "hundreds of billions of dollars" on that we could save
under the dictates of HBD theory?

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
Google "disparate impact".

Here's just one ~$4 billion example of tax payer money spent under the
assumption that differences in loan approval rates were racist and not related
to other factors.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/us/farm-loan-bias-
claims-o...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/us/farm-loan-bias-claims-often-
unsupported-cost-us-millions.html?_r=0)

~~~
djur
So your assertion is that (a) hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on
antidiscrimination policies or settlement, and (b) that under a HBD regime, we
would save this money by simply assuming that disparate outcomes are a result
of immutable differences in ability?

~~~
Chen77
Too a large extent they are unfortunately. I think that will be gradually
accepted as the costs of genome sequencing fall.

Gottfredson, L. S. (2005). Implications of cognitive differences for schooling
within diverse societies. Pages 517-554 in C. L. Frisby & C. R. Reynolds
(Eds.), Comprehensive Handbook of Multicultural School Psychology. New York:
Wiley.

www.edge.org/response-detail/10376

~~~
temujin
Speaking of genome sequencing, if "immutable" and problematic group
differences exist, genome sequencing is a crucial step toward making them
mutable. (And if they do not exist, genome sequencing will help establish
that.)

------
Naga
I'm actually a monarchist, but not like this. I just believe the current
political system of Canada is strong and shouldn't change into a republic.
I've never even heard of this movement. I hope I never have to again.

~~~
alex-g
There's a big difference, of course, which is that Canada already has a
monarchy (of a very limited kind) on top of a democratic system, with stable
institutions, a high level of general prosperity, and the rule of law. Being
in favour of retaining a working system isn't reactionary.

~~~
Systemic33
It's called a constitutional monarchy and is quite common in Europe (if that
isn't obvious).

A few I can remember with constitutional monarchy: Australia, Belgium, Canada,
Denmark, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand,
Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

~~~
strlen
What I find quite ironic is that today in the British Common Wealth, the
combination of an almost symbolic monarch, and parliamentary rule leads to --
in practice -- far less centralization of in the hands of the executive branch
in comparison to presidential republics such as United States.

What's more troubling is that there's very little history of constitutional
monarchies reverting to absolutism and staying that way for a long time. On
the other hand, many post-Soviet USSR republics (including Russia) provide
plenty of democratic presidents turning into dictators.

------
kijin
The problem with Kings and Queens is that even the best ones expire after a
while (... but maybe not, if you believe the transhumanists) and the
replacement tends to be even less accountable than the Presidents and Prime
Ministers of today's governments are.

If you get Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius all in the same century,
you're lucky. You could have just as easily gotten five Neros and five
Caligulas in a row, or an alternating series of Catholics and Protestants who
try to kill everyone who was loyal to the previous monarch.

With a democracy, you can't optimize the society to the same degree of
perfection as you can with philosopher kings, but you also get to avoid the
worst crashes. Do you want extreme performance or do you want reliability?
Hint: human lives are supposed to be many times more important than records in
your database.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
>With a democracy, you can't optimize the society to the same degree of
perfection as you can with philosopher kings, but you also get to avoid the
worst crashes.

A great point; I like to think of Democracy as median filtering, it smooths
extremes.

------
spindritf
_It may be a small, minority world view, but it’s one that I think shines some
light on the psyche of contemporary tech culture._

It does. And investigating why geeks are into HBD or nootropics could probably
be an interesting article. I wondered about it. Maybe you could even take a
look where this disappointment with the regular media/science/gov is coming
from.

 _this interest just happens to coincide with growing media attention being
paid to the problems of the tech industry, from sexism in video games to “bro
culture” in the tech industry to gentrification in the Bay Area._

Haha. Or inflate your own importance and call people racist. That will
probably, and sadly, get even more clicks (while fuelling disapointment with
the media).

~~~
ejstronge
Using the word 'racist' is inflammatory and often seems to be an affront, so I
can appreciate your disappointment with the author.

However, I don't see how many 'human biodiversity' (HBD) claims _are not_
racist - that is, they make claims about individuals based on the social
construct of race though they ostensibly mean to discuss 'biology.'

