My little head-canon: the matters of Equestria's national security · 10:14am Aug 5th, 2014
In my previous blog post I explained my vision about some things with body transformations in the show. Now I will explain, how this thing affected Equestrian government and why it works the way it is in the show.
When Luna transformed to Nightmare Moon, it happened because of her mental issues and unhappiness. Envy, bitterness, feeling of uselessness and exclusion... And many other things. That was explosive cocktail, and it surely exploded. In human world such explosion usually appear as suicide or shooting in school, or some other act of aggression, inner or outer. But in pony world, where magic exists, inner aggression transformed Luna, almost killed her as person (aka suicide), and then outer aggression... well, you all saw it in show. Shooting, castle destruction, attempt to kill, attempt to usurp throne, attempt to make night eternal (and starve everypony to death, because herbivore's food can't grow without sun)... It was very bad case, and I doubt Luna recovered fully even after purification by Elements.
But I digress. Luna's case was very bad because of her very bad emotional state, extreme unhappiness. But, according to my previous post, such thing can happen to everypony who have enough bottled negative emotions inside. This... err... Little Nightmare (I don't think it's good term, but for now it will work, and if you can think better one - say in comments, and I'll change it) will not be as powerful and dangerous as Nightmare Moon, but around will be ordinary ponies, not the powerful Alicorn of the Sun. Casualties will be disastrous. So keeping her little ponies happy is not the matter of kindness, it's the matter of national security (well, kindness helps too). After her sister's banishment Celestia worked hard to make system where such extreme unhappiness will not appear in anypony. She even made Day Court accessible to commoners, so everypony can come and tell her what bothering them. And slavery is forbidden for same reason. And public health service was made. And many others improvements to society system. That's why Equestria have such strange tech and social level - the things not needed to raise level of happiness advanced slowly, but the things necessary for making ponies more happy was sponsored by the crown and were upgraded swiftly.