@RLetot @RD4Anarchy @Radical_EgoCom @graphite @passenger 'countless' is disingenuous but there are certainly a number of cultures where centralization was very limited/rare. The Juǀʼhoansi come to mind, probably the longest lived example of such. Generically "bushman" cultures could be argued to be the most successful in history and many/most would fall into the category of limited/rare centralization. The problem is scale. The "modern" world requires a large number of people to be working together to provide things like roads/water/sewage/etc. Once you have to coordinate beyond a tribe or two worth of people, the internal disagreements and politics spill over into external ones and our baser instincts haven't successfully been neutralized at those scales (hopefully yet).

You point to Athens as an example of a larger society which has done so. As you'll find with any larger society, they are an extremely poor example of anything resembling the above. The thirty tyrants come to mind or the fact that they were violent bullies to all of the cultures surrounding them. Honestly, Athens was a pretty disgusting culture relative to egalitarian standards.