Continuous Democracy - The Best Plausible Timeline?

[SIZE=+1]Continuous Democracy - The Best Plausible Timeline?

This timeline might be the best plausible one - or, at least, it's probably as good as you can get.

Most of you have been aiming for nasty TLs. This tries to be the TL with the best tech and general prosperity. It's not just about ballot boxes, of course, but what Greeks called thalassocracy, which has become bound up with democratic culture both in classical and modern times.

Thalassocracy's a Greek word that referred to the Cretan style of culture and empire and government. Thalassa was the Greek word for water, so it's rule by water - except it wasn't just rule, but also trade. Crete emphasized big fleets and trade and settlement and ethnic cleansing over big armies and imperial conquest. It was also entrepreneurial, liberal, and egalitarian. And, the combination of enterprise, smallish land armies, and lots of trade money meant high tech. Does that sound atall familiar?

But, don't worry - all boring, peaceful, fluffy bunny it ain't. Thalassocracies are hardly short on war and controversy and fun - today we're engaged in three countries at once. And, of course, there'll be conversion by the sword / catapult / gun / missile / whatever.
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POD: Point of Departure

[SIZE=+1]POD: Point of Departure

474 BC / DL 3: City of Eretria (Rower, in Greek)

Athenadoros had to get up before dawn to go to the Eretrian assembly. He and his family ate his breakfast as dawn finished cracking. He said goodbye to his wife and four kids - they'd had seven, but only four had survived. He thought how grateful he was he still had them and his wife, as he gave her one last glance on leaving.

He had to climb two hills to get there, the town being pretty hilly. There was a marvelous view from the hills, though.

That day's assembly was scheduled to vote on the Eretrian Delian League representative. When it started, to everybody's shock, the previous years' League Rep was not there yet. The Assembly waited a quarter of an hour, but he still wasn't there. So, they started from scratch. Nominations were called for, and, to his farther shock, a friend of his nominated him.

"Athenadoros, architect and former general." He had been elected general four year-long terms with the commission of overseeing new wall construction and the existing wall defenses, though that duty was over a year behind now.

Two others were nominated. He won the vote, and was officially Delian League rep, to sail to Delos to represent Eretria in the assembly at Delos. His friends and architecture company employees and relatives and fellow Peoples' Party members were celebrating, and even the Aristocratic Party members were surprisingly respectful and even happy.

He was stunned, of course. He had come to the Assembly just to be a good citizen and vote, and hadn't expected this new duty.

"Very well, I shall be a good rower and row to Delos," he said, after he got used to the idea.

Athenadoros later found out that the previous years' League Rep had gotten so drunk at a party the night before the vote, that he had been too hung over to make it to the Assembly on time.

---

The Delian League was probably the first representative democracy, though it had some precedent with an anti-Persian league, and might've been beaten by India, whom developed democracy astonishingly close to when the Greeks did. The League was a group of mostly-democratic Classical Greek city-states. The Delian League developed as a response to Athenian overwhelming success against Persian invasions and Spartan mismanagement and corruption of an earlier anti-Persian Hellenic League at Byzantium/Istanbul. Each member city had one representative in its council; it selected an Admiral and Treasurers to run its affairs. OTL, both those positions were entirely held by Athenians (the treasurer had to be Athenian under its constitution). The council met in the temple at Delos.

This TL happens in classical Greece, but it could've worked in India or, probably, China. I chose Greece because fewer histories and records were censored or burned, so we have a much better idea of events there. We do know there was democracy in classical India because of certain Greek histories and because the Buddha was a democrat.

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bad luck

I've been inactive unexpectedly in this new thread because I've had the worst luck and lost access to my disk awhile. I ended up making progress on Hitler's Republic instead because I COULD - it's farther along and better memorized. Much more here.

It's back

It's baack....bwahaha...