~~~
davidgerard
They seriously talk about "African" as if it were a tight genetic grouping
(like Icelanders or Ashkenazim) - Africa has _the_ greatest human genetic
diversity per distance of _anywhere_ , as one would expect (diversity per
distance is greatest near the point of origin).

~~~
Chen77
Who is they?

What I find amazing is that people are surprised that group differences have
arisen over the last 50,000 years. Gene-culture coevolution makes it seem
inevitable that different cultures will favor different traits. Therefore
you're going to see some average differences.

There are obvious examples, a more polygamous society where women do more of
the work (eg female farming systems) with lower paternal investment, might
favor different traits to those where there is State control, monogamy and
greater paternal investment.

I'd recommend that you read some posts by Steve Hsu, Peter Frost, or 'The
10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution'.

------
zabuni
I've seen stuff like this on both sides. It's what happens when one's desire
for change and despair at trying to get the vulgar masses to the self evident
"right" thing drives them to misanthropy. It's a misanthropy that sees the
rise Leninist vanguard revolutionaries, or Straussian nocturnal councils. Or
every armchair revolutionary on the Internet, on any side, who has ever
furiously stamped on his keyboard the hoary phrase "Wake up SHEEPLE!"

It is the person who cannot convince the world of their position, and then
comes to the conclusion the problem is the world.

~~~
justanother
This post reminds me of my problems with reading sites like Zerohedge. They're
right about a few things, including severe structural issues in the current
monetary system. But as soon as I hit the word 'SHEEPLE', I immediately close
the browser tab and stop reading. The word strikes me as intellectually lazy
on several levels, and this is certainly one of them.

------
ajcarpy2005
In theory, democracy can be a somewhat workable system. (I wouldn't say robust
but workable.)

In practice, at least in the last many decades, we have seen what happens when
special interest groups get to write their own laws and regulations behind the
scenes...often getting voted on in Congress before there's time to even read
the bills.

Maybe the solution is to somehow 'democratize' the special interest groups?
Well, I've basically advocated for awhile now that we need a larger group of
representatives. (it seems ridiculous to expect a few hundred elected
lawmakers to regulate the government.

Either that or we just need smaller government but if we want the government
to regulate as much as it does in modern times, it's going to continue
evolving as technology and industries evolve and that's one reason why special
interest groups have gained so much power. They serve a purpose in government.
It's just not transparent and 'refereed' like it should be.

------
moocowduckquack
When people say that freedom and democracy are incompatible, I wonder what it
is they are wanting to do.

~~~
fennecfoxen
It's a good question. I guess freedom comes from things like "limited
government" and "pluralism", not directly from democracy, and maybe those
things are more important than actually letting the people rule themselves --
for an individual person, the notion of their vote being a meaningful voice in
a democratic government is kind of a fantasy anyway. But there's not really
any better guarantees of freedom under any other system.

The whole "let's have lots of micro-states with easy exit" condition proposed
by these advocates here sounds borderline quasi-plausible, IF somehow you
could get that going to begin with (not bloody likely)... but even from a
purely economic perspective, the transaction costs in choosing a new place to
live and moving there are very high, so one would suspect this layout would
lead to inefficient results. (and that's economic efficiency, which includes
your overall well-being.) And who enforces that you get to up and leave
whenever you want, anyway? The other micro-states, using WAR?

~~~
praxeologist
How about no states? I just subscribe to the protection agency I like, no need
to move, nobody claiming arbitrary sovereignty over a whole geographic area.
This is a less common type of legal system than whatever flavor of statism but
societies like this existed and maintained civil order for centuries.

~~~
krapp
But doesn't any such successful agency become a state in its own right?

~~~
praxeologist
No, a state is a territorial monopoly. There might be some local/state/federal
hierarchy, but whatever place you live in everyone has the same "stack".
There's studies that show police in monopoly systems wait and _respond_ to
crime much more often than actively patrolling and _preventing_ crime.

