"Well fed people are a peaceful people"
…… Oh the examples I could share about how wrong that can be… Especially the "Rat/Mouse Utopia" experiment.
Mind you, I do wish that it was true all the time instead of only most of the time.

"Hard times create strong men,
Strong men create good times,
Good times create weak men,
Weak men create hard times…"
Thus the cycle continues…

Even so, it shows why that the two of them have ideas to improve the lives of the country that they're destined to rule and gives them something that they both can work towards together. More of a relationship with each other.

Those mice were living fairly well until their population exploded.

Humans living under low mortality rates tend to have fewer kids.

Oh contrare, the mice didn't even remotely reach their peak population. The enclosure could easily house over 3,800 mice, but the population would only ever peak at roughly 800. Which was less than a 5th of what it could contain comfortably.

And as for humans, not nesisarily. It really depends upon the individual humans and even the introduction of other factors into the mix. For example: India has a overpopulation problem, but (like with China and the US) both mortality and birth rates have been falling drastically.

Even so, I think that the mouse population could have continued thriving if they just also do something that was discovered with some species of fish. Namely the simple introduction of a predator. I can't remember the exact experiment though, but basically this certain breed of fish kept dying out, until one person suggested including a predator fish to be included in the tank and (despite the predator fish was still seperated from the rest of the fish) the fish began thriving because their survival instincts were kicked in.

Even so, It's all still really fun to think and theorize about, isn't it? :3

I suggest you read this article about how attempts to replicate the “mouse utopia” experiment with humans yielded vastly different results
https://nihrecord.nih.gov/pdfs/2008.....008_Record.pdf

Well, right off the bat that sounds highly unethical and impractical as rodent populations increase much faster than humans can and do. Also there's the fact that experiments on human beings that are conducted over the course of their entire lives are forbiden for a reason. However, I have seen a few other experiments that were designed to try to prove other things that might apply if you like. However, even those experiments are insufficiant as they usually present themselves as only temporary vs applied for their entire lives.……

Ehem… sorry. TL;DR I highly doubt that there are such experiments, but I'm willing to give your sources a look over.

(Also there are a lot of articles here and none of them seem to be in order. The few that I do find on the topic are just stating all of the problems. Is/are there a specific page(s) you want me to look at.)

"Medical Historian Examines NIMH Experiments in Crowding": Starts page 1, continued on page 6.

Scientists looked at human populations and found that none of the criteria they selected as indicators of "social breakdown" and found no correlation to population density.

What they did find was that people forced into socially interacting with too many people caused stress, people in living situations that allowed more privacy were less stressed than people with less privacy in just as densely packed an area.

And really, Calhoun's barn of electrified "rooms" was more like some sort of mixed gender prison with no set room assignments than any modern human city. The rooms with single points of entry were taken over by families of rats that lived fairly normally for rats while the rest ended up brawling in the indefensible open rooms where they could find no privacy.

Thank you.

That actually sounds quite interesting. (Although, I'm still a little skeptical because of the name… if it's the real name, then it'd have to be a cruel joke.)

Of course you realize that this is moreso due to the fact that humans socialize in primarily one of two ways. Introvert and extrovert. Both types of people need to do different things so that they may "recharge", however, on thing does remain constant that they both need both each form of interaction to at least some degree. Introverts may need to alone to recharge, but will still get stir crazy if they don't socialize for a long period of time, while extroverts also need their private time as well.

Also you seem to be missing a quite a bit of information such as the odd case of the "beautiful ones" in the rat experiment and the fact that the (non-beautiful ones) rats also tended to cluster together despite the huge open spaces and hundreds of rooms.

Finally, remember, what they created in the experiement also required "utopia" as a factor. Which as defined by the original experiment means Unlimited food, lack of desease, consistant clean bedding, so on and so forth. You can't really do that with humans. (The previously mentioned experiments were for Socialist Societies, which also failed because… well, you can't keep them running consistant donations and socialism isn't exactly known for creating wealth.)

In any case, that wasn't what Freddie in this comic was suggesting.

He wants to build up Rackenroon's infrastructure and tech base so that they can break out of their pastoral feudalism to a modern economy.

Oh yeah, totally. One of the best ways to get people out of poverty is to innovate. Obviously they can't do it overnight. That'd be too much of a culture shock. Kind of like a bird that's lived their entire life in a cage suddenly being given freedom. It'll want to stay in the cage, but it's offspring might be more willing to fly away.

I was just trying to point out that just because people are "well fed" does not nessisarily correlate that they'll not be violent nor desire a revolution of some kind. I'm sure Ceaser would agree with me here considering how many times he got stabbed in the back… litterally.

I've always wondered how that experiment would've gone if the food was still unlimited, but the mice/rats had to earn it

Probably (And this is just hypothetical) something akin to the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" book: "Who Stole/Moved My Cheese?"
Which coincidentally, also stars mice.

Perhaps people who have it too easy start seeking excitement in destructive behavior, but initially, starving people are more likely to revolt against the leaders than people who are well-fed and comfortable.

I wont deny that, I mean look at Russia, France and even modern day Venezuela.
Same could be said for those who are seeking excitement in selfdestructive behavior.

For one group they're just bored, for the other all of the other peaceful options have been closed off to them. In either case, violence is inevitable.

It may also be for those that have it easy is that they just simply don't understand what the rest of the world is like outside of their little bubble. Come to think of it, it's sort of like what Kathryn is going through right now. The rest of the world isn't eactly like what we have in the western world and you wont truely know what it's like until either you visit it yourself and in some cases actually live there.

(Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me as well, btw. I love talking about stuff like this. Don't know why, but I do.)

Talking about political systems can be a dangerous thing in these times. It's nice when people can discuss issues without going berserk.

I call that "the YOLO problem"

And I read somewhere that revolts are acts of strength, not hunger. A starving people is a weak people (it was an article about North Korea)

Give them ipods and rock music. Make them -want- to have the cool stuff they can't get unless they change.

erm... they might take "Rock" music a bit too literally

“New World Order."

I'm starting to see Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, here. Maybe he was assassinated, after all!

Bravo! There is a double portrait of the couple that I used for the double portrait here!

Yay elections! Wait, empresses are elected?

And I like the spaceport idea, though that's mainly because it reminds me of Syldavia

The Empress is elected by the four Duchesses from their own number. A Duchess cannot vote for herself, and must rank the candidates in order of how she'd want them to finish. The Duchess with the most points becomes Empress, and her Heir then becomes Duchess in her place.

The first Empress of the Maramasai, Djarro, did not want the position of Empress to become dynastic, so she instituted the election rule. She felt that the other Duchesses would be less likely to plot an overthrow if they stood a chance of becoming Empress legally.

Empresses can choose to abdicate, but it rarely happens, mainly because there's no going back to being a Duchess. In recent times, Songween's mother, Poenari, abdicated due to poor health. She was elected Empress when Songween was in her teens, which made Songween a very young Duchess.