Wargeek Update: The Trireme

Wargeek Update: The Trireme

An Athenian trireme, the high tech, dominant naval vessels of the day. Because shipbuilding tech was limited to small galleys, they were built and fought by the hundreds. Athens and its Delian League had 300 in wartime. Its sailors and ships were mostly Athenian; their salaries were paid by League taxes. The trireme was named for the three banks of oars it had - yes, asymmetric - and with one deck per oar deck. More on triremes here. The trireme's quite the thorough contrast, of course, with today's vast carriers and handful of big escorts, or the handful of subs able to blow up 1/4 of the world. Every kind of unit's like that, too, growing far more effective, having more tail, and shrinking in numbers needed. The US can dominate the world with ten brigades of men when it used to take 100 bigger divisions. The first war where aircraft could win, WWII, saw utterly vast numbers of triremish, tiny, ineffective aircraft, 10x as many as we see in war today; the disparity will continue to grow, too, like for the sea and land.

Athens Loses in Delian League

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Athens Loses in Delian League 472 BCE:

The Delian League was considering an enforcement action against a city delinquent in tax payments to the League.

The Athenian representative, Delian League Admiral and founder Aristides, got up and walked to the well of the Delian temple room the Assembly was sitting in.

"Salutations, honored members," he started. "[unknown] has not paid their taxes to the League this year. You know that there is a price to paid for your peace and prosperity. That price is not just paid in your Athenian talents for our ships, but also in Athenian lives paid in war. Our ingenuity and lives won at Salamis and many other places. And, in our sad world, there can no peace or prosperity without war.

Finally, where can you buy better peace and prosperity than our League? Certainly not barbarous, corrupt and misruled Persia. Certainly not the anticapitalist Spartan hegemony. No, a league of free democracies like ours is best.

So, we propose another tax action against them to recover the money and, er, encourage the laggard.

Athenadoros took his turn at the well next, clearing his throat for a long speech. "Dear Delian friends, I want to call your attention to something that I think is wrong in our great alliance. We are right to be grateful to Athens for our freedom, and to give them the very first respect. But that does not mean we are lessers than Athenians. Do you think your cities' men are lesser than Athens'? Athens needed the help of every city that contributed ships to the alliance to secure that victory, and Athenian ships hardly rowed faster than other cities'. Athens does not have the only spirit of enterprise among us. I believe that, while Athens deserves our first respect, they should be treated as equals in the League, as the fellow men they are, rather than as superiors, or even as the sole beneficiaries of land and booty, as has been on each such League action before.

"I bring up fairness on a tax issue because I wonder if Athenians would think it right to have their own city reduced, immediately, without a second chance. People make mistakes. Others may have shortages of money. Still others may be new to the League and not have accustomed machinery yet. This' the second such action that has disturbed my peace. I voted for a similar action last year, reluctantly, but was bothered by the matter. I will not do so again, and I hope most of you will join me.

"My last point is that the Athenians say, as they did last year, that enforcements are conducted by Athenian ships, risking Athenian lives on our behalves. But, there are plenty of non-Athenian ships and men in League service. Should they not get the equal share of land and booty their service deserves?

My counterprosal, which I hope you will vote for instead, has been filed with the League Secretary for action and copying if agreed to. It is to wait three months after taxes are due for taking contrary action; to raise next year's required payment by half again, and take military action only after two whole years of nonpayment.

"And, all lands gained on all League actions will be distributed by lot across all League cities, minus a quarter for veterans, to be distributed by their cities' leaderships.

After he sat down, another man stood. "Greetings, Honored Assembly. I am Dion of Kymi. I want to express the feelings of us in Kymi that the Athenians rightly have the first place in our league because they are superior. We of Kymi could never have had the divine and smart inspiration of Athena and other gods that made them think of and make Salamis succeed. They are our time's Odysseus, and we must give them first place to listen to, just how the Greeks at Troy gave first place to Odysseus' wisdom to gain their victory. We certainly did not have in ourselves to free ourselves from the Persian Kings. Nor can we forget their role there that served us so well, when the Greek predececessor leader, Sparta, had given up on the Greek Persian conquests.

