Isekai Kenkokuki - Vol. 3 Ch. 21.1

[Austriacus]

@aFFi

Who told you those lies about democracy? As long as the status quo is of progress and wealth autocratic powers wont be pushed aside by democracy, see China, Singapore and the Middle east kingdoms.(theres no distinction here between autocratic and monarchy governments since both have about the same justification for being in governance)

This is old western propaganda already disproven by asian countries.
Mind you, this is not a comment on the efficacy or neccesity of democracy, just a reality that we are seeing right now.

 

[falconx8]

@Austriacus He said "or you keep the reigns tight, oppressing your people and crushing dissidence as soon as it rises to maintain power."

Don't tell me that isn't what's happening in China and Saudi Arabia. (Can't comment on Singapore since I know almost nothing about it). Dissidents have a tendency to 'disappear' in countries like those. Journalists enter embassies only to never return. High-ranking individuals such as the head of interpol just completely go missing. Unwanted ethnic groups get placed in 're-education camps'.

 

[Austriacus]

@falconx8 when one thinks of that one i guess people look at north korea. "Opressing your people" i take it as a sistemathic abuse of everybody, not just a minority that, in this case, the chinese at large arent making a fuss about internally (as far as i know). Foreign people(journalists and the head of interpol)" isnt "opressing your people" either.

I wouldnt say the saudis are opressed either, in the sense that most of their population is muslim and they direct the country with muslim traditions in mind, so not exactly opressing a country that believes in the way the government operates.

I want to mention i dont condone this actions but the idea that political life is either democracy or chains to your back is faulty in modern times, some cultures are just ok sacrificing liberty for a sense of security.

 

[falconx8]

@Austriacus

Spoiler

The head of interpol that I mentioned also isn't exactly a foreign person. That was Meng Hongwei, a chinese politician who was summoned back to China, and has gone missing since. The same goes for the journalist I mentioned, Jamal Khashoggi, who was born in Saudi Arabia, visited an Saudi embassy last year and didn't leave in one piece.

There are various freedom indices available. In the 2018 Freedom in the World index, China and Saudi Arabia are listed nearly at the bottom with very few civil liberties, with just a few nations (like North Korea) being worse. The 2018 Press Freedom Index has both listed as "Very serious situation", the worst category. Eliminating journalists who dare to express a view the ruler does not agree with is one way of controlling a people, and prevents any dissident views from appearing. People in those countries can't really push aside the authoritarian regimes, because if they even think about doing so, they'll soon find themselves going "missing".

 

[aFFi]

@Austriacus
Yeah, pretty much what falconx8 said.
Damn, the 3 examples you give are some of the worst offenders of liberties, so they completely validate my arguments.

Spoiler

This is a long, boring text on how each of those places aren't really good for their people in general.

China is actually trying to create a system to rate their citizens to discriminate and isolate people deemed against the government views. They also heavily censor anything that would be considered bad about their governance... they even ban books that even mention any problem with Tiananmen Square... and Wikipedia is blocked on the Chinese Internet because they refused to censor themselves...
They are actually pretty good at controlling their people, but almost all liberties are illusions... you are free as long as you do and think exactly what the governments tells you to. And that's applicable to everybody, even high members of the government who aren't the "President". Keeping your people ignorant to keep them docile is actually considered oppression, by the way.

The Middle East Kingdoms are notorious for still authorising honor killings. Rape victims and punished the same or sometimes worst than the assailant and torture is legal depending on the situation, especially against gays... Yeah, the country is pretty free if you're a rich religious heterosexual man, but everybody else is treated like shit, so that they can't rise up. Try to get up again, and they'll beat you up until you submit.

Singapore... the country controlled by the Lee family... The right of assembly requires government approval first, being gay is still criminal, non-Singaporeans are banned from joining or financing what the government calls "political or sensitive" and drug use can be punished by death... Yeah, they absolutely aren't oppressing their people, at all...

TL;DR:
China oppresses its people with censorship and prison, the Middle East Kingdoms with violence and death and Singapore by banning people from meeting in too big a group.
So I'll repeat what I initially said:

You either keep your people well, giving them education, healthcare and liberty... or you keep the reigns tight, oppressing your people and crushing dissidence as soon as it rises to maintain power.

And I don't think that the King depicted in this manga is the kind to oppress it's people to stay in power. A guy like that would never listen to some peasant of unknown origins, even if he had great ideas.

 

[kuyukotto]

@givemersspls

First, what other justification could there be?

Maybe Conquerors? Pioneers?

Almus himself previously made the absolutely fucking stupid idea of modeling it on the Japanese system, where the royalty has a creation myth of being descended from the gods. He says that would help in centralization. It's a fucking stupid idea because we can see exactly how pish poorly that worked out in almost any culture, including Japan, but that's beside the point.

I have no memory of reading this Lol. One thing is for sure, there would be blood shed.

 

[SoloSera]

@siscon The idea of a "good king" is naive, so making him the king would effectively change nothing in the long term. I personally think power structures as a whole have strong corrupting influences, but, as a society, we've kind of agreed that monarchy is a pretty stupid idea. Nobody wants to go back to that unless they get special perks. Playing out the fantasy of becoming king is fine, but going into depth about this fantasy completely kills it because of how shitty an idea it is.

