Lawful Good Tyranny - How would this look?

[Andor]

I'm glad you asked citizen. The ordinance against the parking of tall wagons near to the city wall is quite obviously intended to promote public security by preventing spies and villains from gaining egress or ingress to our fair city by way of scaling the wall. Moreover, the King's Own Cavalry requires a clear path about the perimeter of the wall in the event of an emergency, and such wains as yours accelerate only with great difficulty and thereby thwart their progress in a chase. Are you not gladdened in your heart citizen that magistrates wiser and more learned than we have put such great and effectual effort toward crafting the laws of our fair land? Now, this form shows you have been served with a fine. You may pay it at the office of the bursar of the 5th burrough on this coming Wednesday between the 3rd hour and the 6th hour after sunrise.

Errr... citizen, I said, "Are you not gladdened in your heart? Where is the cheerfulness? A merry heart is a light heart. Is it not said in the Book of Lado, "Do not let your countenance fall"? Who is your wellness councilor, citizen, you seem distracted in your mind and heart and I am concerned for you.

Sorry, don't buy it. If they want the inner wall clear (which is a good idea for more than the reasons you mentioned) they would simply disallow traffic around the inner wall. A law with a random (and worse changeable) restriction is neither lawful nor good. How exactly is the public weal served by forcing everyone to replace their wheels whenever a tall king is succeded by a short one?

LG is not LN with a coat of glitter. Think less George Orwell and more about achieving good.

 

[Ysgarran]

Sorry, don't buy it. If they want the inner wall clear (which is a good idea for more than the reasons you mentioned) they would simply disallow traffic around the inner wall. A law with a random (and worse changeable) restriction is neither lawful nor good. How exactly is the public weal served by forcing everyone to replace their wheels whenever a tall king is succeded by a short one?

LG is not LN with a coat of glitter. Think less George Orwell and more about achieving good.

I think you might be getting caught up in the wrong emphasis here. Lots of measurements in a medieval setting were 'rules of thumb' and not tied down to any agreed upon set of standards. This was particularly true in day to day uses of time and distance. It really is besides the point. My guess is that Celebrim included the "King's waist" requirement for a bit of color as much as anything.

The real point is that your ability to dispute what is 'good' is proscribed by the hierarchical nature of the society. Just because you 'know' that a particular law does not result in the greater good does not mean you can just start ignoring that law: you HAVE to go through the proper channels to change that law. A lawful and good society would have reasonable mechanisms for this but there would still be an element of bureaucratic overhead to it.

Arguing with the town guard on the street would not be one of those mechanisms.

Ysgarran.

 

[Celebrim]

Sorry, don't buy it. If they want the inner wall clear (which is a good idea for more than the reasons you mentioned) they would simply disallow traffic around the inner wall. A law with a random (and worse changeable) restriction is neither lawful nor good. How exactly is the public weal served by forcing everyone to replace their wheels whenever a tall king is succeded by a short one?

Excuse men, my good man, but did you just call our king 'short'?

But as a practical matter:

Cubit = The distance from the King's extend finger, to his elbow.
Furlong = One ox plow's furrow long.
Foot = The length of the King's foot.
Acre = One furlong long and one chain wide.

You've got quite the opposite problem of the other fellow I'm talking with. He can't see that 'good' is a requirement of 'good'. You seem to want to insist that 'perfect' is a requirement of 'good'. In the real world, any society - and a lawful society in particular - is going to have an enormous number of artifacts in its law and culture which are legacies of earlier eras and which persist because they've become a part of tradition. Such artifacts tend to persist most strongly ironicly where tradition is most strongly respected.

As a practical matter, the Cubit was standardized in (heavily lawful centralized orderly) Egypt, even when its official definition had something to do with the Pharoah. You can't build a pyramid with changable measurements after all. How does a society resolve this problem? With the judicious application of wit, cognitive dissonance, ritual, and tradition. If the cubit is the same size, then King is always the same size. The King is always tall and noble bearing. If you ever measure him and you don't measure his forearm to be a cubit and his foot to be a foot, it's your measurement that is wrong. If you are his tailor, better keep it to yourself that the King is below standard size, and if you are his cobbler don't even think of mentioning the platform shoes he wears to anyone because you aren't just calling the King 'short', you are attacking the very dignity of the State. The King may be benevolent, but you better hope he's around to forgive your slight, because his vassals won't stand for it.

