[890] in Daily_Rumour
Political Power clarification
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (bcb@MIT.EDU)
Sat Feb 18 22:32:33 1995
From: bcb@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 95 22:31:54 -0500
To: rumor@MIT.EDU
This was mostly written by a player, but it seems to explain things more
clearly than anything I wrote, so here it is.
Political Power is {\it not} a measure of how many vote you have in some
theoretical council of nobles. (There is no such thing.) It is a measure
of how much force you can bring to bear in the case an arguement between
lords actually came down to a fight. Any edict by any lord is technically
of equal "legality", people just tend to ignore edicts without much force
behind them the same way you ignore the speed limit. Any number of lords
do not make an edict in violation of the kings law "legal". If enough
lords sign such a thing, you can generate enough force that the king
couldn't enforce it against you (always assuming no invocation of godly
powers, or something), but you don't make your actions legal or in
furtherance of your oaths of fealty, you just make them stick.
Veto power is like Hillary Clinton contradicting Bill. It doesn't have any
*legal* force, but Bill Clinton would, I think, have a lot of trouble
generating public support for anything Hillary loudly objected to.
Brian
for Siege
