Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb

2) In the UK, the *effective* head of state is a regular citizen who works in what bankers would consider a shoddy townhouse, leaving the distractions of the pomp to the defanged *nominal* one. In France, the president is a monarch. Mitterrand was effectively a modern Louis XIV. — PolitiTweet.org

Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb

3) There is something vicious by "commoners" keeping aristocracy in nominal positions: nobody considers them intelligent, not even themselves. Royals are therefore self-excluded from the elite: it makes them non-dangerous, relegated to a degrading form of human dog breeding. — PolitiTweet.org