How each model solves the same problems
Instead of “democracy versus anarchism”, compare the concrete ways collective problems get solved.
| Question | + Model | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| How are decisions made? | Great Council of all adult noble men elected a Senate, Minor Council and a rector serving one month; real power lay with the Senate. | Kings of small kingdoms (túatha) under over-kings; assemblies (óenach); customary law expounded by hereditary jurists rather than legislated. | |
| How are conflicts resolved? | Republican courts with appeal to councils; diplomacy, tribute and neutrality in external disputes. | Brehon judges; sureties (naidm, ráth, aitire); distraint of livestock; ritual fasting against higher-ranking defendants; body-fines and honour-price compensation.Arbitration | |
| How are public goods funded? | State salt monopoly, granaries, an aqueduct, hospitals and orphanage, quarantine and a permanent Health Office. | Rules on shared grazing, co-operative ploughing, mills and fencing; obligatory hospitality; churches and monasteries; few public works. | |
| How is AI used? | None; a pre-modern polity. | None; a medieval legal order. | |
| What are the main risks? | Exclusion of commoners, a shrinking closed nobility, dependence on great-power goodwill, and decline of Mediterranean trade. | Status-graded and unequal protection, unfree labour, endemic raiding and dynastic war, and vulnerability to a centralising conqueror.CLM-0385 |
This illustrates differences in design; it is not a universal claim about outcomes. Each cell links to mechanisms and the claims behind them.