 

[xironi]

"I like you, fuck my daughter"
"No I like you, become MY son"

 

[orp]

Gotta appreciate how everyone here agrees that Almus' plan is stupid, but noone agrees why.

 

[AKAAkira]

@givemersspls - there was a bit in here that the translators didn't phrase very well that might improve your understanding of this conversation.

The part I'm talking about is your question "Why didn't the king and his brother push back against the notion that the government must protect its citizens?" The answer is that Almus wasn't suggesting that that was the government's responsibility, he was suggesting that they proclaim doing so is their responsibility to get the common citizens on their side. So his way to preserve the royal family is to 1) proclaim a connection to divinity, and 2) proclaim that the kingdom (and I think by implication the royal family) has a duty to protect the common folk.

I think in which case it might diminish the possibility of the royal family and the citizens getting estranged somewhere down the line.

EDIT: Actually, now that I'm looking at the raws, it's funny you brought up Greece in comparison to the in-world Kirishia Cities - in the original Japanese the people are called キリシア (kirishia), while in Japanese Greece is called ギリシャ (girisha). (I don't know much about political terminology, but I avoided using "Federation" here since they've only been named as "Colonized Cities of the Kirishians" or "Kirishia Cities", and was only said to have a republican political system.)

 

[BloodySorcerer]

@SoloSera that's not true, not true at all. Monarchy works, we have centuries of kingdoms that rose incredibly under the guide of a king. It's just that much like how we have centuries of it's success we also have centuries of failures, so it's easy to find a counter argument.
However, I can easily argue that democracy is every little bit as a failure as Monarchy is.

We can see examples of that on many third world countries and even some first world countries. In a Monarchy the king is pretty much born knowing they will have political power and while some of them become corrupt themselves, one could easily find examples where it were the nobles and not the royal family who got corrupt.

In democracy since we have so many kinds of politicians and all of them have some degree of political power, once one get's corrupt, dig enough and you'll find that such corruption has already contamined at least 80% of all politicians. Well, in my country it's actually almost impossible to find decent politicians. To the point where I stopped voting altogether. In fact the only politicians I know were actually decent people were one Judge of supreme court who asked to be relieved of his duties in a few months of him being put in charge, and one senator(was it? I remember it was one guy in a decently high position) who called it quits in a month after he saw every single one of his "co-workers" was corrupt.

 

[AKAAkira]

@givemersspls - whoops, you're right, the Greece thing was @ninjadork. My bad, didn't look at the username there.

That aside, in terms of trying to make change, isn't the mere fact that doing X can be good even if it can also lead to a bad result, a good enough reason to try it? I don't think there is any route Almus could possibly suggest that has no potential of going bad in its own way, or has the chance of it going bad undeniably lesser than any other option. (Though of course this assumes that remaining in the current state of affairs is unacceptable.)

@SoloSera - this is just my amateur opinion, but I feel that another deficit to democracy is that if an agreement isn't decisive enough, it can postpone implementation for a long period of time. I seem to recall stories about one party or another dredging up enough votes to block a bill from passing - while I wouldn't know any concrete examples of it happening, I can easily imagine that a set of people would have power to continuously deny a policy that would make things better overall but would be at least mildly inconvenient to them.

Also the fact that democracy probably needs its voters to be educated and attempting to work in the system's best interests, and sometimes it's doubtful that either is occuring in the great majority of the population.

 

[ninjadork]

@AKAAkira those problems with democracy, and many others, are why America was set up as a Constitutional Republic. Any kind of straight up democracy usually dies out within one generation as lawfare and tribalism sets in.

 

[Coldlight]

So... he's basically inciting civil war by splitting the kingdom into 2 factions. Unbelievable that influential and militarily significant aristocrats will just accept diminishing their political power, especially when Ferme here is a successful example in the kingdom of rebelling against both his lord and the king to start his own kingdom.

 

[anon_whos_not_a_fag]

MC's idea is probably the dumbest thing I've ever read. Dropped.

I thought that Japanese schools were good, looks like the only thing they teach in history classes are that Japan numbaa wan.

What pisses me off the most is that this 'centralization' will somehow work because of plot armor.

 

[MesaOracle]

Late to the party but; Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. A Republic is a well armed lamb contesting the vote. No quotations as I am not exactly quoting Benjamin Franklin, but taking mild liberty with the quote.

 

[botodopo]

one of his subjects who contributed a lot of new technology to the country just got robbed by one of those families and he ain't doing shit about it, so is the king even capable of protecting his people

 

[BadHaremSchollar]

A few years ago?

Bruh, you have been a year in this world.

And you didnt learnt about it straight away.

 

[BadHaremSchollar]

one of his subjects who contributed a lot of new technology to the country just got robbed by one of those families and he ain't doing shit about it, so is the king even capable of protecting his people

Thats just the ancient world.

If your capital isnt being burned down is all good.

 

[BadHaremSchollar]

So everything is set but who will be the Brutus

No, Brutus was all about removing a tyrant. Which his faction succesfully did.

Its just that he ruined every step after killing the dictator that ended up in the fall of the roman republic.