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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Highly recommend any of the interviews or podcasts Eduard Habsburg has done. He seems very pleasant and reasonable. the author's tone is typical of what writers must do to get published these days, and it makes me wonder how some people would justify themselves without nobility or goodness as a foil.

take away what Habsburg recommends (family, religion, ownership, traditional values that built a dynasty, etc) and what are you left with as far as advice for a good life? middling status eating disorders and yoni sunning from what i can tell. it's good to take advice from people who win, and his family has been in that business for quite some time. it's probably worth a listen.

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but nobody has to pick between “the worst manifestation of counterculture” and “traditionalist monarchism”. you can have a whole range of normal political views instead.

Yes, but the author of the article doesn't do that either. Everything is dismissed as ridiculous and old fashioned. Which is also just silly. Not rebelling or rebelling against everything are both bad paths. You need to realise some things you ancestors got right, and some things they got wrong.

As OP says the fashionable thing in media seems to be "dismiss absolutely anything that even faintly resembles old fashioned values as idiotic"

> Yes, but the author of the article doesn't do that either

So why are you doing the same?

That’s just the thing. It seems like we can’t.

He did an interview about this book on the podcast “The Rest Is History” which has become one of my favorite podcasts of all time. This particular episode was really funny. They ask him a few tough questions too:

Interviewer: “Ok but your family wasn’t really great to the people of Peru”

Habsburg: “We were learning.”

> Interviewer: “Ok but your family wasn’t really great to the people of Peru”

> Habsburg: “We were learning.”

I don't know what they did to the people of Peru, but if it follows the general pattern of crimes committed against colonized peoples, that is one hell of a euphemism.

And it seems intentionally morally vague, since it's not clear from that statement what it is that they learned.

> it's good to take advice from people who win, and his family has been in that business for quite some time.

There's a reason the Habsburg Empire isn't around anymore.

I'm sorry middling status eating disorders and what

For men, testicle sunning (it's a bit of a meme)

Yonic is the opposite of phallic, congrats on being one of today's 10,000

https://xkcd.com/1053/

For it's use in a sentence, see the very fun cover of "come on petunia" by the blow:

  Jamie stood on the stoop
  and he challenged his homies
  to go get some girlfriends
  and locate their yonis

https://youtu.be/MO1HSfzK1Ns

> traditional values that build a dynasty

This hides quote a lot of awful, cruel, selfish and unfair. You don't build monasty by being nice. Dynasties are possible only due to little stuff like massacres and human rights violation, belief that you are more entitled then others.

When you remove religion, traditional values that build monasty you get awful lot of great people who help other, who are nice, who work to create better world. And if you remove family you get the same except more lonely.

What eating disorders have with any of that is mysterious, since that is a disease of perfectionist girls with bad handling of fear. They are typically girls who try to please people.

That's some chip you have on your shoulder my friend!

Really? Cause if you read history, dynasty builders are not distinguished by some moral superiority. That is just not how it ever worked.

It is power struggle. You build and keep it by playing power well and pripritizing power. It does not mean you cant have other values as well, but this is deciding factor.

Wait what? How has his family been winning for quite some time?

Well, they ruled for nearly 1000 years. The last 100 years might just be a fluke local minima and they still might recover and rule the galaxy...

Classic problem. Gotta tweak the inputs in a big way to see if you can't get out of the trough. Perfect time for him to become something fun and interesting like maybe an unironic Posadist or one of the weirder sedevacantists.

You assume that they haven't ruled the last 100 years as well

He's able to get by on his family name, which is a marked downgrade from their long rule over most of Europe, seems to have set him up a fairly comfortable and easy-going life. That sounds like winning to me! If my country needs a new ambassador to the Pope, I'll be first in line!

Rare praise for cushy government jobs and low aspirations on HN. I'm here for it, don't get me wrong!

Since when was attaining the rank of ambassador and being appointed to the Vatican ‘low aspirations’?

Even the lowliest ambassador enjoys some authority, and much higher formal rank, than pretty much every non-unicorn startup founder.

Ambassador to a country with no currency or trade or airport. In the US it’s a meme that political donors get to be ambassador to one of the easy countries. Doesn’t get much easier than the Vatican.

> a country with no currency or trade or airport

though more involvement in international affairs than a lot of countries with all of the above

Involvement? They pledge their zero troops and threaten to withhold their zero dollars of trade? Maybe restrict movement over their zero square miles of air space? Is it early modern period day on HN what is going on????

In the days of Franz Joseph Karl, Habsburgs didn't get ambassadorial appointments; they gave them.

His recipe for winning: be born into the Habsburg family

It is a relative downgrade, in the sense that Europe was a lot worse of a place to live in the past. But I’m not sure, I think I’d rather be a rich guy in modern Europe than some king. If you are a rich guy in modern Europe:

* You get modern medical care

* Fancy cars

* Killing you isn’t a major political objective for a bunch of different countries

* You can probably hang out with American celebrities if they have the time

* Better food

By that token most people who have ever had the title of King, Shah, Emperor, Chief, Bwana, Pharoah, etc. would trade me my weight in gold to enjoy my flea-free mattress and working refrigerator.

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