 

[Andor]

The real point is that your ability to dispute what is 'good' is proscribed by the hierarchical nature of the society. Just because you 'know' that a particular law does not result in the greater good does not mean you can just start ignoring that law: you HAVE to go through the proper channels to change that law. A lawful and good society would have reasonable mechanisms for this but there would still be an element of bureaucratic overhead to it.

Arguing with the town guard on the street would not be one of those mechanisms.

Ysgarran.

You've got quite the opposite problem of the other fellow I'm talking with. He can't see that 'good' is a requirement of 'good'. You seem to want to insist that 'perfect' is a requirement of 'good'.

Ok. I am actually familiar historical systems of measurement. I'm also well aware of legacy laws and how weird they can be. Although since we have no past history for this LG theocracy we have no cause to assume it's blighted with a bunch of holdover laws. It could have been founded directly by the God of Justice on Day 1 of existence.

In any event my actual point is that the images you guys are painting of a society where every thing is so over regulated that there is a proscribed number of times to brush each tooth is not good, or lawful, or sane, or even a little bit functional. 1984 with a 'no frowning' law is not LG. The moonbase from Paranoia is not LG even if the computer does want you to be happy.

The existence, or absence of many laws is not what makes a society lawful or chaotic. The goal of the laws, and the attitude towards them does. Same deal with good and evil.

Excuse men, my good man, but did you just call our king 'short'?

Given that the Kings of England included Æthelred the Unready, Harold Harefoot, William the Bastard, and Edward Longshanks I think they can take a little ribbing. Although calling Napoleon 'short' might have been a bad idea.

 

[Celebrim]

Given that the Kings of England included Æthelred the Unready, Harold Harefoot, William the Bastard, and Edward Longshanks I think they can take a little ribbing. Although calling Napoleon 'short' might have been a bad idea.

It's no accident that England developed a democratic outlook almost unique in the world. England also beheaded one of its Kings, and you could do an interesting Ph.D. thesis on the culture that allowed England to govern itself in despite of its highly dysfunctional series of monarchies.

Ok. I am actually familiar historical systems of measurement. I'm also well aware of legacy laws and how weird they can be. Although since we have no past history for this LG theocracy we have no cause to assume it's blighted with a bunch of holdover laws. It could have been founded directly by the God of Justice on Day 1 of existence.

Or not.

In any event my actual point is that the images you guys are painting of a society where every thing is so over regulated that there is a proscribed number of times to brush each tooth is not good, or lawful, or sane, or even a little bit functional.

Ok. Feel free to demonstrate that.

1984 with a 'no frowning' law is not LG. The moonbase from Paranoia is not LG even if the computer does want you to be happy.

No, they are not. Do you think that because there are a large number of laws that there is no difference between what I've described and the world of 1984 or Paranioa? Paranioa, which is ruled capraciously by the whims an arbitrary and probably insane autocrat, doesn't even seem to particularly 'lawful' to me and seems rather to be a highly debased verson of what might have been years ago a lawful society.

The existence, or absence of many laws is not what makes a society lawful or chaotic. The goal of the laws, and the attitude towards them does. Same deal with good and evil.

I won't quibble with that too much.

Exactly what are you arguing against exactly? Because other than a blanket rejection, you haven't said much of anything that goes against my base line of argument. To put it plainly out there where it can be knocked around if you want, it is this:

1) A lawful good society has great respect for the law.
2) Equally, a lawful good society wants its members to prosper and be content.
3) A lawful good society tries to pass laws that benefit its members.

With me so far? Let's shift gears a litle and present two more 'facts' which hopefully won't get alot of argument.

4) There is an infinite (or nearly infinite) number of good ideas that one can have. This follows from there being an infinite (or nearly infinite) number of situations one can be in, and a corresspondingly large number of solutions that may present themselves.
5) Lawful people have no problem at all telling other people to do what is good for them. They aren't 'live and let live' types on the whole, because they put the good of the group ahead of the freedom of the individual. They believe intervention is more virtuous and demonstrative of love and goodness than toleration. They aren't terribly concerned with personal freedom, and will tend to argue that freedom is illusionary at best and a decietful master (compared to say duty) that robs you of your happiness at worst. They aren't above interfering in your life for your own good.

