Quite possibly, society doesn't sit still, but it's still an improvement from before in modern constitutional republic context. Beats going to war to change rulers.

>an improvement

I'm sure some think it is. I think dictating power based on war ability makes way more sense than everyone having a say simply by virtue of breathing.

Egalitarianism is not consistent with nature. But these things go in cycles, the flaws and contradictions will accumulate and the system will collapse eventually, like they all do.

> I think dictating power based on war ability makes way more sense than everyone having a say simply by virtue of breathing.

I honestly can't tell if you're trolling. In what world is it better to instead give all the say to one person? Especially a person selected solely by their prowess for violence (or in leading others to violence)?

> In what world is it better to instead give all the say to one person?

If that one person is wise, virtuous, and really prioritizes the people's best interest, and is willing and capable of delegating and seeking advice from people who understand various domains better than them, and is a good enough judge to choose good people for such delegation and advice, then it could be at least much more efficient than a democracy or republic. Decisions could be made much faster. And such a leader could very well be better at making decisions that are better in the long term, even if they aren't in the short term.

However, how do you find and appoint such a leader? And even if you somehow get such a leader, how do you ensure their successor is just as good? Selecting a leader based on military prowess definitely won't get you such a leader though.

>If that one person is wise, virtuous, and really prioritizes the people's best interest, and is willing and capable of delegating and seeking advice from people who understand various domains better than them, and is a good enough judge to choose good people for such delegation and advice, then it could be at least much more efficient than a democracy or republic.

First, that's a big if. Second, it's the old pipe-dream that there are decisions that are on "best interest" for everybody, that can just be based on "domain knowledge", and not competing interests to be heard and balanced.

>Decisions could be made much faster.

That persons decisions. Not the ones people want. Basically you're described an infantilized population and a parent/nanny that knows what's best for them.

Rulers who conquer tend not to be wise or virtuous, because if they were they wouldn’t conquer. I can’t think of an example of a benevolent autocratic ruler that outperformed the average democracy when it came to the well-being of all their subjects (including the conquered). Some rulers can use the spoils of war to bless some of their subjects, but that just shifts wealth around and causes incredible misery for the deprived.

Productivity requires decentralized decision-making. The more centralized the power structure is, the lower the overall productivity of the subject population.

Who needs philosopher kings when warlords will suffice?

How do you run a society that way? Can I get a bigger house by mulching you in your own garden and telling your family to push on? Do we decide whether you can build an extension on your house by how good a shot the counties men are? Do Walmart and Cosco fight wars over the more desirable lots? This is not a serious suggestion.

Perhaps there is a synthesis of the two, where some get more say based on "war ability" (or other such competence) without actually having to engage in micro battles everywhere. Notice I was describing the criteria upon which decision-making and power is apportioned, not necessarily how it happens. There is a long standing tradition of opposition to mass democracy, particularly amongst the founders of my country so I'm in good company there. Ultimately whatever nominal system is in place, a governing elite arises one way or another...so debates about democracy are funny because in many ways power of the masses isn't real [0]. But to the degree democracy becomes "mass" is the degree to which is becomes worse.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35223884

Nature doesn't have F35 fighter jets, fully autonomous drones that can duty cycle 24/7 for months, hackernews discussion boards built on the internet, that benefited from thousands of years of physics breakthroughs. Nukes, medicine, ect, you know the list of technologies..

Even in a war-economy, the majority of the civilian populace has to provide all the complicated logistics, food, services, entertainment, ect to keep the war effort going. Being a wage slave to a warlord isn't a magic fix to "egalitarianism".

We can already live outside of egalitarianism. I can guarentee you Bill Gates, Stephen Hawkings and Jeff Bezos (and the lowest of society too) have no need for my input on their life, and don't know I exist.

It might, as history has cycles.

But not because it will be replaced with something "better". Democracy just means everybody has a say on decisions affecting them and the society they are in.

If your replacement is closer to "only informed people should have a say", that is even older then democracy, and is much worse in practice.

If we don't replace the current flavour of democracy with something better there won't be much society in a few years (10s, 100s). The next level beyond democracy is tiered, time-limited, and retractable sortism [1]: some kind of a return to roots (Athenian democracy), but with a twist. A quick way to sketch it would look like this:

(i) no functionaries: run all the administrative jobs not in an office by Margaret and John, but in some cluster of computers;

(ii) no political nominations: instead of having elections between Side A vs Side B (vs Side C in non-US countries), all the decision-making positions are up to vote by name and all the candidates are sorted out randomly from the totality of the populace (no candidate can have more than 2 mandates);

(iii) negative vote: all ballots have a special box "No One" invalidating all the candidates (if the majority votes "No One") or reducing the duration of the mandate;

(iv) the duration of the mandate is correlated with voter turnout (if 30% of the populace vote, you don't get 100% of the 4-year mandate, you get 1.2 years of mandate);

(v) the vote is no longer a fact (you voted for X one time), but a process (you are maintaining your vote for X today also); when a majority of people retract their vote for a certain decision-maker they automatically lose their position of power.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

>If we don't replace the current flavour of democracy with something better there won't be much society in a few years

The current flavour of democracy is already not democratic as practiced in most countries (perhaps Switzerland is an exception).

In the US it's career politicians with little accountability, billionaires and huge coporations with huge influence, paying politicians, media owned by said millionaires or fed BS by the government, a baroque system of chosing President, a failed educational system that doesn't teach kids to be active citizens, fossilized two party system supported by all kinds of powers and structures that the voters aren't allowed to change, and so on. Plus a charade of voting once every five years. If that's democracy, then yes, it should change: to real democracy.

The options you describe would be some of the solutions to that.

Of course those "wise persons in power who know better than us what's good for us" will prevent anything like that.

>fossilized two party system supported by all kinds of powers and structures that the voters aren't allowed to change

The original system wasn't two party. In fact, the first Chief Executive (President of the United States) on leaving Office, specifically warned the populace against anything remotely resembling the formation of political parties.

The populace quickly ignored that advice, and carved up the country between Federalists and Anti-Federalists who either vied to achieve the Supreme Seat of Power to enact their Will, or hold that Seat so no one would be able to avail themselves of it.

I wonder if there's another way. I personally would love to hand the power to informed people. To be clear: I don't consider myself informed. I mean economists deciding about the economy, farmers deciding about the agritulture, programmers deciding about IT, etc. But I have absolutely no idea how that could work in practice. For example, budget is finite and every "interest group" would consider their field of work the most important. This is just not workable.

Our current situation is that (in theory) the elected politicians listen to the general "mood" of the population, and then listen to the experts how to implement the needed changes. I can't think of a better system, we just need to figure out how to make it resistant to abuse.