[SolarCross]

I just had an idea for a TV show to be called "King for a Day". It would be a reality TV show rather like Big Brother except the contestants compete to become King for a Day. As King they have the power to make the other contestants obey their will and whim by use of the leverage of threatening "exile" or "detention". Exile is being kicked off the show and detention is being put in isolation. To assist in the enforcement of the king's will they will have at their disposal the Palace Guard, a beefy fellow in a fancy outfit who is a permanent employee of the show. The first king is chosen by the other contestants by a simple vote. A king stays king until the other contestants call coup d'etat and physically subdue the Palace Gaurd whereupon the current king is exiled and a new king chosen. The viewers at home as "the masses" can phone in as and when they feel like it for a "revolution" but only when the number of calls passes some threshold will revolution come into effect. Revolution will be when all the contestants are exiled and new ones brought in with only the Palace Guard remaining in place.

What do you think?

Edit Additional:

The programme will run for year or so after which the king that had the longest reign will get a sizable cash prize.
Any contestest exiled is replaced with a new contestant.
When selecting contestants the show will give priority to people with extreme or unusual political views over others. Ideally we would have a mix of hard leftists, anarchists, hard rightists, racial supremacists, feminazis, "humans are a plague" environmentalists, misogynists, muslim and christian fundamentalists and so on.

[Voluntarism]

You need to throw some sort of economy/tasks in there for the peasants to be doing under the King's rule. Unfortunately, without a big enough group this may not show much :/

[SolarCross]

Well I didn't think of it as a way to show up statist economics. More I wanted to show up the psychology of statism in action. See this is the great advantage to doing this as a fly-on-the-wall reality show rather than as fictional drama or even historical dramatisation, it will be so much more visceral to see real people rather than made up characters scheming, lying, humiliating, bullying and conniving each other. With a fictional piece the audience knows its not real and can easily dismiss it as entertainment or propaganda. But a reality show it is something more empirical like an experiment.

The contestants also are not in the role of peasants but rather political parties / factions / courtiers / special interest groups etc.

It might even be fun if the palace guard position was up for grabs by the contestants too rather than taken by an employee of the show. The contestant that takes the palace guard position is chosen by the king. This will create an interesting dynamic where contestants seeking kingship try to make alliances with the more physically imposing contestants to give themselves a better chance of seeing off a coup attempt.

The actual coup could be done by "its a knockout" or "gladiators" style physical contest with padded batons and such.

[Voluntarism]

The first thing I thought of was that old psych experiment where they split a bunch of students into being prisoners and guards and the guards ended up acting sadistically to the prisoners.

[SolarCross]

The first thing I thought of was that old psych experiment where they split a bunch of students into being prisoners and guards and the guards ended up acting sadistically to the prisoners.

Yes but that was an academic study for academic consumption how much better if something like that was on prime time television for the edification of the greater part of humanity rather just than a narrow clique of experts.

[mum]

It would be pretty interesting. It would of course have to compete with the plethora of singing and dancing contestant shows...

[Dagoth Ur]

lol reality tv as empirical data. You know that shit is always scripted. Conflicts emphasized and egged on is more entertaining than humans working together like we do every single fucking day.