Corruption

Traditionally, how has a corrupt system of government been dealt with, and what are the best ways to handle one?

>> 2

A hypothetical third way would be to remove the mechanisms which reinforce corruption. You could move to a cashless, post-demand economy, where anything you need you take (ala star trek), or you could move from a top-down hierarchical power structure to a bottom-up flat power structure, where every single person's opinion is valued equally on every single issue.

While these ideas may seem far fetched, they have had some implementation: in Sparta, there were no possessions, not even food. Everyone ate communaly. The only thing a person owned was their spear, which they had to make themself. I would surmise that the Spartan system was corruption free. It was also evil, what with the whipping cripples off of cliffs and enslaving millions. But I don't think this is a necessary consequence of a non-monetary society.

Or the New Guinean system, where-in there is *no* hierarchical power structure, there are "big men", but this is a non-hereditary description (not a position), which only indicates that the person is charismatic. Every decision made by a New Guinean tribe is decided by sitting in camp for hours, days, or weeks (Jared Diamond records spending 2 weeks, 3 days, 6 hours sitting around discussing whether or not the tribe should allow one of their members to go off on a scholarship to Oxford), and no decision is made until everyone either agrees or decides they don't really care. Imagine every decision made via multiparty fillibuster. The New Guinean system seems inefficient, but they have survived continuously on a difficult small island without changing their system of governance for at least 2.800 years, a feat no other society can claim.