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The rule of men and not of law. This has been commented on many times in history, and may even be the “normal” state of humanity.

Command-and-control regimes all have several things in common. One is the coercive pressures exerted by a small oligarchy, or even a single person, over the fortunes and lives of those unlucky enough to have wandered, or been found living there, into a given locality. Few if any individual rights and liberties are conferred on the large proportion of the population, and while there may be some grudging “concessions” by the ruling oligarchy, the politics remain very much that of the anthill. Organized on the lines of a military battalion, the strict hierarchy of the authority allows for little vertical movement, the roles are largely hereditary and guarded jealously. The Strongman at the top is seldom elected, but is usually the “last man standing”, following palace intrigue and treachery, and is removed from office by the next coup, but essentially nothing below that level changes in the least.

While apparently more “efficient”, this sort of regime is not very productive, except in the exercise of military power against neighbors, and the source of income for the regime is to capture the goods of their neighbors. This is at sometimes a fearsome loss of life and further impairment of the few rights and privileges remaining to the lower classes, but much to the advantage of the ruling oligarchy.

Sometimes this cycle is broken, by a popular revolt and a sudden flush of “democracy”, but almost always, that is short-lived, and the “democracy” quickly takes on the attributes of the prior regime, just with a new Strongman and high-level oligarchy, leaving most of the population back in the abject conditions they have always known.

Only a very few times, has a true republic come of these revolts, and then only maintained so long as men remain vigilant and faithful to the principles that led to the revolt in the first place. Even so, there is a cycle to these events best summed up in the words of Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Scots lawyer from the 18th Century:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”

Collapse may or may not be imminent, but sooner or later, it is inevitable.