"Society has to work, it has to feed people, it has to keep them reasonably healthy, it has to keep functioning over time and in emergencies."
--Graydon Saunders, Safely You Deliver (Commonweal 3)
Part of why I like the Commonweal books is that they're a fantasy about a functional democratic society, one that has taken "everyone or no one" as a fundamental principle.
"The Bad Old Days worked. People had kids, it kept going. It was generally horrible, but it was a society, it existed to make whatever sorcerer was in charge of it happy. The people who founded the Commonweal were determined not to have that society, they needed something else that would work, and they knew they didn’t know how. All they knew is that no one was going to have any inherent authority, something stronger than 'no slaves', and sorcerers weren’t going to be in charge of anything."
--ibid.
One can of course substitute "billionaire" for "sorcerer" as desired.
"Half a thousand years, and yet ye will not fall."
...
"All things come in time to die. The Line says 'united we fall'."
--ibid.
About a quarter of the second book (A Succession of Bad Days) is concerned with building a canal, one that will take thousands of people from "probably starving" to "belts tightened but mostly making it through this winter and next". There's general agreement that this needs doing, and now rather than in five years, and ... it gets done. There's no argument about whether the twice-displaced in the Folded Hills 'deserve' it, or about whether to put the Creeks into a lean winter, food-wise.
"Everything is tradeoffs. The Commonweal decided, when it was coming into being, that it was going to do at least so well for everyone, or die trying. It's not dead yet."
--ibid.
It's a good time to remember that kind of society is something that can at least be conceived of.
I desire that the enemies of the Commonweal should cease to oppose our polity, our comity, and our unity; that none should seek hereafter to make all joy and goodness arise from merciless obedience; that none should possess the might or strength to make rule of their preference.
I would it be that these things shall come to be by no harsher means, by no less mighty means, than the apprehension of facts and the disdain of fearfulness that is the best and greatest means by which anything might come to be in the world.
And yet these things shall come to pass.
--Graydon Saunders, A Mist of Grit and Splinters (Commonweal 5)