Athenian democracy still had a pretty well structured hierarchy, the big innovation at the time was citizens were able to vote directly on policies which wasn’t common before then. They still had leaders, officials, and a social hierarchy. For example, women, slaves, and foreign residents were not eligible to vote, only adult male citizens were. This means that out of an estimated population of 300k at the time (5th century BC), only 30k-60k were able to vote. The reality is that one of the hallmarks that define civilization is social inequality. I’m sure we’ll innovate more equitable systems in the future, however, it’s not possible to get rid of social inequality entirely and it’s certainly not possible to get rid of hierarchies when it comes to social organization. At our core, we’re still just a bunch of apes, and like all the other apes, we’re social creatures and our societies have hierarchies.
Social organization requires hierarchies, and hierarchies are inherently unequal in terms of power and status.
Innovate on that.
Innovate?
Yes, like Greek Democracy only had hierarchies for wars. We most likely haven’t already tried all possible forms of social organizations.
Athenian democracy still had a pretty well structured hierarchy, the big innovation at the time was citizens were able to vote directly on policies which wasn’t common before then. They still had leaders, officials, and a social hierarchy. For example, women, slaves, and foreign residents were not eligible to vote, only adult male citizens were. This means that out of an estimated population of 300k at the time (5th century BC), only 30k-60k were able to vote. The reality is that one of the hallmarks that define civilization is social inequality. I’m sure we’ll innovate more equitable systems in the future, however, it’s not possible to get rid of social inequality entirely and it’s certainly not possible to get rid of hierarchies when it comes to social organization. At our core, we’re still just a bunch of apes, and like all the other apes, we’re social creatures and our societies have hierarchies.
That’s just an observation. You gave no reason why that’s inevitable.