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? | A college of Nine serving two-month terms, chosen from lists of eligible merchant-class men; a General Council of the Bell approving laws and taxes; a foreign podestà and a Captain of the People.Sortition / citizens' assembly | Kings of small kingdoms (túatha) under over-kings; assemblies (óenach); customary law expounded by hereditary jurists rather than legislated. | |
| How are conflicts resolved? | Courts under a hired foreign podestà; co-optation of magnates into lesser offices; militias against conspiracies. | 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? | Palazzo Pubblico, Campo, fountains and aqueducts, walls and roads; financed by direct taxes assessed on a property survey and by indirect taxes. | Rules on shared grazing, co-operative ploughing, mills and fencing; obligatory hospitality; churches and monasteries; few public works. | |
| How is AI used? | None; a medieval commune. | None; a medieval legal order. | |
| What are the main risks? | Narrow oligarchy controlling eligibility lists, exclusion of magnates and artisans, banking failures, plague and external intervention.CLM-0408 | 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.