It's...it's sorta
not tbh. And that deserves some elaboration which in turn means I'm gonna have to cobble together a bunch of lessons into a somewhat workable argument and talk about the political mechanics of a setting I'm not intimately familiar with. So, uh, bear with me please.
And if I fuck shit up feel free to correct me.
My biggest issue with the video is that it commits the cardinal sin of study and pretty bluntly asserts that there is only
one way that shit works. And you should always be suspicious about that. 'Cause that's someone trying to win an argument by pretending there
isn't an argument to be had at all. Political Science wouldn't be such a diverse and argumentative field if there was an authoritative truth about how everything really worked. The truth is, like, there are a variety of competing arguments for how states function and how decisions are reached, a fair number that the video doesn't touch on in favor of selling this one particular narrative. And it's not really a new narrative either y'know? It's the "evil people are more efficient" narrative. It's Machiavellian thought-porn that says the hardest men win and that the only
really important people are a handful of elites.
Like even at the first hurdle it sort of eats shit then dusts itself off and walks off whistling: there are a lot of reasons that perspectives change in the transition from ruler-to-be to ruler. They can become isolated by the position they hold and have their information filtered through yes-men. The instruments and organs of power like the courts and the legislature might not be as responsive as they would like or might be particularly opaque. The video acknowledges that the throne isn't omnipotent but it explains that away as a function of the throne not having infinite dosh. Which isn't the case. But, like, let me tackle this shit point by point. It'll probably flow better.
Rule One: Get the Key Supporters on your Side
On the face of it this makes intuitive sense and it's not completely wrong in the fundamentals. You need a secure power base to hold office. There are certain people who are critical to exercising your power that you have to sway. The issue comes when the video tries to say that this is all there really is.
But it's, yaknow, not.
What the video seems to mostly be describing is the neo-patrimonial systems that dominated dictatorships like those of Sub-Saharan Africa post-independence. The nation has a few major industries: a principal agricultural export or source of mineral/metal wealth. I control that and distribute the proceeds to my followers. They distribute their share to theirs. I look after my cronies and they look after me. But even that has its roots in some form of institutional legitimacy. The state has a momentum of its own. Its own
inertia. Customs and concerns and action exist that provide legitimacy beyond "I have dosh let's be friends".
To explain with a real world example: in those African dictatorships what often occurred was that the first parties to form post-independence had a grossly lopsided position of power. They attracted the educated elites. They gathered most of the popular support. They essentially pulled all the oxygen out of the room and made it hard for loyal oppositions to form and in that vacuum, with no real competitors or contenders for the throne, they crafted systems that further entrenched and reinforced their power. It wasn't some guaranteed outcome and it wasn't something that was built entirely on control of dosh. They couldn't do what they did if they didn't have such popularity.
Similarly institutions and norms themselves have a sort of weight to them that exert a tangible force. "I am the King and thus I am divine"
matters to people. In Exalted the Dragonblooded have Great Houses, their names and reputation are linked with but not wholly dependent upon the state of their coffers yeah? The purity and strength of their bloodline is an important facet that doesn't rely purely on dosh as does their military record. These Houses additionally have a say in the government iirc, via a Diet. They have rights that the Scarlet would be very, very unwise to transgress. The Immaculate Faith exists to give additional legitimacy to the reigns and actions of the Dragonblooded and people wholeheartedly buy into it.
And then on top of
that is the fact that popular support
matters. 5% of a nation can't casually oppress and occupy 95% of it. Not without some consent from the majority. Not without some form of acquiescence from the population. An unpopular ruler who dutifully buys up all the bureaucrats isn't going to have a stable and secure rule. A beloved leader who faces opposition from the nobles still wields power that the nobles have to recognize and account for.
It's not all just economics.
Rule Two: Control the Treasure
It's true that cash covers a multitude of sins and it's equally true that it's hard to run a nation when you're fucking broke. The video brings up rentier states as a thing (and they are a thing, states that derive most of their income from renting out natural resources for developments and thus don't have to give a shit about what their population says) but the situation is more complicated. Rentierism and analogues have seen something of a decline since the Cold War. The US and USSR don't give a shit about funneling millions of dollars in aid to Angola so they can claim to be furthering the cause. Furthermore that kind of thing depends on having some crucial resource (which not all states do) and can make you incredibly sensitive to price fluctuation for that resource. See: Venezuela. Diversification is still often a good idea (Iran and Saudi Arabia are working on that iirc) but that involves more taxes.
And if people are paying taxes they tend to want
something out of it.
Which is sorta the big failing of the video I think. There's been a lot (a lot a lot a fucking lot) of revolutions and revolts over unjust taxation. The situation is more complicated when you move out of the modern world but the general gist remains that people don't want to pay something for nothing and keeping your boot on their neck and bleeding them dry is ultimately unsustainable. Abuses provoke backlash (Boudica yo). At some point you have to get them to
want to pay into the system. Which means you have to provide them security and infrastructure, which is something the Realm does for its territories iirc?
Their Legions provide a bulwark of defense for the population. They can build roads and larger works. Their Wyld Hunts can manage and disperse pretty fuck-awful supernatural threats. Again 5% can't indefinitely rule without some agreement at a more local level.
Rule Three: Minimize Key Supporters
Just to be blunt this isn't always feasible or advisable. People aren't exactly interchangeable parts that you can swap in and out as needed and organizations themselves often are resistant to sudden, sweeping change. There's more to manage than just having the smallest inner circle you can and I think the video does something of a disservice by explicitly portraying it as the one thing that really matters.
Like honestly, if you want an example for why this kind of approach isn't exactly advisable I'm
pretty sure it's exactly what the Solars did yeah?
They thought as long as they retained control of a few key functions of government and had their own personal lethality they were essentially unassailable and could do as they pleased and the people would be glad to bend and lick their boots.
And then the Dragonblooded went "fuck this noise, we get rights too" and knifed them en masse yeah?
(As a side note: I'm still really disappointed that Dragonblooded are just anime-people instead of, like, actually dragon-dudes.
)
