Federal Senators are supposed to be elected by state legislatures.

The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire – by Wess Mitchell.

No, not inbred in a word. They fell from Exhaustion after centuries of holding off enemies Tous Azimuts – all points of the compass. Turks to the South, Prussia to the North, France to the West, Italian states to the South, Russia to the East.

Inbreeding would have revealed itself much sooner, in fact it never revealed itself. The Final Grand old man Franz Joseph the Emperor died working at his desk, he slept on an army cot and wore his uniform every day of his life. He had terrible misfortunes, no one ever called him a fool.

Really they fell because of the critical error of alienating their key ally Russia over the Crimean War, inability to modernize fast enough and above all nationalism. For the Hapsburgs to have survived nationalism they would have had to at least recognize the Czech’s, Croations, as a co-equal monarch giving them 4 monarchs instead of one – but they also lacked a common enemy to unite their peoples and their neighbors when the Ottomans retracted. The need to not destroy the Ottoman’s just to keep them managed may have influenced the fatal mistake of making Russia a friend instead of foe – a bitter foe – over Crimea.

In many ways balancing their neighbors friends and foes, picking their fights carefully and keeping the balance of power was their strategy and their greatest achievement. In the end they were simply overwhelmed. The mistakes of WW1 must be in context of all these forces tearing them apart and their choice to essentially go down fighting.

I wouldn’t toss the great achievements of the Hapsburg’s away. Because of them we have the modern military staff system, cartography in a military sense but above all Imperial America can learn how to balance friends and foes at all points of the compass – Austria had no choice, although we did and perhaps still do.

The elite cement their power by infantilizing the culture. Then it’s: “See? The sheeple need us!”

This falls apart when the elite themselves become degenerate.

Vote-based governance beyond tribe size (100-200 people) is NOT intuitive. Really hard to run. But, note, too, that vote-based systems win. Ed West’s observations argue that a transition to a vote-based system can be eased by keeping a king around for a while. Sounds right.