RE: The Start that points North

I have a lot of sympathy with many of the anarchist ideas and ideals. Part of the problem is that I don't see politics in the traditional left/right terms, but rather in terms of individualism/authoritarianism. So I tend to reject both authoritarian socialist ideas, and those of a democracy that has become so corrupted as to become an oligarchy.

An issue I see is that anarchism and true democracy only seem to work up to town scale. Anything above that allows vested interests, money and bureaucracy to take control.

So my ideal form of government, appreciating that nothing is perfect, would be for cities and below to be governed on anarchist principles. Not direct democracy, because most people will vote for personal self-interest irrespective of the larger consequences.

Above city level, the world should be broken up into states of approximately early medieval size, i.e. large enough to be useful but too small to develop nuclear weapons or a military-industrial complex. The states should be culturally homogenous, so they have something binding them together. Now here's the controversial bit.... the states should be ruled by hereditary constitutional monarchs. While monarchy has it's problems, it is less vulnerable than democracy to power-grabbing politicians or vested interests trying to buy elections. Making it hereditary means you've got someone in charge who has been trained from birth to do the job, rather than some power-hungry political operator.

If we did this, we'd have a world full of squabbles and petty warfare, but without the kind of all-encompassing destruction we see in places like Gaza, Iran and Ukraine, without the kind of surveillance state inflicted on us currently by over-powerful governments and unaccountable corporations, and enabling the kind of competition which can spur human achievement and growth.