I see the point about scale dependency. I wonder why the larger scales in society might make the centralization of power counterproductive. I'm just trying to extract some principle from systems theory that impacts on the political conflict between, say, dictatorship/monarchy and socialism/democracy.

Is there some warning a system theorist might have for conservatives and liberals regarding how they prefer to organize society? Or does systems theory align with the warnings that have already been given by political theorists (the law of oligarchy or the ancient Greeks' prediction that democracies degenerate into mob rule or demagoguery, which in turn turns into tyranny)?

I'm not asking you to solve these problems here, of course. I'm just saying that the question interests me and I'll be on the lookout for info on this.