"And, we who have been conquered by Persia, or those whom have seen the huge Persian Army, can see the advantages of empire. We like the idea of an Athenian Empire, commanded by the surely divinely inspired Themistocles, Cimon, or Aristides. How can we lose that way?

Athenadoros had arranged four vote swaps for later votes on issues others' cared about. He needed them, because his counterproposal passed by only one votes. He thought, nobody here is used to even thinking about voting against Athens, and half are wrongly worshipping Athenians like the Kymian.

---

The argument custom of the time in democratic assemblies forbade any speaker from talking more than once. I'm guessing the same rule would've applied to the League assemblies in this TL, though I don't know it for sure. Also, the custom you see on CSPAN and modern Parliamentary coverage of having supporting speakers seems not yet to've arisen; additional speakers seem to've just risen if they had other points to make.

I don't actually know, either, if there was a tax enforcement action in 472. I just know Thucydides wrote that there was wide unhappiness about them, and that the first Delian League rebellion happened the next year, and there must've beeen some reason.

There was a cool word for land settlement rights - Cleruchies[/i]. It was a package of settlement rights for a particular piece of land. In Athens, where they were most commonly used, receivers were chosen randomly and kept Athenian citizenship as well as a second citizenship in the cleruchy city. Politicians liked cleruchies because the opportunity for voters to enrich themselves made them popular. Of course, in modern terms, cleruchies were all wrong ethnic cleansing, because they implied state support against whomever might already be there.

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Interesting idea. Consider me subscribed

Battle of Salamis

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Battle of Salamis: 480 BC / -1 DL Salamis, where this battle was fought.

Cikudes son of Dion was all sore and seasick from his ships's daily exercises, for he was still new to the sea. His family was mostly farmers, and he had grown up farming on his family farm. He and a brother had decided they had had enough of farming, and would go as far as they could, from the land, far out to sea. And so, they had responded when Themistocles asked for sailors for his fleet.

His family had, like most Athenians, taken refuge in the city of Troezen. That was so the city could man the most ships as possible without needing to keep a home defense. The Athenian Navy's 180 ships made up most of the 300-strong Allied Greek Navy. They had been told by their leaders that they faced roughly 1200 ships, four times their numbers. They had already done fine against the vast Persian Fleet, despite the 4:1 disadvantage, though, at Artemisium. Their land buddies had lost one, at a pass near Thermopylae, but a famous loss that had lost a huge proportion of enemy Persians and made them delay four days.

If on the sea the odds were vast - 4:1, it was far worse on land. The Greeks had a mere few tens of thousands (40000?) facing, Greek contemporaries say, millions. There's alot of controversy about the Persian Army's actual size, of course, but it must've also outnumbered the land forces even worse, or literally half of Greece would not have surrendered before the Persian Army even arrived, given the Persian loss at the last land battle where they also outnumbered the Greeks, Marathon. Nor would the Greeks have chosen to face them on the sea instead of land, given Marathon.

His trireme was pulled up on a beach with the rest of the Greek Fleet. That beach was in the northwestern part of the Strait of Salamis, in the middle right of the above picture. The Athenian part of the fleet was on the north side. The Athenian government had moved to Salamis to be exactly as safe as the fleet.

Their fleet was admiralled by a Spartan named Eurybiades, even though Athens had the most ships there. He did also get some advice from contingent commanders from various city states, including Athens' own Themistocles, whom Athens and the Popular Party he was part of loved and had every confidence in. Athens might not have been trusted to run the fleet because they were total newbs to the sea, and had no history of important fleet victories until, well, this very battle. Although, BIG, multi-hundred, fleet battles were a novelty to everybody, as far as we know; preceding battles involved less than a hundred triremes, and had, until recently, among the Greeks, been fought without rams, as though they were land battles happening to be fought on the sea.