From that it follows:

6) It is very tempting for any society desiring to do good by its members, but particularly one with a high regard for the law, to want to enshrine every good idea in the form of a law so it will be there to benefit all. That is to say, every time there is an accident, or a misfortune, or a catastrophe, or a need, or distress, or anything else, the instincts of the members of the society will be to say, "This could have been prevented if only X." and hense "X should be a law so that this does not happen again." You see, what's most insidous about this is that lawful people tend not to believe in random chance. They believe things happen for a reason. Hense, they tend to believe that, if you had the right set of laws, that the world could be rightly ordered. Now, this is in my opinion a mild form of insanity, but it tends to inflict alot of people in the real world including some very bright (maybe especially some very bright) people.
7) At some point this drive to rightly order the world for the benefit of its members can go subtly wrong. Oh sure, it can go horribly wrong too, but when it goes horribly wrong its generally not something we call 'good'. Stories abound with sterotypes of LG societies going horribly wrong, to the point that I no longer even consider the idea interesting. It can however go subtly wrong, and one of the ways it can go subtly wrong is simply forgetting (or never even considering) that a very very large number of laws - even if they are individually rather sound and well thought out laws - represents for mortals a very huge and onerous burden in and of itself. Each individual law has a very good reason behind it. Each individual law is intended to thwart a particular specific tragedy. Each individual law arguably contributes to the well being of society. However, collectively all these good laws end up constituting a prison. However noble each law is separately, collectively they are just too much of a burden to bear. They are, as someone so perfectly put, 'stiffling', in exactly the way that something good, when you have too much of it, becomes stiffling, choking, and even suffocating.
8) This becomes a very difficult trap to escape though. Because, to repeal the law individually requires you to take on the reasonableness of the law head on. Each law is in and of itself reasonable, and even if you managed to nitpick it to death, the likely result wouldn't be a repeal of the law (as you might have desired) but an ammendment of the law that made it that much more complicated to deal with the special cases you came up with. Likewise, any attempt to repeal a bunch of laws together becomes an attack on the society as a whole. So, it becomes very hard to repeal laws, but meanwhile a new law is created every time someone observes 'a good idea', some good that theoretically might be done if a regulation existed to prevent some evil or encourage some good. In the right culture (and it doesn't even have to be a lawful one), the situation tends to just snowball until eventually society is buried under a mountain of well intentioned laws.

This, sadly, is rapidly leaving the merely theoretical.

 

[FireLance]

1) A lawful good society has great respect for the law.
2) Equally, a lawful good society wants its members to prosper and be content.
3) A lawful good society tries to pass laws that benefit its members.

With me so far? Let's shift gears a litle and present two more 'facts' which hopefully won't get alot of argument.

4) There is an infinite (or nearly infinite) number of good ideas that one can have. This follows from there being an infinite (or nearly infinite) number of situations one can be in, and a corresspondingly large number of solutions that may present themselves.
5) Lawful people have no problem at all telling other people to do what is good for them. They aren't 'live and let live' types on the whole, because they put the good of the group ahead of the freedom of the individual. They believe intervention is more virtuous and demonstrative of love and goodness than toleration. They aren't terribly concerned with personal freedom, and will tend to argue that freedom is illusionary at best and a decietful master (compared to say duty) that robs you of your happiness at worst. They aren't above interfering in your life for your own good.

From that it follows:

