you can roughly locate any community world or somewhere along a scale running all the way from democracy to despotism one to democracy and another somewhere in the middle and a third many observers a found that workable yardsticks help in discovering how near a community is to despotism the respect and the power scale arable observer can use a respect scale to find how many citizens get an even break as a community moves towards despotism respect is restricted to fewer people our community is low on the respect scale if common courtesy is with held from large groups of people on account of their political attitudes if people are rude to others because they think their wealth and position gives them that right are because they don't like a man's race or his religion equal opportunity for all citizens to develop useful skills is one basis for raising a community on a respect scale the opportunity to develop useful skills is important but not enough equally important opportunity to put skills to use is a further test on a respect  scale power scale is another important yardstick of despotism it gauges the citizens share in making the communities decisions communities which guns and great decision making in a few hands rate low on a power scale and are moving towards despotism like france under the bourbon king was one of them said the state i am the state today democracy is going to have a way in communities whose citizens the distant despotic power is that it can disregard the will of the people it rules without the consent of the govern when legislatures become ceremonial i say please only and have no real control over law making their community rates low on a power  spread of respect and tolerance of community is influenced by certain conditions which many observers measure by means of the economic distribution and information scales  economic distribution become a slanted its middle income groups grow smaller and despotism stands a better chance to gain a foothold where land is privately owned one sign of a poorly balanced economy is the concentration of land ownership in the hands of a very small number of people when farmers lose their increased in communities which depend almost entirely on a single industries such as a factory or mine maintaining economic balance is a challenging problem if there is going to sion exists over the nation as a whole so that the control of jobs and business opportunities is in a few hands despotism stands a good chance another sign of a poorly balanced economy it is a taxation system that presses heaviest on those least able to pay a larger part of a small income is spent on the subsidies such as food sales taxes on such necessities hit the small income hard banks community rates low on an information scale when the press radio and other channels of communication are controlled by only a few people and when citizens have to accept what they are told and communities of this guy and despotism stands a good chance see how community trains its teachers ion when teachers but such training into practice does but there is a mist and is a good chance these children are being taught to accept on critically whatever they are told the questions are not encouraged and accept exactly what the few in control want them to government censorship is one form of control a newspaper which breaks a government censorship rule can be suspended is also possible for newspapers and other forms of communication to be controlled by private interests i thought i told you to kill at story didn't cost us a lot of the advertising story goes out i what sort of community do you live and where would you place it on a democracy despotism scale to find out you can rated on our respect scale and a power scale defined out of what way it is likely to go in the future you can rate it on economic distribution and information scales the lower your community rates on economic distribution and information the scales what happens in a single community is the problem of its own citizens it's but it is also the problem of us all because as communities go so goes the nation