Cikudes' job, like virtually all their crew except the Trierarch (captain)'s, steersmen, and some bowmen, was mosly rowing. They had sails, but it was considered a secondary addition to rowing. He had also been trained in fighting, both on land and on the sea, but not much. Alot of the sea training had been done on the way to the sea battles.

His fellow crew walked to the market Salamis and his fellow Athenians had set up for lunch. They ran across two Corinthian crews that were looking angry.

"Cor-inth! Cor-inth! Why not Cor-inth? Why not Cor-inth?" they yelled, in rhythm. The Greek Army was assembled there, because Corinth is an isthmus, meaning it narrows alot. A narrow spot is good in a battle, especially against big odds like the Greeks faced. The Corinthians wanted to unify the land and sea forces in that isthmus good for the land troops, no doubt doubly because it was at their city.

"Themistocles is right," said his trierarch, Alcisthenes, in a sure voice. "Salamis has the same kind of advantage as your Corinth, except on the sea, where it matters to us. Stationing ourselves here, to one side of the Strait here, means the Persians will face the same disadvantage as they will at Corinth and did at Thermopylae at first. And, if the Persian Fleet is defeated, most of the land army will have to go home because it cannot be supplied. You are seamen as much as we are; you know he's right in your head, even if your gut's having some trouble with it being your own city at stake."

"That's only if the Persian Fleet actually decides to stick its head into a trap. The Persian Army had no choice at Thermopylae and has no choice at Corinth, either. And, how long have we been waiting without him taking the bait?"

"All wars take patience to win rather than lose stupidly," Alcisthenes answered. "Though, sometimes it's hard to wait, and this is one of those times, true."

They ate from the many stalls standing in a market near the shore in Salamis.

... to be continued, on the same batchannel...
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Battle of Salamis, Part 2

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...continued..

Much later, a little after four hours after noon, a loud sound of rowing started in the background; speculation started on whom it was, a fleet or a messenger. Then it got too loud to be anything but what they were hoping for and fearing: the Persian Fleet, come to accept battle on their terms.

The Persian Fleet entered arrayed in three lines, all next to each other. The first triremes to enter had blue and red flags. There was muttering that that was the Phoenicians. They were the most famous mariners in the Med then. The idea of facing them in battle at huge odds in their favor did nothing for his nerves. They followed the line of the Strait of Salamis, crawling around northwestwardish from the far end.

By dinnertime, just before sunset, the sea was covered with Persian triremes. He felt even more nervous. He wondered if Themistocles could see the same sight, and how he felt about it. Part of him even wondered if Themistocles was running away or getting ready to give up.

Then the fleet had dinner, right after a messenger in Spartan Naval uniform arrived to summon Trierarch Alcisthenes to a Fleet meeting with the admirals.

When Alcisthenes returned, he summoned the ship's crew, and told them battle would probably be the next day, and to get as much sleep as possible. He told them there'd be a watch posted in case the Persians engaged foolishly at night. Cikudes tried hard to sleep, but was nervous; ongoing rowing noises didn't help; in the end, he only catnapped.

The next morning, he was awakened roughly with the rest of the fleet, at the start of dawn. He awoke, slowly, as usual, and ate breakfast nervously. Then, they went to listen to their Admiral Themistocles, also a the dominant Athenian politician of his day. Cikudes couldn't see much of him, but had no problem hearing him; like all politicians of his day, he was used to talking to crowds without mikes.

"I call on you this day to think of the very best that human nature and fortune, and the very worst. And, I challenge you this day to take your destiny in your very own hands this day and choose the best for your own selves." Then he offered sacrifices to the gods, and they returned to their ships.