6) It is very tempting for any society desiring to do good by its members, but particularly one with a high regard for the law, to want to enshrine every good idea in the form of a law so it will be there to benefit all. That is to say, every time there is an accident, or a misfortune, or a catastrophe, or a need, or distress, or anything else, the instincts of the members of the society will be to say, "This could have been prevented if only X." and hense "X should be a law so that this does not happen again." You see, what's most insidous about this is that lawful people tend not to believe in random chance. They believe things happen for a reason. Hense, they tend to believe that, if you had the right set of laws, that the world could be rightly ordered. Now, this is in my opinion a mild form of insanity, but it tends to inflict alot of people in the real world including some very bright (maybe especially some very bright) people.
7) At some point this drive to rightly order the world for the benefit of its members can go subtly wrong. Oh sure, it can go horribly wrong too, but when it goes horribly wrong its generally not something we call 'good'. Stories abound with sterotypes of LG societies going horribly wrong, to the point that I no longer even consider the idea interesting. It can however go subtly wrong, and one of the ways it can go subtly wrong is simply forgetting (or never even considering) that a very very large number of laws - even if they are individually rather sound and well thought out laws - represents for mortals a very huge and onerous burden in and of itself. Each individual law has a very good reason behind it. Each individual law is intended to thwart a particular specific tragedy. Each individual law arguably contributes to the well being of society. However, collectively all these good laws end up constituting a prison. However noble each law is separately, collectively they are just too much of a burden to bear. They are, as someone so perfectly put, 'stiffling', in exactly the way that something good, when you have too much of it, because stiffling, choking, and even suffocating.
8) This becomes a very difficult trap to escape though. Because, to repeal the law individually requires you to take on the reasonableness of the law head on. Each law is in and of itself reasonable, and even if you managed to nitpick it to death, the likely result wouldn't be a repeal of the law (as you might have desired) but an ammendment of the law that made it that much more complicated to deal with the special cases you came up with. Likewise, any attempt to repeal a bunch of laws together becomes an attack on the society as a whole. So, it becomes very hard to repeal laws, but meanwhile a new law is created every time someone observes 'a good idea', some good that theoretically might be done if a regulation existed to prevent some evil or encourage some good. In the right culture (and it doesn't even have to be a lawful one), the situation tends to just snowball until eventually society is buried under a mountain of well intentioned laws.

This, sadly, is rapidly leaving the merely theoretical.

Not only is this a very good post, many of the points are also applicable to a discussion of rules bloat in game systems.

 

[Ysgarran]

It could have been founded directly by the God of Justice on Day 1 of existence.
In any event my actual point is that the images you guys are painting of a society where every thing is so over regulated that there is a proscribed number of times to brush each tooth is not good, or lawful, or sane, or even a little bit functional.

You are getting at what could make a LG society actually interesting have a game in. Who gets to decide when a law 'goes over the line' into something that is not LG? Even if clerics have a direct line to their gods you still have to rely on their subjective interpretations (Rashomon Effect). Even LG gods would differ amongst themselves about what is best for the society as a whole.

Lets say the god of Justice set down the laws on day one. Either you have a set of laws that are so overly exacting as to become quickly out of date or you need lawyers (or clerics) to interpret how the laws apply to day to day life. When you bring people in to the equation you bring in fallibility and room for errors.

An example that comes to mind is a prohibition against eating the Fugu fish because it is poisonous. Perfectly rational, protects people from killing themselves, who would argue against such a law? If I perfect a way of removing the poisonous gland and making the fish edible that law still remains on the book.

You do keep bringing up 1984 and I was wondering if a LG society might start demanding people use LGSpeak (i.e. Newspeak). Before you dismiss that out of hand think about this from wikipedia: "The linguistic relativity principle (Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) is the idea that the varying cultural concepts and categories inherent in different languages affect the cognitive classification of the experienced world in such a way that speakers of different languages think and behave differently because of it." If LGSpeak would lead people down the path of good then why not have laws mandating its use?
I would find it entertaining for a group of adventurers heading into to town and asking "Where is the nearest fence who can handle stolen diamonds?" translates into "Where is a badman who does bad things?"
Now I'm not sure if such a society would ever exist outside of the outer-planes but it is fun to play around with.

To clarify things a bit. Do people believe that that there is some unvarying standard by which 'Lawful Good' can be measured by? I suppose that could be supported by the existence of the LG gods but I still say that it runs smack into human nature.

Ysgarran.

 

[Andor]

From that it follows:

