[samstave]

I honestly can't understand this.

They have a queen and a royal family which, AFAIK, literally do nothing meaningful, aren't running the country, don't produce anything of value (from what I can see) and yet are paid billions (land holdings etc) and are forcing populous to pay fealty to them in many respects...

I just don't understand why... The only thing I can see is "Because I said so, that's why", which doesn't seem to be a sound basis for government.

[GW150914]

The most popular argument I’ve heard is that the royal family actually makes more money for the UK than they cost, although those arguments seem to assume that abolishing royalty would mean bulldozing the artifacts and architecture which are the real revenue source. I think the real reason why is that the aristocracy does actually run a lot of things, if a bit indirectly. The House of Lords is a powerful, rich group of people, and who hands out the honors thst enobled them? How many in the House of Commoms aim to become lords and retire? Would they really vote to dismantle the institution which might make them lords?

[scrame]

I saw it once described as "the perfect split of politics and patriotism". People can love the queen and hate the PM.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> They have a queen and a royal family which, AFAIK, literally do nothing meaningful, aren't running the country, don't produce anything of value (from what I can see) and yet are paid billions (land holdings etc) and are forcing populous to pay fealty to them in many respects...

I think that's kind of a backwards view of how it works these days. If anything, the royal family are a bunch of mascots that not only bring in billions to the UK, but also, for better or for worse, serve as a unifying identity for millions of people.

If anything, I think most celebrities in the US serve as a bunch of vacuous narcissists, while at least the royal family understands "noblesse oblige" and their jobs basically involve making non-stop charity appearances.