His crew, like all the rest of the entire crews of the allied Greek Fleet, were hurrying to put out from land in the early gloom. When his reached their trireme, Grace, a handful scrambled on board to stabilize it, handle lines, and get the ship ready to go. Once the crew were counted off and the ship ready, Cikudes and most of the crew pushed their ship off in seat order. Once the Grace was well in the water, they then got on in that order, marines first, as the steersmen held it, and then followed to their steering posts. Cikudes, meanwhile, had his oars ready for the order to start rowing he knew must come soon.

He could see little, because, like most his fellow greenhorns, he was on the bottom of the three rowing decks, called the thalamite deck. Which deck you rowed on was mostly given by seniority, and he had exactly none of that. He could only see a tiny bit of the port side through the rowing frame and oarhole. That means he could only see a bit of the land they were leaving.

Cikudes could hear plenty, though - a thousand and a half ships rowing, chanting, and trumpetingm and firing and throwing weapons at each other all makes a pretty loud noise.

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In the ancient world, Democracy was only possible in relatively small societies. It is much less efficient than tyrannies and perhaps prohibitively so. It may be possible to solve this through technology. I can see Rome staying a Republic if they had paper, printing, and newspapers.

tallwingedgoat wrote:

In the ancient world, Democracy was only possible in relatively small societies. It is much less efficient than tyrannies and perhaps prohibitively so. It may be possible to solve this through technology. I can see Rome staying a Republic if they had paper, printing, and newspapers.

Click to expand...

Do remember that the POD is about a different man elected to a legislature. The Delian League was a representative legislature; at least, until it was corrupted to Empire IOTL. Democracy was already by no means strictly direct.

The picture we're taught in public schools underrates the Greek and Med Classical Era alot, especially Greeks. Maybe that's because we tend to think progress was probably roughly linear, not realizing it's been pretty slow and even effectively gone back in some ways and regions for centuries, and gone faster in some times than others.

Aristotle, whom we're quoted was against evidence, in fact has (later?) used it himself, with students he taught.

And, one area they were advanced at was government. Athens invented democracy, Sparta constitutional checks and balances, an surprisingly important key of good government. An IOTL Democratic Achaean League combined democracy and checks and balances to have a forerunner of the American constitution, with separate judicial, legislative, and executive branches. Mind you, the executive had the title general, so totally us they weren't; but those were the most important bits.

Sparta IMHO invented something awfully like Communism; it was anticapitalist, unfree, and had checks and balances of aristocratic organization (communism is an aristocracy of the Communist Party). That made it outprosper monarchy and dictatorship, just like Communism vs Fascism and monarchy later.

Trade, currency, and even investment from banks were mature, so there was plenty of money. Traded objects from far have been dated back tens of thousands of years. Banking dates at least back to Hammurabi's first written law code, because he had things to say about it. And, Athens stamped its own coins.

Several constitutions, including the Roman Republic's, existed for centuries, meaning they were pretty stable; Rome's lasted five centuries.

Oh, yeah -forgot


Salamis battle map

You're severely overestimating the similarity of ancient Greek democracy to our own.

jkay said:

The Delian League was a representative legislature; at least, until it was corrupted to Empire IOTL. Democracy was already by no means strictly direct.

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The Delian league was not a state, and to say it had a "representative legislature" is not accurate. It was an alliance network set up by Athens to combat the Persians, formed of city-states whose only defense from destruction came from Athenian naval power. It was essentially a tributary system - there may have been some idealistic motive there at some point, but within a few decades it had clearly become nothing more than a money-pot for the Athenians.

jkay said:

Athens invented democracy

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Athenian democracy was indeed sophisticated, but it was nothing like modern representative democracy which developed in an entirely different cultural, social and scientific atmosphere. A system like the Republic of Athens could only really work in the long term on a small scale. For Attica, it was a sufficient system, but for an empire with Attica at its heart it was not. It's very clear from looking at the later years of the Athenian empire that the democracy was a bane. Its reckless and impulsive decisions served to alienate and sabotage the city's war effort, and were a major factor leading to its ultimate defeat...

