Build For The Worst

Even when we know what is right, we consistently fail to do it. The human mind is incredibly prepared to diverge from responsibility. The ability to recognize the world as it is, and hold the conclusions that one must necessarily draw from it, while not acting on those conclusions is both comfortable and easy. Because knowledge and the desire for comfort arise from the same brain, the brain often maximizes for both things at the same time and lets internal coherence die. Once internal coherence is gone, a feeling of self-righteousness and the actions of self-indulgence can coexist in harmony. When individuals cannot even see the world clearly and have no recognition of their responsibilities, then even internal coherence is not required to allow irresponsible behaviour. Some forms of human behavior have emerged as conducive to a stable societal order and human flourishing. Even people who mean well and know how to act for the good of themselves and others are often not able to do so, and the world is full of many with less altruistic motives. The good intentions of every societal revival or revolt are inevitably hampered by internal inconsistency and bad actors. Every crucial institution must be designed with this human brokenness in mind, while incentivizing moral and cooperative behavior when design choices must be made.

Humans are inherently broken. The problems with society can never be described as purely the problems of a system. Every economic and governmental system is at its core a collective mechanism of the people it consists of. Unless people are perfect, the system they produce cannot be expected to reverse the chain of causation and allow them to reach perfection. People want evil things, people do not know the difference between good and evil, and even those who do know what is good continually fail to enact it. Whether individuals have an internal coherence pointed towards evil or an internal lack of coherence pointed at good, there is no sea of human goodness being restrained by faulty institutions. Good intentions or a complete lack of them simply help determine where people are on a continuum from broken to evil. Any form of government that expects to rely on human goodness must provide evidence of a population of internally coherent good people that has never yet been found. 

Because people neither know what is right, nor are able to act on it when they do, every government must be able to persist through even a few generations of predominantly evil people. Too much power cannot be given to state employees to act with discretion because even one incompetent or bad employee can destroy with far greater power than anyone in the private sector can. The ability to create and change regulation as well as spend government money and organize employees should be as difficult as possible for one person to organize. While misuse of power by individual bureaucrats should be continually monitored, the amount of power that the government has should also be firmly restricted. It is difficult to maintain these restrictions because government often finds ways to justify an increase in power, but guardrails like a constitution and distributed in competitive powers can slow this process down. However much power is given to a government at the start, it is almost a law of nature that it will take more for itself as unethical or ineffective bureaucrats push the limits of their power. An initial starting position of as little power as is necessary coupled with a competitive governing process will allow a government to evolve into tyranny or anarchy as slowly as possible.

While this is almost never a justification to increase government power, the ability of the government to incentivize moral behavior cannot be forgotten. If a government is set up to function effectively with an immoral citizenry, it must ensure that it does not encourage the creation of an immoral citizenry. There is a large difference between being able to function with immoral people and being designed for immoral people. The very existence of government, as free as it may be, requires some desired vision for the world insofar as it acts. Only anarchy can credibly name itself a government without a vision. No matter how few regulations a government creates or how sparingly it chooses to monopolize industries, how it does so has significant impacts on the moral development of the citizenry. Well, the moral development of the people should not be the driving factor behind many government choices, every action that the government takes must be based on a thorough consideration of the moral effects of that action.