A polycentric legal order would have people living in one area who might
subscribe to any number of different private security and arbitration firms.

~~~
krapp
But how would they enforce the laws you subscribe to without having people
with guns in your general vicinity willing to do violence on your behalf, and
what's the value if you're not interacting with people who subscribe to the
same?

Perhaps you could say their different agencies come to some sort of an
agreement in regards to disputes or conflicts between the laws subscribed to
by different people. But where such agreements exist they would be made for
the mutual benefit of the corporations and not necessarily their customers. To
me the end result still looks a lot like a state, just one in which cartels
stand in for governments.

------
Apocryphon
“What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who
has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner
Life.”

~~~
davidgerard
"And a magical flying unicorn pony that ejaculates rainbows." When we actually
get a donkey with an ice cream cornetto smooshed onto its head, wings nailed
on and it's been fed laxatives and food colouring. So yeah, software
requirements documents.

------
strlen
Seems like a reaction (no pun intended) to a false dilemma: either unlimited
direct democracy (majoritarianism) and equality of outcomes or unlimited
monarchy and lack of what is termed "equality of liberty" (every individual is
treated equally before the law).

Whenever I hear someone who claims to like liberty preach against democracy in
favour of reaction and monarchy, I feel they miss that when classical liberal
enlightenment thinkers (who were the first to speak of individual liberty,
advocate for free trade, property rights, and abolition of compulsory
membership in guilds) critized democracy, the word democracy didn't mean what
it means today: it meant direct and unlimited Athenian-style democracy, that
lead to Socrates' death.

To add to this, they mistake traditionalism/conservatism of Edmund Burke (in a
way, the intellectual founding father of the US republican party and modern
Tories) who happened to criticize French revolution with actual continental
reactionary politics (of Hegel, Metternich, De Maistre, etc...) Here's a
tendency to explain Burke's support of American Revolution followed by
opposition to the French revolution for a change in his views: in reality,
they were consistent -- he was appalled by the Jacobins, but supported
constitutional law, equality of freedom (arguing for emancipation of Catholics
and against imperialism/subjugation of India), and so forth...

When reactionaries speak against democracy they do so for entirely different
reasons than when US founding fathers (or the philosophers that inspired them)
warned against democracy. The reasons reactionary thinkers from Plato onwards
despised democracy had more to do with the fact that they saw democratic
cities as having _too much_ freedom. They absolutely despised private
property, trade, and the middle/upper-middle classes (all of which are likely
sacred with these neo-reactionaries).

Their idea of monarchy was far more similar to Byzantine absolutism, as
opposed to constitutional monarchy of e.g., Franz Josef of Austro Hungarian
Empire (who, incidentally, also despised nationalism and presciently saw it as
an incredibly destructive force) or even "enlightened absolutism" of Fredrick
The Great.

So here's a "radical" thought: despite all of its flaws, limited (de-facto or
de-jure) constitutional government (a.k.a. "rule of law" in English speaking
countries, and "rechstaat" in German speaking countries), genuine social _and_
economic liberalism (aka "classical liberalism"), and democracy have (overall)
greatly increased human liberty, happiness, and productivity. There's tons of
rooms for debate -- but I'd imagine most honest left-liberals would much
prefer to live in, e.g., US under Reagan or UK under Thatcher than in Fidel's
Cuba, while most honest libertarians/conservatives would much prefer to live
in social-democratic countries of Western Europe/Scandinavia than in Spain
under Franco, Portugal under Salazar, or Chile under Pinochet[1].
Conservatives may wax enthusiastically about low taxes in semi-authoritarian
Singapore, but I'm not sure if that enthusiasm would continue if they realized
that the country also punishes firearm possession by death.

Personally, I hope that a broader centrist liberal party emerges in the US
(which would also include libertarians as part of its big tent coaliation --
Reagan and Thatcher parroted libertarian ideas, while expanding perhaps most
anti-libertarian agenda, namely the War On Drugs). The NSA spying scandal was
awful, but one of its results was the begging of a left-right coalition
focused on civil liberties.