The effectiveness of the democracy declined as Athens' empire grew because (as tallwingedgoat implied) communications technology was so primitive and literacy so limited. Executive power was directly in the hands of a citizen body which often had only a hazy perception of what policies the republic ought to carry out and which furthermore, being mired in the political intrigues of the city let these dictate foreign policy. A compounding problem was that the pliable citizen body could be easily swayed to any course of action by anyone with power and charisma. During the Peloponnesian War the wrong decisions thus conceived could (and did) prove disastrous for the empire.

Autocracies proved much more effective on the international stage. With executive power concentrated unequivocally in the hands of one individual and a few advisers, the proper judgments and decisions could be made for the furthering of the interests of the state. As long as the ruler was sound, autocracy produced larger and more stable states. In Greece at least, republics eventually fell by the wayside because they were too politically unstable to become large states in the long-term, and were thus devoured by the big fish: autocracies like Macedonia and emerging autocracies like the late Roman Republic.

jkay said:

Sparta [invented] constitutional checks and balances, an surprisingly important key of good government.

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Again, the notion that Sparta's primitive "checks and balances" can be at all equated to those present in modern democracies is unfounded, if they can be said to have existed at all. Sparta was at its heart an aristocratic oligarchy, with executive power almost entirely in the hands of the gerousia, a senate structure composed of members of the aristocratic and royal clans. The other elements of Spartan "democracy" hardly had any power.

I think it's time for some Sources

Sources:
Largely in decreasing order of importance:
o Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War, a primary contemporary source whom lived in the day. He was the first historian to fully live up to contemporary historical expectations about placing evidence first. He was briefly an Athenian general in the war; he not only lived in Athens, but spent considerable time in or investigating the other important parties to the war.

o John Hale's Lords of the Sea, a great book about triremes and Athenian naval supremacy, from the Persian Wars to Macedon and Al the Great's massacre of the Athenian plebes.


o Polybius 'The Histories , about Rome's rise. This helps both with constitutional issues of why Rome and Polybius' Achaean League did so much better than Athens over the long term. It also helps with how a fight against Rome might go.

o Herodotus' Histories cover the Persian Wars, including some early scenes and background for the TL. Though he wasn't as evidence-oriented as later Thucidydes, he gets general credit for at least both broke with bardic epic and got what he wrote from talking to people involved. The difference is that he applied little criticism to what he heard, telling every side, including the religious.

All those are good sources on classical Greece and Rome. I recommend them if you're interested the classical world, doing a classical TL, are a hopeless history geek, or just don't believe a word I'm writing. All are available in free translation online except the contemporary John Hale.

Tangerine said:

Athenian democracy was indeed sophisticated, but it was nothing like modern representative democracy which developed in an entirely different cultural, social and scientific atmosphere. A system like the Republic of Athens could only really work in the long term on a small scale. For Attica, it was a sufficient system, but for an empire with Attica at its heart it was not. It's very clear from looking at the later years of the Athenian empire that the democracy was a bane. Its reckless and impulsive decisions served to alienate and sabotage the city's war effort, and were a major factor leading to its ultimate defeat...

Click to expand...

I'm not an expert, so I'm asking at least in part searching for information, but...

Were the "reckless and impulsive decisions" of Athens a product of its democracy in particular, or simply the result of "reckless and impulsive" policy makers? As in, would an Athenian oligarchy with similar men have really done much differently?

The effectiveness of the democracy declined as Athens' empire grew because (as tallwingedgoat implied) communications technology was so primitive and literacy so limited. Executive power was directly in the hands of a citizen body which often had only a hazy perception of what policies the republic ought to carry out and which furthermore, being mired in the political intrigues of the city let these dictate foreign policy. A compounding problem was that the pliable citizen body could be easily swayed to any course of action by anyone with power and charisma. During the Peloponnesian War the wrong decisions thus conceived could (and did) prove disastrous for the empire.

Click to expand...

But that (bolded) is hardly a distinct trait of democracy.

