I looked up Zomia. Thanks for mentioning it. Live and learn. What Zomia is is a term coined by a Dutch anthropologist for Southeastern Asian highlands that have resisted the influence of central governments. In such places, people govern themselves in local and traditional ways.
Democracy, division of powers, and rule of law are primitive and easily corruptible forms of decentralization of power. With technology it will be possible to take that much further.
I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, mainly from Joe Rogan (think what you want of him [I don't know your opinion of him at all, but some dislike him] but he has awesome guests sometimes!) and many understand that democracy is a system doomed to failure in what we know of it as democracy. It's nice on paper but when it's practiced in the way we know it through voting systems that are gameable, it leads to some pretty unfortunate results. I will have to dig out which ones make good arguments for it but one I think that comes to mind first is John Anthony West.
Taking it further will be a great step but one that we have to take on our own such as the Zomia situations. I will have to educate myself on Zomia as well!
Not everything is local or traditional in the sense of "not modern".
But back to this "Zomia". What happens if I steal somebody's property? Or physically harm somebody?
These things happen. The question is how any given social structure deals with them.
According to whom?
What people?
What if I'm a lot stronger than the person I'm stealing from?
There are very large differences in capacity for violence between individuals or families. If there is no structure in place to maintain order and justice, then the strong rule the weak with nothing impeding them. There is always some sort of a system of tribal justice in place, laws and customs that tradition has shaped. The tribe delegates resolving cases where the tribal laws have been violated to the tribal elders who are respected individuals considered authorities. The carrying out of the decisions of the elders who may represent different tribes negotiating a solution if the transgression involved a member of one tribe violating a right of a member of another tribe is done in an agreed upon way by an individual or a group powerful enough to do so - against the will of the transgressor.
This how it works everywhere where there is no larger organized society whose size exceeds the number of people one can know personally. The difference is one of scale. Not everything is up for negotiation from scratch. There has to be a set of rules known by everyone as well as people whose task it is to interpret the rules as well as someone powerful enough to carry out the decisions.