Twenty-two centuries ago, some Greek bloke called Polybius was hauled to Rome as a hostage, and he spent his captivity studying the place, not as a tourist, but the way a doctor studies a patient he already suspects is dying.

His conclusion was that no form of government lasts. They turn into one another, in order, like a wheel coming round.

He called it Anacyclosis.

It runs like this:

1. A strong man rules well, and that is monarchy.
2. His sons rule for themselves, and that is tyranny.
3. The best men kill the tyrant and take his place: aristocracy, the good few.
4. Their sons grow greedy: oligarchy, the rich few.
5. The people rise and throw the rich out: democracy.
6. And then democracy curdles into the thing Polybius dreaded most — ochlocracy, mob-rule, where the loudest voice wins — until it gets bad enough that the crowd itself begs for a strong man to make it stop. Which is where we came in.

His reason for why this keeps happening is really worth thinking about: Every government, he said, breeds the thing that kills it, the way iron breeds rust. The end isn’t an accident; it’s in the metal from the start.

What we genuinely have right now is a late democracy: the mass franchise intact in its forms, decaying in its substance. A managerial class that calls itself a meritocracy presides over a crowd that calls itself the people — each dressed up as something nobler than it is.

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