John Adams once said, "It is by balancing each of these powers against
the other two, that the efforts in human nature toward tyranny can
alone be checked and restrained, and any degree of freedom preserved
in the Constitution."
At least the checks and balances are a system for separation of
powers. It is there to make sure that no one group or branch of
government can have exclusive control. Each of the three branches has
their own powers to check the action of the other branches. The three
branches are legislative, judicial, and executive. The legislative
branch is Congress and they pass the laws. The executive branch that
is the president administers and enforces the laws. The judicial
branch is the courts that interpret the laws. These separation of
powers are established in Articles I, II, and III of the
Constitution.
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At each layer we need to fight against the ape in man, man. We need to
at every level some group that checks that level and someone that
checks that group. Or life will become "solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short." else you get Bush/Hitler/stalin salad!
Hobbes
During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in
awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as
is of every man against every man. In this state any person has a
natural right to do anything to preserve his own liberty or safety,
and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." ...in the
international arena, states behave as individuals do in a state of
nature.
Within the state of nature there is no injustice, since there is no
law, excepting certain natural precepts, the first of which is "that
every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining
it". ; and the second is "that a man be willing, when others are so
too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think
it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented
with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men
against himself". . From this, ...the way out of the state of nature
[is] into civil government by mutual contract. (bellum omnium contra
omnes)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature
If a nation were a machine, here's how you could build it using
subsumption architecture:
You start with towns. You get a town's logistics ironed out: basic
stuff like streets, plumbing, lights, and law. Once you have a bunch
of towns working reliably, you make a county. You keep the towns going
while adding a layer of complexity that will take care of courts,
jails, and schools in a whole district of towns. If the county
apparatus were to disappear, the towns would still continue. Take a
bunch of counties and add the layer of states. States collect taxes
and subsume many of the responsibilities of governing from the county.
Without states, the towns would continue, although perhaps not as
effectively or as complexly. Once you have a bunch of states, you can
add a federal government. The federal layer subsumes some of the
activities of the states, by setting their limits, and organizing work
above the state level. If the feds went away the thousands of local
towns would still continue to do their local jobs -- streets, plumbing
and lights. But the work of towns subsumed by states and finally
subsumed by a nation is made more powerful. That is, towns organized
by this subsumption architecture can build, educate, rule, and prosper
far more than they could individually. The federal structure of the
U.S. government is therefore a subsumption architecture.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch3-b.html
