The

The Hello and welcome to Broanomics.

Now, in this episode, I'll tell you what, I've been thinking about democracy

and how utterly incompatible it is of actually ever getting anything done and perhaps why it's a root cause of many of our problems.

You know, Socrates warned that a democracy is like letting the passengers of a ship choose the captain.

It is only going to work if the passengers are sailors themselves. If the passengers are

experts in the thing that is being done, the ship of state, then it could work, but otherwise

it's pretty much doomed to failure. Now, of course, it did fail. The ancient Athens democracy

did fail pretty hard. It ended up being absorbed into

another power. And indeed, Socrates himself was suicided. So I think he may have been onto something.

I mean, consider the difference with something like feudalism.

The aligned incentives in it, not divided ones.

So, you know, a feudal lord, his wealth is derived from his population,

his productive tenants, you know, his farms, his craft and his trade.

And dead peasants or unproductive peasants are bad for him over the long term. And this created a bit of a feedback loop where, you know, exploitation was limited by

self-interest. Yes, you could grind the peasants down into nothing. Yes, you could get to the point

where, you know, young peasants can't afford homes,

but, you know, ultimately long-term stewardship mattered more than short-term, you know, vote chasing.

And therefore, the Lord was always incentivised to ensure that his tenants and his service and whatever

and his peasants were actually as wealthy as he could

make them because that meant that over time that he would become more wealthy and he would pass

on something that's stable and strong and his family line would continue. So feudalism incentivised

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