Autocracies proved much more effective on the international stage. With executive power concentrated unequivocally in the hands of one individual and a few advisers, the proper judgments and decisions could be made for the furthering of the interests of the state. As long as the ruler was sound, autocracy produced larger and more stable states. In Greece at least, republics eventually fell by the wayside because they were too politically unstable to become large states in the long-term, and were thus devoured by the big fish: autocracies like Macedonia and emerging autocracies like the late Roman Republic.

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But that's the problem - an unsound autocrat is as bad as an unsound demos. And the "judgments and decisions" could also be made for the good of the ruler and/or advisers, regardless of the good of the state.

I'm not a democrat (in the sense fan of democracy), but I think assuming that autocracy is more prone to good judgment is less accurate than that autocracy is a more effective method of concentrating the resources of the state.

Jkay: As a suggestion, I suggest you read Donald Kagan's book, both for a broader view of the war and a view illustrating how...Thucydides isn't always the best of all possible writers.

Elfwine said:

I'm not an expert, so I'm asking at least in part searching for information, but...

Were the "reckless and impulsive decisions" of Athens a product of its democracy in particular, or simply the result of "reckless and impulsive" policy makers? As in, would an Athenian oligarchy with similar men have really done much differently?

Click to expand...

The fewer decision-makers you have, the less threatened the system is by the ignorance of the general public. This is why modern representative democracy works better than direct democracy of the Athenian model. Even though theoretically the voters still have the power to affect public policy, they can only do it indirectly through elected officials who ( again theoretically) are qualified to make political judgments.

In direct democracy public policy is dictated by the average opinion of the voting body as a whole, so even if half your voters are sound (which I guarantee will probably not be true) the input of the unsound half will still often result in a policy that is sub-par. In reality, of course, the Athenian democracy was much more oligarchic than this, but the "mob" still had an inordinate amount of power.

Of course, a monarch or an autocrat is not immune to stupidity... but if you're lucky enough to get an effective monarch you're pretty much set.

Tangerine, the way to advance thinking, play the argument game constructively, or play the game on this site are all to pay first attention to evidence, and, when making claims, either cite evidence or give logic. I'm afraid you failed to do that in your post. No doubt you'll get the hang of it. We've all been new. My version, with its own evidence' in the next two paras.

I'm guessing you started feeling sympathetic to the Dark Ages, feeling it couldn't be as bad as they say. Sadly, there's alot of evidence to the contrary. The amount of writing we see during the regions and periods of the Dark Ages vastly declined, and was mostly religious, with little about evidence or science or other intellectual stuff. Evidence of advanced skills declines except in monasteries, within strict, unfree rules. That was because intellectuals had to live in monasteries or courts or be tortured or killed by people who'd specialized in war instead. Central governments mostly weren't up keeping order. And, even before that, in most of Christian Europe, almost all writing had already long become concerned with religion, government, or flattery rather than science or evidence. Medieval Christianity was mostly just a return to that slowness.

If you don't believe a word I'm writing about classical Greece, I encourage you to check one or more out of the sources I listed yourself. All are available in free translation online except the contemporary John Hale. My favorite's probably Thucidydes, but if you like long books, you might prefer Herodotus, whom was more inclusive because he had lower standards for evidence.

Tangerine said:

The fewer decision-makers you have, the less threatened the system is by the ignorance of the general public. This is why modern representative democracy works better than direct democracy of the Athenian model. Even though theoretically the voters still have the power to affect public policy, they can only do it indirectly through elected officials who ( again theoretically) are qualified to make political judgments.

In direct democracy public policy is dictated by the average opinion of the voting body as a whole, so even if half your voters are sound (which I guarantee will probably not be true) the input of the unsound half will still often result in a policy that is sub-par. In reality, of course, the Athenian democracy was much more oligarchic than this, but the "mob" still had an inordinate amount of power.