6) It is very tempting for any society desiring to do good by its members, but particularly one with a high regard for the law, to want to enshrine every good idea in the form of a law so it will be there to benefit all. That is to say, every time there is an accident, or a misfortune, or a catastrophe, or a need, or distress, or anything else, the instincts of the members of the society will be to say, "This could have been prevented if only X." and hense "X should be a law so that this does not happen again." You see, what's most insidous about this is that lawful people tend not to believe in random chance. They believe things happen for a reason. Hense, they tend to believe that, if you had the right set of laws, that the world could be rightly ordered. Now, this is in my opinion a mild form of insanity, but it tends to inflict alot of people in the real world including some very bright (maybe especially some very bright) people.
7) At some point this drive to rightly order the world for the benefit of its members can go subtly wrong. Oh sure, it can go horribly wrong too, but when it goes horribly wrong its generally not something we call 'good'. Stories abound with sterotypes of LG societies going horribly wrong, to the point that I no longer even consider the idea interesting. It can however go subtly wrong, and one of the ways it can go subtly wrong is simply forgetting (or never even considering) that a very very large number of laws - even if they are individually rather sound and well thought out laws - represents for mortals a very huge and onerous burden in and of itself. Each individual law has a very good reason behind it. Each individual law is intended to thwart a particular specific tragedy. Each individual law arguably contributes to the well being of society. However, collectively all these good laws end up constituting a prison. However noble each law is separately, collectively they are just too much of a burden to bear. They are, as someone so perfectly put, 'stiffling', in exactly the way that something good, when you have too much of it, becomes stiffling, choking, and even suffocating.
8) This becomes a very difficult trap to escape though. Because, to repeal the law individually requires you to take on the reasonableness of the law head on. Each law is in and of itself reasonable, and even if you managed to nitpick it to death, the likely result wouldn't be a repeal of the law (as you might have desired) but an ammendment of the law that made it that much more complicated to deal with the special cases you came up with. Likewise, any attempt to repeal a bunch of laws together becomes an attack on the society as a whole. So, it becomes very hard to repeal laws, but meanwhile a new law is created every time someone observes 'a good idea', some good that theoretically might be done if a regulation existed to prevent some evil or encourage some good. In the right culture (and it doesn't even have to be a lawful one), the situation tends to just snowball until eventually society is buried under a mountain of well intentioned laws.

This, sadly, is rapidly leaving the merely theoretical.

This is where I start having a problem. On several levels. First even in lawful societies people are well aware that passing a law is not the solution to every problem, because anyone but an idiot is aware that laws cannot possibly cover every eventuality. Thats why we teach custom and ethics, to provide guidelines for situations the law cannot cover. More importantly non-modern systems do not move as quickly or rashly and are much less likely to pass a law on a wave of popular panic the way we are accustomed to seeing it.

Second. This is a theocracy. If before any law can be passed a cleric casts 'weal or woe' to see if it's a good idea it will probably cut down significantly on the number of stupid ideas.

Third. We don't know quite enough about the function of the society, specifically how laws are proposed, passed and enforced to be certain how this would play out. I rather doubt however that anyone who feels like it can propose a law and see it passed on the basis of popularity as can occur in some modern states.

Fourth. A lawful society doesn't need a law to cover every possibility. Because the people respond well to authority local control and regulation are very effective at controling problems without the long term restriction of law.

This is fun stuff to toss about btw. And it is worth noting that some societies value stability and continuity much more than freedom or even justice. Under the Tokugawa shogunate frex if a law was found to be bad or unjust, but had been in place more than 40 years, it was left alone as the disruption to stability was seen as worse than the injustice. However as we are discussing a Theocracy headed by a God with Justice in his portfolio that probably does not apply to our hypothetical kingdom.

Touching on 3. It's worth noting that all control doesn't need to be vested in a single central authority, and historically it rarely was. Maybe the law doesn't touch on arcane experimentation at all, that is considered to be mages guild buisiness. Likewise no law governs the use of dyes in fabrics, that's for the dyers guild to worry about. Why would the king or parliment or high priest know or care about such matters?

 

[Celebrim]

This is where I start having a problem. On several levels.

Ahh.. objections. It warms my heart.

First even in lawful societies people are well aware that passing a law is not the solution to every problem, because anyone but an idiot is aware that laws cannot possibly cover every eventuality.

The world contains a surprising number of idiots. What is probably more surprising to most people is that it contains a very large number of highly intelligent idiots. Actual idiots have this advantage over intelligent people: they believe that stupidity goes all the way to the top. They do not believe it for the right reasons usually, often they are just engaging in a defensive mechanism to protect their feelings, but at least they believe it.

Thats why we teach custom and ethics, to provide guidelines for situations the law cannot cover.

Do we? Do we really? How many people think that the public school system does an adequate job teaching customs and ethics? How many people hear would trust the public school system to even try? I mean, seriously, what part of the world do you live in that is trying to teach some sort of ethical guidelines, because I gaurantee you its not part of the English speaking world.

More importantly non-modern systems do not move as quickly or rashly and are much less likely to pass a law on a wave of popular panic the way we are accustomed to seeing it.

There is nothing new under the sun. If anything, modern systems are much less likely to pass laws rashly and in response to panic because in a modern system you have to get many many more people on the panic bandwagon before you get an ill-thought out law. Back when you had one man legislatures, I assure you, you got lots and lots of rash and over hastily implemented laws.

