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? | Seven sovereign provincial States; a States General with one vote per province and unanimity on war, peace and taxes; co-opting town councils; stadtholders and a Grand Pensionary. | Unknown | Kings of small kingdoms (túatha) under over-kings; assemblies (óenach); customary law expounded by hereditary jurists rather than legislated. | |
| How are conflicts resolved? | Provincial and town courts; negotiation in the States General; stadtholder arbitration and, in crises, force or crowd violence. | Unknown | 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? | Defence and navy funded by provincial quotas (Holland over half), water boards for dykes and drainage, town poor relief, charitable foundations and schools. | Unknown | Rules on shared grazing, co-operative ploughing, mills and fencing; obligatory hospitality; churches and monasteries; few public works. | |
| How is AI used? | None; an early-modern polity. | Unknown | None; a medieval legal order. | |
| What are the main risks? | Paralysis from unanimity, regent oligarchy, recurring conflict between Holland and the stadtholder, colonial violence, and foreign invasion.CLM-0377 | Unknown | 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.