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? | Village assemblies or headmen set opening days, quotas, tools and labour duties; rights belong to member households. | Kings of small kingdoms (túatha) under over-kings; assemblies (óenach); customary law expounded by hereditary jurists rather than legislated. | Unknown | |
| How are conflicts resolved? | Rotating village guards patrol and fine violators, with sanctions graduated by severity; land disputes with the state go to the courts. | 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? | Firewood, fodder, thatch, fertiliser litter and later collectively managed timber plantations, maintained by compulsory communal labour. | Rules on shared grazing, co-operative ploughing, mills and fencing; obligatory hospitality; churches and monasteries; few public works. | Unknown | |
| How is AI used? | None. Rules and enforcement are entirely human and customary. | None; a medieval legal order. | Unknown | |
| What are the main risks? | Loss of economic value, cheap timber imports, depopulation, exclusionary membership rules and state pressure to individualise rights. | 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.