On 05Sep2020 0111, Jeffrey Schwartz wrote:
> The story I saw was:
>
> 0 No government structure. -- very small group of people, scouts,
> prospectors, etc trying to figure out if the world is worth anything
> 1 Company/Corporation.--- they found something, and the company comes
> in to exploit it.
> 2 Participating Democracy. -- enough non-company employees that they
> need frontier-town style town hall government
> 3 Self-Perpetuating Oligarchy. -- and the Political machine comes in.
> Certain people got elected, and set things up to make sure who took
> over for them
> 4 Representative Democracy. -- until the people got fed up with it and
> wanted reforms
> 5 Feudal Technocracy. --- but they elected by face and personality,
> not competence. People who actually know how to solve problems take
> over
> 6 Captive Government. -- until some other world noticed the place was
> profitable and had good resources, and bought the technocrats out.
> 7 Balkanization. -- and then the people got fed up with that, and
> fought among themselves
> 8 Civil Service Bureaucracy. -- Until a group of people negotiated
> contracts and deals between the warring states, so they could at least
> trade between factions on planet
> 9 Impersonal Bureaucracy. -- and then the people handling the
> paperwork decided they were more important than the people who were
> doing the real work
> A Charismatic Dictator.-- and the people doing the real work found
> someone to follow
> B Non-Charismatic Leader -- but when he died, his son took over... and
> he was an idiot.
> C Charismatic Oligarchy. -- so the friends of the guy from "A" took over
> D Religious Dictatorship. --- and one of them had an epiphany
And all the while the population was growing and growing, putting
constant pressure on institutions not intended to govern so many people
and manage the infrastructure required for them to live and thrive. Each
shift in government was thus a bandaid on the last, as were its reforms...

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>