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Comment by davidgay | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how many proponents of this idea know that it's been done before? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_of_Glarus - Protestants and Catholics had separate governments and tribunals in the same (rather small...) canton in the 17th century.

The summary I read also mentioned that the death penalty required agreement from both groups - highlighting one of the obvious complexities of such a scheme.

edit: a bit more detail

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That's a small example, limited to very small geography, and is really an example of power struggle than of different groups autonomously governing themselves.

Closer to the mark examples are all over the place with different levels of success. The most prominent are the governance structures of multiculutral and multi religious states of south and southeast Asia, Singapore is a prominent oneone, but India and Bangladesh have also adopted similar models to differing degrees. Basically, where multiple ethicities or religions coexist together, their civil and sometimes even criminal law are the laws of their religions or ethnicities, and only when a dispute is between people of disparate groups does some supreme, secular society wide set of laws apply. There are also examples of this throughout Africa, and truly, this is the way most of the world operated for thousands of years before states had defined borders.

Of course, these aren't truly what we are talking about, they're close, but in my examples there is still an overarching state that is arbiter of last resort, and there is nothing voluntary about the associations, they're usually hereditary and imposed by the state with at most an opt out of tribal/religious law. The concept as noted in the diamond age differs in that associations are voluntary (both on the part of the individual as well as the organization) and prominently, you're subject to the law of those you violate, or, if two members of two different groups are in dispute, the dispute and a resolution are handled diplomatically.

> That's a small example, limited to very small geography, and is really an example of power struggle than of different groups autonomously governing themselves.

Definitely a small geography, and, yes, a solution to a power struggle. I'll point out that large parts of of Europe had rather substantial wars and massacres as part of that specific power struggle, and also that this definitely is "different groups autonomously governing themselves".Landsgemeinde are generally viewed as a prototypical example of that, and there was no significant power over Glarus at that time (the Swiss confederation of that time was extremely far from anything like a central government).

A link to the summary? This sounds interesting.

While it sounds anachronistically enlightened (and very close to an actual historical example of what the TFA intended-- it's not very often that we harvest anything from "truth is stranger than [especially science] fiction")--

   --the death penalty was applied against witchcraft in 1782??

On the whole Switzerland is (today) sort of a Heinleinian (but regrettably (or unsurprisingly?) not Stephensonian) SF setting: peak humanity in hillbilly country

> A link to the summary?

Sorry, it was in a museum - https://www.freulerpalast.ch/, which doesn't look like it has that much information online.

Gotta wait for our residential citation-fu master to dig that one out, then. A necessary but maybe not sufficient condition for the emergence of such governing structures would be that people grow up rejecting zero-sum status games (including) at the level of tribes. The stopgap solution, constitutional monarchy, fails, because,---? So, I'd say in Gladrus, you already had protestants living in close proximity to Catholics for a handful of centuries .. but the clincher v-a-v the asiatic cases eludes me.

Ime the asiatic cases the "jesus nut" of the system (sovereign, policemen, yeomen, lawyers, judges, etc) are drawn from a single caste. Pace Manu. Makeup of the branches of government then becomes a emergent symptom. (Compare to western based systems of law.)

Who formed the peacekeeping contingent in Gladrus?

Low B/W ATM, may be a while...

In the meantime, note that CH had a catholic/proddy civil war mid-XIX (Glarus* on the protestant side) but as proof of that humanity it was resolved with only ~100 total deaths, both sides included.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderbund_War#/media/File:Son...

compare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderbund_War#/media/File:Rel...

* for some reason, only cantons with non-human animals on their flags have visible genitalia, so the flag of Glarus is penis-free.

EDIT: note also that in "modern federal" CH, almost all the tax burden is canton and commune, not confederation.

TiGR CH anachronistically (by centuries) indulging again (here, in wars of religion)

Noted the blue St Gallen in a red sea :)

Also that miyamifla has opposite tax policy, => Catholics the house?

could easily be a remnant of roman law, but unlike Monterey, which grandfathered laws (along with existing property lines) in, Mia Mifla isn't a community property jurisdiction, so maybe it's just an incidental remnant of the property speculation boom bust cycle?

Pillarization is one term used for countries with vertically integrated sub societies based on religious and other affiliation.

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