So in all, I think the idea that rule by a new generation of philosopher kings
will somehow make us more free seems silly: it's ease to get caught up in the
aesthetics of the idea, but it's bizzare to think as to how this may actually
strengthen the rights to life, liberty, and property.

[1] Obviously all sane people would not want to live in Stalinist USSR, Nazi
Germany, or North Korea -- but totalitarianism is a far more rare phenomena
than "mere" authoritarianism and isn't really a danger at this point: its
bloody record speaks for itself.

~~~
hjrnunes
You are wrong, at least about Portugal.

Most of the people I know, that lived back in the day, openly say that life
under the previous regime was better. A lot better.

Obviously, members of the current oligarchy, trade union professionals and
members of the current parties, always try to pass across Estado Novo as some
sort of totalitarian nightmare, forgetting that they at the time most of them
were pushing for die-hard communism. The country these people looked up to as
a model was communist Albania...

The 2nd Portuguese Republic started as military dictatorship. In 1933 it
became a constitutional system, with a constitution sanctioned by popular
vote. Contrary to what people normally think, Salazar wasn't the head of
State. The head of State was the President of the Republic - elected by
popular vote up to the fifties, by which time the system changed to an
electoral college, due to communist sabotage and violent agitation during the
presidential elections. The PoR was elected for seven year periods and had the
power to appoint the Government, particularly the President of the Council of
Ministers (Prime-minister). That's how things worked when Salazar died: the
President consulted whomever he saw fit and decided to appoint Marcello
Caetano, which, by the way, had a leftist reputation in more conservative
circles. There were three Presidents during the 2nd Republic.

Salazar proposed his own resignation a few times to the Presidents. However,
Salazar was an absolutely brilliant statesman, besides being an extremely
competent and scrupulous with money and finances. He single-handedly assumed
the jobs of the ministries of War and Foreign Affairs during the 2nd World
War. It's him Portugal owes being saved from that catastrophe. To an extent so
does Spain. The people loved him and that is undeniable. Even recently, no
more than ten years ago, there was a silly tv show to the purpose of electing
the greatest portuguese person of all times. Salazar won. This is hard to
understand without knowing the state of the country left by the 1st Republic.
A lot of people became salazarists because of the simple fact that they
started to get their pensions paid regularly.

Anyway, as far as repression goes, it's undeniable that censorship existed.
For several reasons it was never abolished, even though there were plans for
it. In the establishment of the regime, it was deemed necessary to control
agitation and maintain order. Then came World War 2, an extremely delicate
situation that warranted the control provided by press censorship to maintain
the cooperative neutrality with the Allies Salazar wanted. Then, when finally
there seemed to be a glimpse of an opening in the 50s, started the soviet and
chinese-sponsored terrorist operations in Angola, with the 1961 massacre in
the North. Beyond this point, press censorship was used mainly control enemy
propaganda, which was mainly all communist. Still it was a known fact and the
government didn't hide it or denied it. Compare this to the sort of veiled
censorship practiced in the UK but especially in America, in matters
pertaining the wars in which they recently were involved.

Salazar, and other important figures of the 2nd Republic, weren't against
democracy as such. They were against parliamentary democracy with parties.
They were against political parties and were against control of the executive
branch by the legislative branch. They felt the stability and long-term vision
necessary to govern a country can't be provided by changing governments and
policy every four years. I think they were right. Reality proves so, at least
in the case of Portugal. That doesn't mean they didn't felt popular
legitimation unimportant. Like I said, the President was elected, and so were
the deputies of the National Assembly. The difference was that the government
didn't have to have a majority in this assembly to govern. The trust of the
President was enough.

This isn't more widely known because of communist propaganda. What people in
the US need to understand is that leftist over here isn't quite the same as
over there. Here we have an active and parliamentary represented Communist
party. There is even another one to the left of it. As usual, they play the
poor, worker, green, lgbt, etc, "progressist" cards. But they never say what
they actually would do if they obtained power. Presumably, they would
implement a communist system like all the others. In fact, we had a glimpse of
