King

Who Is A King?

Head is the person at top of an organization. If the organization is a state, then the person is Head of State; if the organization is a department, then the person is Head of Department; and so on.

A special type of head is a king. He must have following properties:

He must be able to make organization-wide decisions on his own. If he need vote of members or approval of an executive committee for examples then he is not a king; he is a president. Its not that he should take unilateral decisions, its that he must be able to, because that power is needed in emergency and also when due to whatever reason the underlings are unable to decide on their own and the organization is going in paralysis.

 

He had delegated authority to underlings. He dont try to make all major decisions himself;  if he do then he is a dictator. Dictators are bad because they order around, not listen to and not confer to anybody beyond their immediate circle of around six people. This result in nobody taking ownership, both because they are too disheartened to and because they are no longer capable of even if they were capable before. A king dont work that way. A king make people incharge and that goes down to hundreds or thousands of individuals he personally put in charge of various parts of government. Dictator also make people incharge but those people can be counted on atmost two hands. As a result each one of those become too powerful to be replaced and too overburdened to handle his chunk of government.

A king, relatively speaking, keep very little for himself. He may appear to be getting huge amounts from treasury but he dont keep it for himself, he give almost all of it away to his officials and even to general public. A king, by definition, have to be generous; both in delegating power and in distributing wealth.  

Why Is A King Needed?

 

Kingship is the sweet spot where a head keep executives in check while at the same time treat them well enough that they happily take ownership. 

 

In democracy, the executives are not in check because power of head is divided so many times and in so many parts that its pretty unable to do much of anything.

In dictatorship, the power of head is concentrated so much in so few hands that the burden of governance overwhelm it; too few people have to make too many decisions, they cannot understand the implications of what they are doing. A dictatorship can certainly do a lot, and its the only reason any country ever switch to it, to get things done. Its just that the volume of decisions needed to be made by handful of people at top are so many that debates cannot be made, alternate paths cannot be sufficiently thought, information cannot be processed etc that it (the dictatorship) do more harm than good.

Kingship kills the root of problem. It delegate power down so many people make many decisions. Therefore each decision can get its proper attention as no single person is overwhelmed.

A decision is still made by one person, the executive incharge of that kind of matters. So no endless debates in parliament, no leg pulling and political compromises etc.

 

For this to work, the person at top, the head, must have the ability to fire at will the executives below. This is the stick that along with the carrot (power to make unilateral decisions) make kingship work. However this is not enough.

The remaining piece of puzzle is judiciary. If the head only have executive power and not judicial power then he cannot effectively put executives incharge in line. They can always run to courts to have judges intervene. This division of power at top make the whole system ineffective.

Whats needed, in this regard, the matter of judiciary, is that the head, the king, also have judicial power. He must be above all judges on land. His decisions have to be final.

What If The King Himself Become Corrupt Or Happens To Be Incapable?

This entire article has only one point: the head must have both executive and judicial power, and all of it. 

 

This is actually very risky because this kind of system has one point of failure. If the king dont work as he should then the whole system suffer. This is not a viable system.

There have to be some mechanism to peacefully, that is, without a rebellion or a war, replace the king; have the current king deposed and have another person put in the position of king. Question is, who will do it? It shouldnt be the executives incharge, the underlings, because if they have such power then king cannot control them. I intent to answer this question in another post.