[Brutha]

I'm personally not familiar with those societies. Info about them would probably provide some useful hints but unfortunately wouldn't be suitable for use as a model for a modern society any more than ancient Athens is a suitable model for modern democracy.

France after the second world war for example.

Actually, lets flip the entire question around. Instead of asking "which historical model produces the best society?", lets ask "Given the resources and problems in the modern world what system would result in the best outcome?". Note that it doesn't have to be a system that we already have a name for.

I am fine with that question.

I put that poorly, let me rephrase: you say that "people make self-centred decisions with unfortunate spillover effects that require a government to contain" whereas I say "It's better to resolve (a) what is causing people to make self-centred decisions at the expense of others, and (b) what is causing the decisions to result in unfortunate spillover effects".

I doesn't have to be on an individual level. Group centric decisions can also lead to problems.
Let take some Christian fundies, who say: "Every homosexual has to be burned to rescue his eternal soul."

BTW, note that the current 'representative’ democracy systemically encourages politicians to make decisions geared at re-election. ie. It encourages decisions that are oriented towards short-term popular outcomes at the expense of responsible and long-term ones.

The more direct the democratic process the lower the amount long-term thinking.
In China politicians can plan for decades because they aren't irritated by elections.

I never advocated doing away with money.

I thought you did, but I is good to hear that we both agree that money has a place in society.

Monetary reward is an attempt to channel people's self-centred decisions toward societally beneficial ends. And, where it works, it works well. It just doesn't work well as the one and only answer, for the reasons discussed.

We agree there too.

Again I would ask: why do the mob want to hang someone just for being unpopular in the first place? That strongly suggests a serious cultural problem.

We live in times of exponetial change. Take someone like Richard Dawkins. We he would walk in the wrong town, after talking to them about evolution, those citizins could get the idea that it is Gods will to hang him.
Different cultures clash against each other and as long as it is kept peaceful everything is fine. There shouldn't be the need for everyone to have the same worldviews.

Perhaps the major point of contention is that you believe selfish, destructive behaviour is inherent (and thus requires external containment) whereas I believe it's largely learned (and thus can be prevented in the first place)?

Modelling a human to be certain kind is a technical problem.

You belief more than that it is learned behavior. You belief that the political system is to blame for such behavior.
In addition single persons can't judge whether certain behavior is in the best interest of everyone. It is better to let a group of people decide what's best for everyone than to let single people who have certain personal interests decide.

IMO, if people are raised in an environment of scarcity with a scarcity mentality then they will be motivated by selfishness to meet their own basic needs - at the expense of others if necessary.

You don't need scarcity mentality for decisions that are based on wrong priorities. You might think that damaging the enviroment is worth the economic gain you produce.
Their will be a certain amount of damage to the enviroment that is okay for substancial economic gain.
In the end that decision shouldn't be made by the guy who profits but by a neutral party.

Note that being raised in abundance doesn't necessarily require vast material wealth. A monk can feel abundantly content in spartan surroundings while the richest man in the world can feel he never has enough. IMO, it comes down to (a) consistently meeting basic physical needs (food, shelter) and (b) meeting emotional needs (both directly and through building emotional resilience).

You can raise a kind as monk regardles the laws of a state. You should also note that most monks let themselves be bound be more religious laws than the average person.
A monk that follow a don't-drink-vow won't call that religious law scarcity thinking.

Obviously a consensus system would result in a more nuanced understanding of an issue than any individual or small group could produce. It could also generate more complex and layered outcomes in response.

Acording to the wikipedia article it is a system that small groups use to decide.

Equally obviously, an individual or small group will have its own vested interests that will bias its decisions away from the optimal solution as compared to decision-making by all concerned.

However, even if a small group could generate equally effective decisions, the main problem isn't actually how effective the final decision is.

A certain level of education is required to do good decisions on any given topic. No single human being has enough time to get that level of education for all topics.
If you let all human beings vote regardles of them knowing something about the issue, you get short term thinking which is ineffecive.

The problem is the “us and them” dynamic that automatically creates. [...] The beauty of democracy is that the populace have input into the decisions that affect them through their power to elect representatives. The more those representatives actually represent the populace, the less the people feel disconnected from the nation. Conversely, the more distant and disconnected the ‘representatives’ seem from the populace, the less respect the populace has for their decisions (and the greater the resulting social cost).

Getting better representives would be a simpler solution (it is still difficult to do), than throwing the whole system away.

For the populace to directly represent itself without any need for intermediaries is the end of the spectrum. The closer you get to that ideal, the greater investment the populace has in the nation. The ideal itself may even be coming within our reach technologically.

We have to balance the value of that investment with the cost of short-term "popular" decisions.
On one end you have a dictatorship, on the other hand you have a system where every decision is made by direct democracy. You have to balance out those benifits.
One way is to have more direct level at the local community level, to get people involed with concrete decision where you don't need much expertise.

Originally Posted by Keith

P.S. Note that I coined an acronym rather than continuing to use the term "Anarchy". The term “Anarchy” narrows the focus more than I intend. eg. Direct Democracy falls within the category of SWCG even though it would not be considered Anarchy.

What do you think about Swiss style democracy?