it in 1975 when they managed to obtain power for the larger part of the year.
They nationalised all industry and arrested or chased all the capitalists off
the country, essentially decapitating portuguese economy, that never recovered
since. The country would soon be requesting IMF assistance in 1977. It did so
for two more times, in 1983 and 2012. For comparison, bear in mind that in
1974, just before the coup that ended the 2nd Republic, Portugal had, apart
from several foreign currency reserves, a reserve of 800 tonnes worth of fine
gold. The escudo was a stable a strong currency. The commercial scale was
balanced. All this despite sustaining military defence operations in Africa.
Portuguese economy was rapidly growing, both in Europe and Africa, at about 6
to 8 percent. Three years later, it was bankrupt. They also immediately
created a political police under military control called the COPCON, that
issued capture warrants with the name field blank... Thousands were arrested
for being "reactionary", meaning they weren't communist. The public
administration, from state bureaucracy to teachers, was, as they said,
"sanitised" from people that weren't "progressive" enough. The previous regime
PIDE/DGS was more akin to an intelligence and counter-intelligence service.
However, it couldn't arbitrarily keep people arrested. Although the police
could deduce accusation, the suspects had to be presented to a judge, and a
judicial process would be open. It wasn't anymore repressive than the
McCarthy's era FBI. It has to be understood that the regime was highly
academic and legalist. Most of the Government figures were university Law
professors. Everything was done strictly according to the law. Arbitrary and
irregular actions like COPCON's blank named capture warrants would never ever
be permitted in any circumstance.

Basically, the whole of the political spectrum in Portugal today is leftist.
The people on the so called parties on the right, all have extreme-left
backgrounds. A paradigmatic example is the President of the European
Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, member of the portuguese social-
democrat PSD (one of the big two parties). In the 70's he was proper fist-in-
the-air maoist[1], part of the MRPP - Portuguese Workers' Communist Party
(this isn't the orthodox soviet communist party PCP, we had lots of them
besides the 'real' one). Ironic isn't it? The preamble of the current
Portuguese Constitution still says that Portugal is on it's way towards a
socialist society... Contrary to the 1933 one, this constitution wasn't
subject to popular vote. It was imposed as "the will of the portuguese people"
to the people. A lot of the structural problems affecting Portugal can't be
solved without constitutional amendment, something that is and has always been
opposed by the left, led by the Socialist Party (the other of the big two
parties). Only in the eighties was private banking allowed by constitutional
amendment, for example.

The truth is, parliamentary democracy was bad for Portugal. It is true that it
could have been different. But it was what it was. Presently, what happens is
that the big two alternate in fucking up the country, raising taxes,
privatising everything (how things change, heh? But now they need the money)
in ruinous deals for the treasury, while the communists, who control the
unions, make sure protests don't go out of hand, being given places all over
the public sector for their cronies in return. Everybody wins. Except the
taxpayer, of course. Why don't people vote differently? Well, because the
media is in bed with the regime, and to campaign you need money. Same as
everywhere I guess.

Salazar used to call the 2nd Republic an organic democracy. Besides the
National Assembly, there was the Corporative Chamber, where all the
significant trades and industries were represented. All laws passed by the
Assembly required consultation of this chamber. This is reminiscent of the
Courts of so called absolutist monarchy in Portugal, which gathered
representatives of trades and industry, clerical representatives, nobles
(military), and the municipalities. This was put an end to with the civil
war[2] in the nineteenth century between absolutists (called miguelists,
because they supported D. Miguel) and constitutionalists that wanted a
constitutional monarchy. The constitutionalists won, but not without heavy
international support from financiers and foreign government in the form of
money and mercenaries. However, the wounds open at the time haven't really
healed and they still divide monarchists to this day.

[1]:
[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GfHGyLKkpFQ/Tn2RrRJMcHI/AAAAAAAAA1...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GfHGyLKkpFQ/Tn2RrRJMcHI/AAAAAAAAA1k/wcSWl6Cdou0/s400/DuraoBarroso+17.jpg)

[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Civil_War](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Civil_War)

EDIT: corrected the right century of the civil war. Not eighteenth but
nineteenth.

