Comment by philistine
8 hours ago
That is exactly the point OP is making. If you do not have a mandate to govern from the people, you need unanimity from all homeowners. Those are the alternatives.
8 hours ago
That is exactly the point OP is making. If you do not have a mandate to govern from the people, you need unanimity from all homeowners. Those are the alternatives.
> If you do not have a mandate to govern from the people, you need unanimity from all homeowners. Those are the alternatives.
You don't strictly need a mandate from the people; authoritarian governments can be legitimate despite not having such a mandate. However, it's an impossible trilemma: successful action needs at least one of unanimity (parent commenter's approach), threat of coercion (government), or tolerance of free-riding (charity).
Why would you leave out the form specified by the GP? Representative (republican) government where the 40 members would hold an election to nominate a smaller number of representatives to decide on what should be done and bind everyone to abide by their decisions.
If you require unanimity then everyone has veto power over every decision which is difficult to manage even with 40 people. If you select 5 or even 3 people out of that group of 40 then it become much easier to make a decision. If everyone can nominate and vote for their representatives then they should feel it is fair when they have to abide by their decisions. At such a small scale you have very direct access to your elected representatives so you should feel that they have heard everyone's opinions and will hopefully do their best to accommodate them and if they don't then you should not elect the same people again.
At this scale you really can't call it threat of coercion, the land isn't owned by a separate entity so individuals could choose not to participate and all participants have direct access as well as a significant weight to their vote. It is a self-binding agreement if you choose a representative.
Sure, there's no threat of coercion for OP's street (or whatever) since nobody involved has any license to exercise power over the collective. But I thought the person you replied to was speaking of any group of people in general.
In the case of the 40 people, if a few of them consider whatever proposal stupid they can ignore it (e.g. not pay their share of something).
If they organize a republican government and have 4 representatives, some of the citizens could still refuse to pay (even if they accepted at first the election of the Street Senators). Coercion is what makes, say, Rhode Island, different than that person's street because if a few Rhode Islanders decide property taxes are stupid and refuse to pay, eventually all their land will be confiscated and they'll be dragged off of it by armed police.
20 wolves and 10 sheep elect 3 representatives ...
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Can AI help here? Asking seriously
There are plenty of other alternatives. Where do you think organized crime came from?
"Where do you think organized crime came from?"
Where do you think governments come from?
The oldest Epos we have, Gilgamesh (from the top of my head):
"We came early in the morning. Anyone opposing, we killed. We took everything.
...
until they learned it was better to submit to us."
The rest is how he became then a king, but got bored and now thought, might as well be a good king (but that too got booring, so he got onto adventures angering the gods).
So this is the founding mythos of Babylon. Often considered the root of civilisation.
I like Gilgamesh and I don't recognize that part. My translation has "the king should be a shepherd to his people" on the first page. This is part of complaining about Gilgamesh's arrogance, which is why the gods have to distract him by creating Enkidu, his equal. I mean sure, Gilgamesh is an asshole, a liability, but the text seems to know that.
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