On Kings, For Kings: Take #2

This morning, at the tea-shop, I met two Gurkhas from Nepal. One said he'd been in Pondicherry for 12 years. The other said he'd been here for 26 years! Both said that they'd prefer to stay back home - if only their country had some economic prospects to offer. Both said that today things were far worse than during King Birendra's reign. They decried Nepal's politicians. And they did not say anything good about their new king, Gyanendra, or his son, Paras.


Hans-Hermann Hoppe comes to mind. In his magnificent book Democracy: The God That Failed Hoppe puts forward the thesis that "traditional monarchies" are always much better than democracies. Yet, if we look around, we see so many kings who don't know a thing about government: Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Japan - and even England and all the Crowned Heads of Europe.


To me (and I do believe Hoppe will concur with me on this) the greatest monarchs of Europe were the Hapsburgs - and America did the world a great disservice by pulling them down. Of course, they had their own tragedies, too - and the mysterious death/suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf was one of these. It damaged Carl Menger's career, for sure, for Menger was Rudolf's teacher.


In the world of today, democracies are ALL failing - from the USSA to Europe to Japan to India - and the main reason is the "funny money" which is causing "capital consumption" and consequent "de-civilisation."


Traditional monarchies must replace them - or we must head for a "Natural Order."


Traditional monarchies ruled without Parliament. The monarch commanded the public administration - and that is all. People lived in a "private law society." There was zero legislation. The King rarely passed statutes binding on all his subjects. The people had Property, Contracts and Torts - and Liberty, too.


And there is more. Traditional monarchies never produced paper money. Money was GOLD - and gold is a form of "private money." Under traditional monarchies, the world was under a Gold Standard. Below is Adam Smith's famous "Three Duties of the Sovereign" - and do note there is NO mention of money:

According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to; three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings:

first, the duty of protecting the society from violence and invasion of other independent societies; 

secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice;

and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.

Now, if some monarchs here and there want to emulate their ancient forbears and govern their nations well, I recommend a book, and that is Carl Menger's Lectures to Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria. Menger had been hand-picked by the Empress Catherine to tutor her son in "classical liberal political economy" and had he made it to the throne, Rudolf would surely have made an excellent king.


But this book is now with us, in an edition prepared by Professor Erich Streissler of Vienna University, from the hand-written notebooks of Rudolf himself, which were found in the State Archives.


Kings who wish to deserve their crowns and thrones ought to read this book.


And then, who knows, the magic of the Hapsburgs might be recreated in some other parts of the world.