This is a radical and original proposal for a fundamental reconsideration of modern political organization. It draws inspiration from anarchism and marxism to some extent, but much of it is also novel, at least as far as the author lets on. His main thesis is that the state should be abolished and people should instead be governed by an amorphous network of functional units - one unit for garbage collection, one for healthcare, one for defense and so on. In the absence of a state, the constituency of each functional unit, i.e. the people whom it serves, would include only those who are affected by its decisions, a different set of people for each unit. People would be able to select which units they need. Representatives would be chosen to work in these units based on an expression of interest followed by a representative lottery. The author calls this distribution of political power "demarchy".

It's a bit hard to judge a panoramic argument like this by the same standards as ordinary arguments. I admire the author's audacity, but his theory is so far removed from political reality that it's beyond utopian. He admits that he can't really be sure what kind of society he's framing. But given the uncertainty, the main weakness of this book is that the theoretical foundation is a mere sketch. The theory of demarchy takes up only 20 pages, 40 if you include the introduction. This is far too little. Fundamental objections to demarchy could be raised on many fronts and the theory seems unlikely to withstand any of them.

The objection that first came to my mind is that political units need finance. How can any financial means be gained without taxation imposed by a state? The author believes that "trustees of various natural resources [can] be required to provide jointly enough revenue for public purposes to make taxation largely unnecessary" (p.134). By what formula would revenue then be distributed among the multitude of independent units which the author envisions? In the real world this distribution is performed by the state which in one way or another reconciles conflicting opinions, budgetary ones included. In a very brief section (p.118) the author indeed mentions that "higher-level bodies" would be needed for adjudicating disagreements, but he writes that these should provide a legal framework without becoming administrative authorities. This seems like a self-contradictory suggestion and the author quickly sweeps it under the rug. I would have liked to see this gaping hole filled.

As I mentioned, it would be easy to poke holes in demarchy from many other directions as well. The author should have built up the theoretical foundation in much more detail. Instead he rushes onward to discuss practical questions when the core argument still lies incomplete. This is an entertaining book which provides some food for thought, but the case for demarchy needs much more backing before it can be seriously discussed.