Who Were the Sea Peoples?

Monarchy is an interesting possible solution to Hayek's problem of why "the worst get on top": the monarch had to make no effort to get on top except that of getting out of the birth canal. And history lends this notion some support: of course, there have been very bad monarchs, but I don't think the worst of them approach Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot. Sortition, of course, is another possible solution. Just wishing that "Everyone will stay at the bottom and so no one will be on top!" on the other hand, is not much of solution.

In the classical and Christian epochs, few people would have worried about exactly how a government was constructed from parts or what operating procedures those parts followed when it came to deciding whether a particular government was justified. Instead, it was justified because it brought about a good end: generally speaking, because it was the most concrete expression of and ultimate protector of the civic order that underlay its existence. The details of how the government had been composed -- out of the monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements combined, or only one or two of those -- and how it operated -- by voting and of what sort, according to what sort of constitution, and so on -- were of interest not as ways to justify the existence of the government, but as methods that could be evaluated according to the extent to which they did or didn't help a government achieve its end. But with the overthrow of Aristotelian philosophy, the baby was tossed out with th...