Philosopher Kings

2400 years ago Plato imagined a Utopia ruled by Philosopher Kings. The idea of a beneficent ruler is beguiling. A secular version of the Pope perhaps. Such an authoritarian state might well have much the form of an altruist society, with everyone's needs catered for. The essential feature though, is that the citizenry would be in compliant servitude to the 'king'. Should he change his philosophy or die, everything could change. If the philosophy were a form of democratic altruism, then the citizenry would cease to be obeying the king, by adopting it. The seeds of revolution. Should there be no 'king' [or Pope] but only a philosophy more as a religion, with its authority as 'king', such a society could last for a thousand years. Set against this authoritarian society, the anarchist or individualist society, would be a form of democracy with its citizens in a precarious condition of egalitarian self determination. It would be precarious, because should any family exert a wider 'moral' influence, either the society would be moved towards Altruism or, more likely, Authoritarianism.