Return to Avalon

In accordance with the current practice of moving around mentally within Poul Anderson's Technic History, I am again rereading The People Of The Wind, a novel set on the human-Ythrian colony planet, Avalon. For previously recorded information about this planet, please see here.

There remain plenty of details to discuss in The People Of The Wind. What a different place from the early Dominic Flandry stories, although they are in the same future history. I was puzzled by this sentence, in the Technic Civilization Saga omnibus edition:

"Behavior grossly harmful to the physical or social environment must be enjoined..." (my emphasis)
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT p. 498.

Fortunately, I had bought all the installments of the History before it was collected into uniform editions:

"Behavior grossly harmful to the physical or social environment must be forbidden..." (my emphasis)
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind (London, 1977), p. 56.

That makes more sense.

Among the winged, carnivorous Ythrians, "...the Khruath [was] a periodic gathering of all free adults in a given territory who cared to come. It had judicial and limited legislative authority..."
Rise Of The Terran Empire, p. 497.

This arrangement works for Ythrians, although not for human beings, because the former are less talkative, less interfering, less easily bullied and less crowded. "...on Terra...a version of it appeared once, long ago, and failed bloodily." (ibid.)

I thought that I knew which historical example Anderson meant but, on reflection, I am not sure.