> Maybe, but he did so without even a hint of how those advantages could be achieved in an alternate way He pointed out that other attempts haven't worked as w

> Maybe, but he did so without even a hint of how those advantages could be achieved in an alternate way He pointed out that other attempts haven't worked as well. Maybe he's wrong, or maybe there is something new that would work better, but that's a very different complaint. > or any mention of the disadvantages. he said that they existed. > To me, it sounded like he was implying establishing decentralized imperial republics. implying->recommending ? There are two ways to evaluate decentralized imperial republics, on an absolute scale and on a relative scale. On an absolute scale, they're bad. On a relative scale, they seem to work better than the alternatives. You seem to think that "they're bad" is the end of things. Unless you've got something better, it isn't.