To me, it sounds like a constructive alternative to Sunday morning sermons.

I'll never tithe in my life. Where does that money go instead? Well, where did it go originally? 90% of tithing these days goes to supporting a developed world middle-class lifestyle for folks who give one lecture a week and spend the rest of their time providing constitutionally protected unlicensed mental health services.

So, there is a business model here. Professors are paid so poorly that individual tutoring for the intellectually curious in the professional class could provide meaningful additional income. $60,000/(24 x 3 x 3) = $277/student/class for a typical 3+3 load. But I'd happily pay $500 to take a 3-4 person class with a good prof on a topic I enjoy. $500 x 4 = $2,000 per seminar. Which is quite a lot of money when you're only making $60,000 -- especially if you're already prepped to teach that seminar. And my guesstimates here are actually high for the humanities at some institutions!

I'd happily pay $500/mo to attend intellectually engaging seminars with a small group of like-minded folks, even online. And I view that as morally equivalent to tithing, since it's achieving roughly the same thing (sponsoring someone's life-of-mind).

So, there is a market for the idea outlines in thep ost.

(The Plato's Republic thing feels pretty off-topic; I also think it's over-rated fwiw, but if others want to read it more power to them.)

Justice is very much part of the zeitgeist, but how many actually stop to ask what that even means? What does it mean for a society to be just, for a person to be just? If we can't produce an answer to those questions, how are we ever going to produce justice, or be just?

Plato's critique of democracy isn't something we should reject on the account that it's a critique of democracy. He makes a few good points, it's not some intellectual check mate, but it's something any follower of democracy should have answers to, they are problems any democracy needs to work toward solving. If there is any take-away from Plato, it is that we get closer to truth by asking questions, by exploring murky half-thought thoughts and figuring out where they don't quite add up.

FWIW, The Republic has a lot of things to say about other subjects besides politics. Things like art, and education, ancient Greek society. I read a really interesting book a few years ago, Preface to Plato, that argued Plato was mostly criticizing the traditional, oral culture of Greece, with its emphasis on rote, formulaic learning. (That's a crude summary of the argument, but anyway...)

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