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democracy without the state is meaningless; democracy, from its ancient origins through its modern formative years up till today, is undeniably a form of statecraft. i concede that just because there's never been a democracy that didn't enforce its democracy through a state doesn't necessarily mean that it can't ever happen, but you've got a couple thousand years of political inertia to fight against. your line of reasoning is so fucking flawed. why do you bring up obviously non-anarchist definitions of particular functions the state assumes for itself? these are non sequiturs, and don't do anything to enhance your arguments. now you add a new adjective, "radical" to the previous ones. but it also doesn't enhance your argument. i will indeed call what you describe something else. i call it unradical democracy, a sop to institutionalized decision making that at some point (given your other ideas, definitely sooner rather than later, deliberately and not in any way accidentally) will require representatives and therefore institutionalized alienation. it may not be bureaucratic in the same way that all modern states are, but the bureaucracy is incipient in even your barebones descriptions. calling the people who live there "the people" already acknowledges that your ideas haven't escaped the modern state's definition of whom it allegedly represents. who is to be included in this construct "the people"? presumably all adults. what about mentally ill/deficient/disabled adults? if they're candidates for conservatorship, will their conservators get a double say in the decisions? what about non-adults? will you have an age of decision making? 15? 16? 17? maybe there could be a board of examiners (perhaps even the same ones to decide on mentally deficient adults) to determine the intellectual level of non-adults to allow them special permits to engage in the decision making? will there be a lowest limit, below which one is definitely not permitted to participate? what about people who are just passing through the area? surely there will still be people who are mobile? maybe they can get permission (from some other board of examiners, no doubt, tasked with determining the parameters of duration of residence) to participate if they've been hanging around for longer than a certain number of weeks/months/years? seriously, Wayne, if you haven't thought about this stuff, you might not want to pontificate on the alleged benefits of "radical" democracy; the first rule of any democracy is to define the parameters of citizenship. you can't just ignore that if you're yammering about political science.