Poll: British Monarchy

[HillGoose]

Lol @ all dogmatic republican Muricans in this thread. You guys make me more of a monarchist than I ever was.

Vive la Republique!

[Kingpoleon]

Looking at the American system, I can tell you that a monarchy outside of the elective system(or an elective monarchy with 10/15 year terms) would have many potential benefits, especially if it had auditing power.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

One of the curious things about the British monarchy is that as an institution it is certainly more powerful than, say, the Swedish, Dutch or Norwegian Royal Families. That is, we don't have a written constitution, so a lot of the (lack of) powers of the monarch are merely based on precedent. This has some curious results: for example, precedent gives a lot of the monarch's powers to his or her Prime Minister, meaning the executive is fairly overpowered compared to many other parliamentary systems. Even as it stands, the monarch is far more involved in backdoor politics than their European counterparts.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I'd say go with whatever the people want in this case (they generally seem to dramatically prefer maintaining the current system). If I was a UK citizen and there was a referendum I'd probably vote to keep it.

Abolish, people shouldn't have to pay taxes so others can live a lavish lifestyle

Doing additional research shows that the British royal family makes a fyck ton of money for the government.

Oh please inform me if you know so much

From some stuffy right-wing site. You can find other sources if you want but lots of them ignore things like the Crown Estate.

Make it an elective monarchy. republic

It pretty much already is an elective Republic, though. We're very far removed from the days where monarchs had much power at all. The Royal Family is a mascot for the UK that according to most sources I can find (i.e. not counting dogmatic hit-pieces) actually does more than pay for itself.

Honestly, talking about it in terms of a "monarchism vs. republicanism" debate is ridiculous since--being that we are talking of a western country in 2018 instead of talking about Saudi Arabia or a country in the 18th century--the monarch has no power. From a "what governmental system is best" standpoint a constitutional monarchy and constitutional republic are identical. Looking at how the "Presidential system" thing has turned out for the US makes me feel like criticizing the UK's system is a case of, to paraphrase the Bible, trying to take a speck out of our brother's eye before we remove a plank from our own

The royals don't actually own the crown estate though. The bean-counting argument (for or against the monarchy) utterly collapses upon examination, not only because it is depressingly utilitarian and cynical, but the exact finances of the royal family are shadowy and exempt from FOI requests.

Anyway, my beliefs are very simple and stem from quite a basic value formed from the Enlightenment: that all men are born equal and the hereditary principle is a load of bunkum. I don't particularly mind the pomp and ceremony, even though it is a lot less "ancient" than it purports to be; but I dislike the idea that people should be born into roles, and I certainly dislike the whole entourage that comes with a "royal family". Take this past weekend for example. Harry, short of some Nepalese Royal Massacre incident, will never become monarch or have any constitutional role at all (beyond the murky role that many seek). Why should the nation stop for such an event of non-significance?