> We don't have to figure out the best government. We already have all kinds of ideas about this collected from millennia of thought on this subject.
Except for 99.9% of those millennia, humanity had very different challenges than it does today. One of the biggest being effective communication between people. There's a reason the U.S. constitution talks about sending delegates to Washington D.C. Another being an abundance of basic necessities that simply did not exist when Voltaire was writing. Increased globalization, vast changes in technology, bitcoin, AI, automation, social media, etc. Why would you assume political theory from even 100 years ago holds up in the face of all those differences?
And political theory, like history, tends to be written by the victors. What percent of all laws ever written were about maintaining the status quo for the people currently in power? It's a lot; I wouldn't be surprised if it's over 90%.
There's no reason to believe that humanity has "figured government out" by now. There's still plenty of room for experimentation in what works best in today's world. For example, why can individuals not collectively draft legislation, in the same way they can draft Wikipedia articles or open-source software? What would it take to make that happen?
The baseline theory of the state is exhausted. It's like figuring out how to build a car. We have all the ideas already, and the little innovative improvements are the cherries on top. We have quite a few modern political thinkers as well as ancient ones, not victors, but real critical thinkers and historians. As far as communication problem, yeah you may be right, but this is a problem of implementation, not architecture.
And come on, "Galadriel" and some mythical pharaoh? This is your argument-viable examples? I think a little too much fantasy is overtaking your thoughts; you might want to switch to non-fiction for a few months to balance yourself out.
Except for 99.9% of those millennia, humanity had very different challenges than it does today. One of the biggest being effective communication between people. There's a reason the U.S. constitution talks about sending delegates to Washington D.C. Another being an abundance of basic necessities that simply did not exist when Voltaire was writing. Increased globalization, vast changes in technology, bitcoin, AI, automation, social media, etc. Why would you assume political theory from even 100 years ago holds up in the face of all those differences?
And political theory, like history, tends to be written by the victors. What percent of all laws ever written were about maintaining the status quo for the people currently in power? It's a lot; I wouldn't be surprised if it's over 90%.
There's no reason to believe that humanity has "figured government out" by now. There's still plenty of room for experimentation in what works best in today's world. For example, why can individuals not collectively draft legislation, in the same way they can draft Wikipedia articles or open-source software? What would it take to make that happen?