Second. This is a theocracy. If before any law can be passed a cleric casts 'weal or woe' to see if it's a good idea it will probably cut down significantly on the number of stupid ideas.

This opens up a can of worms that complicates things emmensely. We'd first have to decide on a bunch of concrete facts about the nature of LG dieties, before we'd even begin to be able to deal with, "What if the government is literally a theocracy and not merely one in name only?" Let's leave off that objection for now, and see if any of the rest hold before we try to deal with it.

Third. We don't know quite enough about the function of the society, specifically how laws are proposed, passed and enforced to be certain how this would play out. I rather doubt however that anyone who feels like it can propose a law and see it passed on the basis of popularity as can occur in some modern states.

Doesn't really matter. All I have to do is provide an example of a structure that would allow this to happen. Even in modern states I think you'd be disappointed to find that 'anyone who feels like it' would have a very very hard time proposing a law and seeing it passed on any basis - popular or otherwise. What matters isn't that everyone can, but that those with legislative authority do. Even if only one person has legislative authority, so long as that person doesn't have perfect wisdom, then the situation described can develop. And even then, we have to be very careful to define 'perfect wisdom'. And, just as a preview of the problem of throwing a diety directly in the mix, we could presume a LG deity that had very great wisdom indeed, but whose personality and inclinations caused that diety to assume that any suffering brought about by incidental losses of freedom represented an inherent flaw in the governed rather than an inherent flaw in the law or system of governance.

[quoteFourth. A lawful society doesn't need a law to cover every possibility. Because the people respond well to authority local control and regulation are very effective at controling problems without the long term restriction of law.[/quote]

Of course it doesn't. But doesn't mean that a lawful society couldn't desire to have a law to cover every possibility. A game system doesn't need a rule to cover every possibility, but that doesn't stop many people from acting like it should or from being tempted to try to do so. And obviously, this is more likely to occur where the lawful population has been acustomed to 'Rule of Law' rather than 'Rule of Man' and is uncomfortable not knowing what the law might be.

However as we are discussing a Theocracy headed by a God with Justice in his portfolio that probably does not apply to our hypothetical kingdom.

I've been speaking in the general case, but even the specific case doesn't I think preclude this sort of problem developing. Even in D&D, LG dieties might feel that the right of self-government justly had to be respected and that a more hands off approach was required to ruling the living. Or, a hands off approach might be imposed upon the diety by some convention amongst the gods the precluded intervention beyond a certain prescribed level. We don't really know. And, even if we did know, we'd then have to decide just how all-knowing, all-wise, and suited to ruling mortals such a diety would be. There is no reason to assume that just because the WIS 30 greater diety does a bang-up job generally, that he does a perfect job, nor is there any reason to assume that flawed humans still wouldn't chafe under perfection.

Touching on 3. It's worth noting that all control doesn't need to be vested in a single central authority, and historically it rarely was. Maybe the law doesn't touch on arcane experimentation at all, that is considered to be mages guild buisiness. Likewise no law governs the use of dyes in fabrics, that's for the dyers guild to worry about. Why would the king or parliment or high priest know or care about such matters?

Doesn't really matter. On one hand, you can ask, "Why would the Federal Government care about how deeply you plow your field and how often?" or any of the other things that governments meddle in with the best (or worst) of intentions. On the other hand, the very same problems are likely to be manifest at every level of government if they have the same cultural root. The central government might not regulate the dyers at all, and leave that up to the dyers guild. But the dyers guild might, with the best of intentions, regulate its own affairs just as onerously as anyone. Indeed, if you look at Athenian democracy, it didn't collapse because some tyrant subverted it - it collapsed because the voters saddled themselves with so many burdensome and stiffling regulations, that rule by a tyrant got to be more attractive than continued self-rule. So really, this problem can develop quite independently of the sytem or structure of government. People can have this sort of system imposed on them by a well meaning ruler wanting to order his people's lives, and people can literally do it to themselves trying to order their neighbors lives.

 

[Andor]

This has drifted into modern politics and completely off the subject at hand so I'm going to let it drop. But...

Even in modern states I think you'd be disappointed to find that 'anyone who feels like it' would have a very very hard time proposing a law and seeing it passed on any basis - popular or otherwise.

Take a look at the California ballot initiative system. That example was not randomly dreamed up.