> And therefore the monarch's own wealth and power is at stake.

They have a tolerance of how much resource can be wasted. President's kickback isn't worth anything when the resource wasted can actually cause problem for the nation(Only at this point the monarch will start paying attention). So i am pretty sure they both are similar in this context.

The President is not the nation, and therefore problems for the nation are not problems for the President. It doesn't matter how much resource the President wastes, it doesn't impact their bottom line. This is especially true in democracies with term limits where the Presidential power has a known end, but the President's personal wealth does not.

In a proper democracy, a group of elected officials convene and then give permission to the president to send you off to die.

That group of elected officials is still spending your life to enrich themselves at no personal risk. By nature of the monarch owning you and the country, if the country loses the monarch loses.

This doesn't appear to be true at any time in history for a plethora of monarchies. Do you have anything to support your argument save for your well articulated but poorly reasoned thought process?

It's axiomatic of monarchy, not a thought process or reasoned argument. If the monarch owns all the wealth in the country, then if the wealth of the country goes down, the wealth of the monarch goes down. If the laborers die, if the resources are mismanaged, etc. then the monarch's wealth and power diminishes (because the laborer's lives and the resources are the monarch's wealth). A monarch may choose to spend their wealth (including your life) to take over more territory, but they are spending their own wealth to achieve that goal.

This is categorically different from a democracy where the leadership's wealth is separated from the nation's. If the laborers die, the President is not impacted in the least. A President may choose to spend your life and money to take over new territory and increase their power, but they are spending your wealth to do it, not their own. If the resources are mismanaged you are harmed, not the President.

Firstly you are pretending that people are rational actors. This isn't necessarily true of people in aggregate and its sure as hell not true of individuals who have many wildly divergent understandings of the world, the probable end results of different actions, and desired outcomes including but not limited to aggregate wealth.

Next this doesn't even work out if we replace the monarch with an automaton which faithfully executes economic theory.

A monarch of 100M people might spend 10,000 people for some end that on net increases his wealth whereas a president of 100M might find the rest of the people so appalled at the 10k corpses that they vote him out of office.

If you look at how monarchs have actually and in fact spent the blood of their people historically we wouldn't have to argue theory. Throughout history monarchies have spent their people liberally in proportion to their ability to do so. You can look at recent history at a bunch of nations that are still technically monarchies you will note that their period of moderation directly coincides with the waning power of the very actor you claim somehow serves to moderate the state.

I only spoke to the inherent incentives and risks for each type of leader: monarch and President. The rest of that stuff you filled in on your own.

The rest of what I filled in on my own is reality. The motivations you propose constitute a limited theory on how leaders of nations behave. Comparing your theory to thousands of years of actuality ought to cause a rational actor to conclude your theory is at best so incomplete as to be useless and at worst completely wrong.

You appear to have imagined that I suggested there is one and only one narrow motivation for Presidents/monarchists regarding their own personal wealth and that single narrow motivation would be the only thing impacting their behavior. I made no such suggestion. Therefore all of your extrapolations are invalid.

> Monarchy is superior to democracy in a very important way. When a monarch sends you off to die in war, the monarch is spending their own resources: you. And therefore the monarch's own wealth and power is at stake. In a democracy the president sends you off to die at no cost to themselves and only really strands to gain from the kickbacks.

This understanding is completely outside of actual reality. The statement "Monarchy is superior to democracy in a very important way" goes on to explain why you believe the monarch has a greater incentive to avoid wasting the lives of his citizens. This isn't even close to true. A monarch who loses 1% of his "wealth" in the form of dead people still has the other 99%. A President can lose his job, his wealth, and his personal power for less.

A president is incentivized not to put upon the people more than they can bear with the understanding that all they have to do to be rid of him is check a different box next go round. A monarch faces the same risk but only if the anguish of the people is enough for them to spend copious amounts of their own blood in violent revolution.

This difference in resistance is the dominant difference in motivation NOT a proprietary feeling towards a kings subjects. This is well born out by an ocean of blood spilled foolishly by monarchies through history. I don't misunderstand you. I don't think you have properly understood history.