Sparta is the only state to beat Glubb’s cycle of history lifespan limit on empire. The Spartans avoided corruption by various Draconian (Lycurgan, really) measures, including the use of iron for currency. While this is not feasible in a modern economy, the idea is adaptable.
My system calls for two representative political bodies, the house of blood and the house of gold. But perhaps the name of the former should be changed to the house of iron.
(While we’re picking names, perhaps this state model should be named Cyber-Spartanism. Neo-Spartanism is taken, and the Cyber prefix honors Mother Internet, who has given birth to the panoply of ideas that is the Red Pill.)
I have also called for a return to the anthropological 40-60% male pre-breeding casualty/incel rate. The symbol of the iron coin offers a mechanism for enforcing this requirement.
The two fundamental units of this state model are the blooded patriarch and the sovereign 12-man gang. In war, men will die for fellow platoon mates, but that willingness falls off rapidly for the larger organizational units. Thus the 12 man sovereign gang must be willing to die for each other.
I propose that each man in the gang be given a blank iron coin. Each writes in his will to which of his gang mates the coin should go. (For redundancy, this should be a list ordered by priority.) Whenever a man dies before producing a male heir, his coin is engraved with his name, face and ID number. It is then bequeathed to the first surviving man on the list.
That receiving man becomes a blooded patriarch, and has rights to marry and breed. If he is already blooded, the coin goes to the next man on the list.
Illegitimate children, i.e. those not sired by the blooded, are exiled immediately upon detection, to preserve gene pool K-selection. For similar reasons, slavery or any form of second class citizenship is not permitted. Those who would fall into this category are instead exiled.
Unblooded men remains wards of their patriarch or nearest patriarch relation, and have no independent legal existence.
Iron coins are not fungible between individuals or gangs. One brother must lay down his life so that another may live. Those bloodlines that produce self-sacrificing heroes will thus be prized and multiplied.
Human corruption seems universal and overwhelming at any organization unit larger than 12 or less permanent than a lifetime. So we keep it there.
In times of war, the necessary blood can be shed in national service. In times of peace, in internecine gang duels, at varying organizational scales. These internal duels guarantee that the state’s military remains martial rather than bureaucratic, and 3rd generation warfare capable rather than ossified. The Spartans warned never to fight too long against the same enemy – the exception being oneself.
The Spartans failed due to institutional drift, women’s lib, slave-generated luxury, and economic incompetence. It is possible to resurrect the model and add to it the patriarchal Abrahamic birthrates that powered the pre-Mosaic Egyptian explosion, the Roman separation of powers that permitted expansion, and the English property rights that permitted capitalism.
Can you imagine how quickly an eugenic Christian state on built on this model would conquer this sloppily-run planet? The only limiting factor is the compounding interest of population growth. The prospect makes me toothy.
No one gets a break, no one gets a pass – unless it comes from one of the other 11 men in his gang, via the ultimate selfless sacrifice. Corrupt that.
Every now and then, someone will try, of course. And he’ll be caught and fragged. Such is the beauty of a small tribe.
So far, it has been lack of imagination that has permitted the state megascale system to flourish. Now we will see if it is also lack of will.