i would have frustrated the living snot out of hobbes

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Even as I agree with him about the absolute monarch part. That is the best, the sanest, form of government. Yes, yes, of course, it is blaringly apparent that the monarch has to be King Arthur at the very least, but that does NOT distract from the point. If you don't have that, you have THIS. No matter what.

In the prisoner's dilemma, I wouldn't confess, wouldn't rat out my partner. And neither would my partner, or he/she wouldn't have been my partner. We both would rather die than break the vow to save all sentient beings. Besides, people forget that the cops didn't have a case to start, and if nobody opens their mouth, that's an end to it.

You know that old saw about absolute power corrupting absolutely?

It's hogwash.

Not if you've picked the right monarch. You say the right monarch can and will be corrupted at some point? Easy. Take him or her out. If the people have means of training and testing their young, the right ones naturally rise to the top. There would be the perfect replacement for such an UNLIKELY eventuality.

Did it ever occur to you that the absolute power hogwash has been used by the corrupt to insure their corruption can keep on being sanctioned by the powerful? I bet not. Democracy does not prevent corruption. It enables it. Think about the pinheads out there doing their Hatfield and McCoy acts like there's no tomorrow. Babies... with candy... but not for long... and every time they get more it's also not for long. That is democracy. The only reason to have it is to enable oligarchy.

The only reason to have a monetary system is to enable oligarchy—wasichu kind of oligarchy, not oligarchy made purely of true merit. Everyone I've ever told about this wants to know what would motivate people to go to work if there was no money in it. Self respect. Most humans don't like themselves if they are not contributing somehow. Inevitably next they want to know who'd pick up the garbage and man the sewage treatment plants. People who wish to ensure people don't get sick from dread diseases and people who don't want to live in a garbage patch. And, besides, as the Zeitgeist people insist—and they are not wrong—technology already is capable of handling all that for us. It's only capitalism—and communism and socialism—dictating we continue to do almost everything ourselves... for pay, for a personal return. We don't need money where self-respect is more than enough to cover it.

You should not have to pay to live your life, and neither should those who are too lazy, or too weird, or too whatever to work. They will always be with us, only much less so if they don't have to pay to survive as comfortably as possible, and it could in fact be that they would contribute stuff then that is impossible for them now. Everyone could... only nothing would be stopping them. What business is it of yours to starve the unlucky or the lazy or the unlikeable? 99% of the crime in the world is about the dog-eat-dog nature of our societies. Without this money bullshit there would be seriously few prisoner's dilemmas to work out. There would be no more resenting the living snot out of people who aren't, or can't be, killing themselves to make a buck... OR people resenting the living snot out of people LUCKY enough to have jobs at all.

Nobody would have to sell dope to have a decent standard of living.

There would be no more G20 meetings to protest.

There would be no more wars to keep the dollar from crashing, even though it rightfully should have crashed long ago. The energy barons would immediately cease ruining everyone's lives and the planet's. There would be no more impediment to using the full physics to provide limitless energy that doesn't harm a thing to maintain.

What elite we might have then would be made up of people who love living things, whose hearts are filled with the love of justice and equity, whose courage—physical and moral and spiritual—would be so immense that their power, the oligarchy that would form around them, couldn't be anything but beneficial and happy for everyone.

All that is required is a people who insist on it... to the point of physically making it impossible for things to be otherwise. If everyone in the world would rise up against anyone or any group seeking to subjugate or otherwise harm us, all these agonies we lie to ourselves are but human nature would disappear forever.

One duty of an absolute monarch would be population control. While it is certain that people would automatically stop reproducing so insanely in such an environment, there still would be a need to ensure the human population does not outstrip the planet's ability to support us. That would mean in the beginning that many would have to be sterilized. Maybe something like China's one kid rule, only both parents are sterilized after the birth of the one kid. And later everyone gets sterilized after two. Whatever. When there is no monetary system, no one, anywhere, needs to make a huge brood to try to optimize their ability to survive. It's already optimized.

Another would be to cut down any packs of greedheads, beta males, seeking to subjugate others and return us to a mess like we have now. I don't know if a problem with this would persist past a few generations, but the male ego is a tricky thing and does not always want to adhere to the good teachings, prefers to bounce off them instead of embrace them. In native American societies this was pretty much handled by the loss of standing it cost, and would be in a global society too, but there would not be much to stop a gang of them from trying to topple the social structure instead of trying to live up to the demands of good character. So there might always be a need to have a means to dispose of this action.

Otherwise, we might not need ANY governing at all.

We certainly could work toward that. Even better than absolute monarchy... a world where everybody knows the right way to deal with everything and does.

Maybe I want to buy one of Scott Horton's "nonarchist" bumper stickers....

BTW, these notions have been in my head, pretty much whole, for about fifty years, and no one has ever managed to train them out of me... though too many to count have tried.

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