How each model solves the same problems
Instead of “democracy versus anarchism”, compare the concrete ways collective problems get solved.
| Question | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| How are decisions made? | Irregular diets of town delegates deciding by agreement, recorded in recesses binding in practice only on consenting towns; regional diets; self-governing kontore abroad. | Kings of small kingdoms (túatha) under over-kings; assemblies (óenach); customary law expounded by hereditary jurists rather than legislated. | Unknown | |
| How are conflicts resolved? | Kontor courts with appeal to Lübeck; arbitration between towns by neighbours or diets; embargoes and exclusion of members as sanctions.Arbitration | Brehon judges; sureties (naidm, ráth, aitire); distraint of livestock; ritual fasting against higher-ranking defendants; body-fines and honour-price compensation.Arbitration | Unknown | |
| How are public goods funded? | Collective trading privileges, merchants' courts abroad, shared urban law, convoys against pirates; financed ad hoc by member towns. | Rules on shared grazing, co-operative ploughing, mills and fencing; obligatory hospitality; churches and monasteries; few public works. | Unknown | |
| How is AI used? | None; a medieval network. | None; a medieval legal order. | Unknown | |
| What are the main risks? | Free-riding and opt-outs by member towns, monopoly privileges that harmed outsiders, defence of oligarchic town councils, and stronger territorial states.CLM-0374 | Status-graded and unequal protection, unfree labour, endemic raiding and dynastic war, and vulnerability to a centralising conqueror.CLM-0385 | Unknown |
This illustrates differences in design; it is not a universal claim about outcomes. Each cell links to mechanisms and the claims behind them.