Of course, a monarch or an autocrat is not immune to stupidity... but if you're lucky enough to get an effective monarch you're pretty much set.

Click to expand...

And if you're lucky enough to have the average opinion be right, you're pretty much set, too.

To put it another way, a group of 100 men who happen to be born well (say, the status of Pericles?) are no more certain to be fit than a group of 10000. And the downside of the former is that one idiot (a monarch) is devastating in the sense one of ten thousand citizens being an idiot isn't.

I'm not saying direct democracy is a good thing - but relying on the education and ability of the "elite" does take that risk.

I'm ignoring the idea of absolute power corrupting anyone as much as possible because we're looking at whether or not autocracy is more effective at good decision making, which doesn't require all that much in the way of a conscience (I'm presuming you've read or know about The Prince in this discussion).

jkay said:

Tangerine, the way to advance thinking, play the argument game constructively, or play the game on this site are all to pay first attention to evidence, and, when making claims, either cite evidence or give logic. I'm afraid you failed to do that in your post. No doubt you'll get the hang of it. We've all been new. My version, with its own evidence' in the next two paras.

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For someone who wants to play "the argument game" you seem very hostile to constructive criticism. My pointing out flaws in your timeline isn't a personal attack - I merely wish to help you produce something more plausible. In any case you need to provide some kind of response to my previous points, which pointed out the flaws in the assumption that from Athenian democracy we can magically leap to something identical to modern representative democracy.

jkay said:

I'm guessing you started feeling sympathetic to the Dark Ages, feeling it couldn't be as bad as they say. Sadly, there's alot of evidence to the contrary. The amount of writing we see during the regions and periods of the Dark Ages vastly declined, and was mostly religious, with little about evidence or science or other intellectual stuff. Evidence of advanced skills declines except in monasteries, within strict, unfree rules. That was because intellectuals had to live in monasteries or courts or be tortured or killed by people who'd specialized in war instead. Central governments mostly weren't up keeping order. And, even before that, in most of Christian Europe, almost all writing had already long become concerned with religion, government, or flattery rather than science or evidence. Medieval Christianity was mostly just a return to that slowness.

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If you look elsewhere from Northern Europe, you'll see that the depredations of this period were not so severe. The Islamic world and the Byzantine Empire remained cradles of literacy and science during what you call "the dark ages". Do you think the advances of the Classical period were made in northern Europe? Of course not - so why are you holding up northern Europe during the early medieval period as some kind of evidence for the general decline of science and culture after the fall of the Roman Empire? There was very little of it there to begin with compared to the east.

Elfwine said:

And if you're lucky enough to have the average opinion be right, you're pretty much set, too.

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True, but looking at it logically, with a large group the average is always going to be closer to the mediocre, while if you have one autocrat with a good head on his shoulders (with the council, hopefully, of society's preeminent military and political experts) you're immediately operating at a higher standard of governance.

Of course, as I already admitted, this hinges on your autocrat and his advisers being perfect, which they obviously never will be. But even if they're just a little better than mediocre they're probably going to come out with better policy than a huge mob of citizens, the majority illiterate and many fired up by demagogues with motives independent from (or even hostile to) the interests of the state itself.

Not in the spirit of contrariness (as stated, my queries are questioning rather than trying to argue in favor of democracy), but to look at autocracy, the Byzantines are a very good example of that working.

Trying to run the Byzantine Empire needing to take into consideration every citizen of even just Constantinople, even assuming said citizens were on the same level as the average member of the dynatoi, would be nightmarishly complex.

Hard enough to handle that on a small scale.

That, I think, is more disastrous than the demos being necessarily stupider or less informed.

It also makes popularity a positive good, which is not a good thing (I think you said this, or implied it, but it bears repeating). What is popular is not necessarily wise or right.

And a state which sacrifices one or both of those to popularity, as a democracy almost inevitably will, is not a good thing.

Autocracies have their own issues, but that one hurts more than its worth, I think.