Monarchists: can you explain the appeal?

Specifically in regards to the British royal family, who don't really wield much actual policy power, it seems to be more a cultural/traditional curiosity. They're more like national mascots than anything.

In the case of actual monarchist government, I'm not a monarchist myself but in a certain sense I can understand the logic. Your leaders are trained basically from birth to be leaders, and institutional wealth and lack of elections makes them more difficult to bribe. If your monarch is a good and responsible person, the power to make sweeping improvements without slow, fiddly debates and negotiations is a big benefit.

The logic falls apart pretty quickly in reality though. Generations of isolation from the common people makes you ineffectual in the long term even if your intentions are pure. Then there's the difficulty of dethroning a monarch whose intentions aren't pure.

Look, I'm not saying this because I am assigning some moral or ethical judgement to paying taxes but calling the set up of the Royal Estate as tax is...flawed.

That is like saying an individual who withdraws a salary from their corporation is taxed at the rate equivalent to what they didn't withdraw.

Further,

The revenues from these hereditary possessions have been placed by the monarch at the disposition of His Majesty's Government in exchange for relief from the responsibility to fund the Civil Government

...

In 1760, George III surrendered control over the estate's revenues to the Treasury,[6] thus relieving him of the responsibility of paying for the costs of the civil service, defence costs, the national debt, and his own personal debts. In return, he received an annual grant known as the Civil List.

I guess the revenues don't fully cover the cost of the government? Seems like a good deal for the monarchy vs a tax?

If you do the "getting rid" of them correctly, they definitely won't be aristocrats anymore.

I'm not strongly either way but I like the public holiday for their birthday!

'Appeal' isn't exactly the word. We just don't dislike him enough to kick him out.

I'm a 'Murican. When they had that royal wedding back in 2012 or whenever and everyone was going crazy I was like didn't we fight a war so we wouldn't have to care about this?

I've been around general monarchists, as in people who support monarchy as a form of government, and always wanted to ask this question. The best answer I can think of myself is that democracy is not a guarantee against bad leadership.

i don't see the appeal either. i like to think for myself. but i guess many people just don't like to make decisions themselves so they defer them to someone else.

Rich dommy mommy telling me what to do.

I'm not monarchist. I think most of the time it ends up as a disaster. However, I'd say the appeal is training someone from birth to be a good leader. Theoretically this could still involve checks and balances.

The other benefit is that they can just get shit done instead of arguing about every little thing and special interest groups roadblocking progress at every turn. Again, this usually backfires spectacularly, but that's the dream, to just go have a vision and fuckin' do the thing.

Plato envisioned extending this to a ruling class/aristocracy that is intentionally not allowed to own property but instead focuses on just doing their job to benefit the city. They don't have to campaign, they can't reject power, so it is to their benefit to do a good job and benefit the city. There is some logic to this since any schmuck can get elected in a democracy, and money hungry oligarchs are diametrically opposed to having qualities desirable in leadership such as patriotism or caring about others in any way.

British monarchy gets tax money plus from their own companies and land holdings that arent taxed

I might have a weird view of things but I don't want to get rid of royalty, just take away any authority they have over the lives of themselves and others. They already live off others' work. Let's keep them as national pets.

'Who's a good king? Who looks nice and waves for the people?'

'Is it me, <racial slur>?'

'No! No talking! Bad! Smack you on the nose with a rolled up replica magna carta.'

Interesting.

As a woman, I can walk around the city without covering my hair and not be bothered by anyone.

Is this true in general? Is Mecca (or Medina for that matter) included?

I never been there, but my folks have for Hajj.
You can probably guess the country, we have the largest Muslim by population.

So my anecdote for Saudi generally refer to those two particular place.

Who do you think they are? The French?

Yes, the French have palaces too, but they attract nothing like the numbers as the actual real, functioning palaces and castles actually used by a real, breathing monarchs.

Just FYI, this is incorrect, Versailles gets more visitors a year (15 million) than all British palaces combined (~2 million.)

Not a monarchist, but I definitely have one big gripe with democracy.

Who is responsible?

I feel like there is no responsibility within democracy. Politicians just point at abstract things like party, commission etc. They can sell the country to the outsiders for cash money and nobody will be at fault. Or perhaps it's the voter, his fault for voting. And when there is too much "guilt" put on party they just disband it and start a new one. Same people, same issues, just a different name.

As for British Monarchy - they are literally pets. I wouldn't mind a permanent big-brother house with royal family for my country. Would certainly save up on production of telenovelas.