Re:Square where Julius Caesar was killed opens to the public...
by pdonis on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @07:53PM
(#36412425)
> It’s an ideal because we’re defining it in its idealised form.
Even if I take your idealized form as you state it and put aside my previous objections, when I ask myself what kind of system in human history has actually come closest to doing what you describe, what I get is an ultra-libertarian free market system with a government that is as weak as possible--at any rate, in which any government that exists does not have a monopoly of force and cannot expect to enforce its edicts against people that disagree with them. Historical examples include Saga period Iceland and some of the American colonies in the late 1600s and early to mid 1700s, before the British decided to tighten up on the colonies after the French and Indian War.
In other words, if your ideal really is "democracy" as you describe it, historical experience shows that governments take you away from that ideal, not towards it.
Even if I take your idealized form as you state it and put aside my previous objections, when I ask myself what kind of system in human history has actually come closest to doing what you describe, what I get is an ultra-libertarian free market system with a government that is as weak as possible--at any rate, in which any government that exists does not have a monopoly of force and cannot expect to enforce its edicts against people that disagree with them. Historical examples include Saga period Iceland and some of the American colonies in the late 1600s and early to mid 1700s, before the British decided to tighten up on the colonies after the French and Indian War.
In other words, if your ideal really is "democracy" as you describe it, historical experience shows that governments take you away from that ideal, not towards it.