With our modern lens it’s easy to forget, but traditionally people would go and cut the heads off people like this. This modern period where politicians get away with all sorts and never have to face the reality of themselves being sacks of flesh and bone is an anomaly that won’t last, it is perpetuated precisely because optionality doesn’t exist in the modern world.

Back then you didn’t need passports and visas to leave a tyrant like you do today. You didn’t have to traverse oceans. Didn’t have permissioned money that you couldn’t take with you. Didn’t have mass surveillance and Intelligence agencies infiltrating every nook and cranny where people might organise etc etc.

There is always a risk of an evil king, no doubt about it. Taking out one person is a lot easier than the hydra of a liberal democracy where no-one is accountable for anything though.

The key is to build wealth and prosperity through specialisation. Germany had this during its city state period (and it largely remained although bastardised thereafter), as did Italy before them. You can even see it in places in Asia albeit their culture is a bit different.

Allowing smaller regions to excel at certain things and having to compete is how the remaining principalities/city states have flourished whilst larger countries deal with non-stop internal and external conflict caused by trying to homogenise radically different groups into some incoherent mess of a society. https://i.nostr.build/zdYYz.jpg