perfidy

What I was attempting, distractedly, to do in my last post Devin has accomplished in a much more thorough-going fashion. He's laid out a sensible taxonomy of government types, into which all our governments can be squished. He also hits on an excellent way of phrasing the distinction I was arguing with Aretae about - legitimist v. lawless. A monarch is typically, though not always, going to be a legitimist regime; and will be behaving far differently than, say, Mao.

Having that taken care of, the remaining tasks are to figure out - hopefully in a detailed way, how the elite selection mechanism relates to the other things we are about. Economic growth, individual rights and liberties, justice, defense and, in general, quality of life.

I'd start right now, but it's past my bed time.