~~~
strlen
To be honest, I did hesitate to include Salazar in the same list as even
Pinochet, much less Franco or Castro: it was never totalitarian or
substantially fascist, less authoritarian than many regimes in Latin America,
and certainly far less authoritarian than People's Republic that were setup in
its former colonies.

I clearly understand what you said about leftist in US vs. leftist elsewhere
as well: both the republicans and democrats in the US would in many countries
be more akin to a fairly tiny party that called itself liberal and had only a
few seats in the parliament (e.g., in today's Russia the entire US political
spectrum would likely fall into Yavlinsky's party/list which hasn't had any
seats at all in the Duma since 2007).

Given a choice between communism (even communism under a "progressive" cloak
-- Venezuela is a clear example of how that played out!) and Salazar, I also
think that most reasonable people would pick Salazar in a heartbeat. Communism
and socialism almost by definition require totalitarianism, which is why the
last remaining totalitarian state is North Korea, with other states getting
progressively less authoritarian in lockstep to them becoming less communist.
Chinese citizens are for the most part more free than Cubans -- e.g., Chinese
and Vietnamese citizens are permitted to leave their countries, while
immigration is extremely difficult for any Cuban medical doctor. Cubans,
however, are more free today than my family was under Kruschev and Brezhnev --
my parents couldn't even travel to other communist countries for scientific
conferences until 1989.

However, I was not comparing Estado Novo to its alternatives at the time in
Portugal or even the current mess (I believe one of the leaders of the coup
against Caetano said that he wouldn't have overthrown him if he saw what came
out in the end): what I see as an example of "decent" social democracy would
be Sweden -- private property and capitalism, but with a somewhat more
expansive welfare state. To be clear I do not in any way endorse an expansive
welfare state: the taxation needed to sustain such a state chokes businesses
(I am not at all surprised that Volvo is owned by Ford and Saab by GM) and the
handouts create artificial externalities which ultimately lead to less
individual liberty ("we gave you free healthcare, so now we will regulate what
you, what you smoke, and force you [as in France] to see a doctor on a routine
basis").

I also realize that this isn't a fair comparison: 1930s Portugal was a multi-
ethnic state with overseas colonies, yet with living conditions (in terms of
literacy, standard of living, but perhaps not infrastructure) even in
metropolitan Portugal that resembled today's developing world. To compare it
with a highly homogeneous and wealthy Scandinavian country of today is indeed
quite absurd.

The colonial wars also complicate things quite a bit -- I personally do find
it ironic that Portugal was condemned for them, while France (which acted with
greater brutality both in its colonies and against domestic dissent) got a
free pass.

I also do not in any way mean to slight the enormous advances in standard of
living that happened under Estado Novo, as well as neutral Portugal's role as
an escape route for refugees.

Yet, the "neo-reactionaries" are for the most part Americans which is what I
find insane: Western-style liberal democracy is an unattainable dream for
most. I first learned the word liberalism from my grandmother, who described
it as only a faint memories from her grandfather -- a merchant of first guild
(highest title that could be held by a Jewish capitalist) in Imperial Russia
-- who supported a liberal party in 1905. I find it crazy that any American or
North-West European would want to give that system up for the neo-ancien
regime.

------
guard-of-terra
There is a desperate call for better democracy. A good way to demand it is by
exposing other options.

Btw, there was a prime minister of Bulgaria who was also a king by birthright.
Talk about elective monarchy.

------
nsxwolf
How did I not know this was a thing?

~~~
davidgerard
You're not on LessWrong? They're a plague there. (Though note in the comments
where Eliezer specifically disclaims neoreaction.)

~~~
Apocryphon
Where did he do that?

~~~
davidgerard
Comments of the TechCrunch post this post links to. Direct comment link
[http://fyre.it/ebaVZi.4](http://fyre.it/ebaVZi.4)

------
JetSpiegel
The Diamond Age was a documentary? Neomorons are a more apt name.

~~~
gojomo
Can I upvote your first sentence and downvote your second?

------
amerika_blog
Glad to see this here.

