2.5: The Political Machine

America, its politics, and its government are products of human nature. As humans, we desire the fulfillment of living in a society and the enjoyment of public goods that only society can reliably provide. We need politics to manage a diverse society, and we need government to provide public goods by coercing individuals to contribute to them. For anyone who does not want to live as a hermit, politics in some form or another is an inescapable part of human existence.

The upside of American politics is that it can provide these benefits, increasing the happiness and quality of life of its users. This makes America a very popular product, one that hundreds of thousands of people every year adopt by applying for and obtaining U.S. citizenship. But America, like many machines, can fall into disrepair, be used for ill instead of good, or even misfire with terrible consequences. The same power that enables American government to solve collective action problems for the good of its users can be (and has been) used to make their lives much worse, both intentionally and unintentionally. That’s just how power works: any government that is powerful enough to do very good things is also powerful enough to do very bad things.

As we’ll see beginning in the next chapter, America’s democracy was carefully crafted to limit the dangers inherent in any government. Like many products, it comes with a set of “safety features” designed to prevent injury or harm from careless or malicious use. These safety features tend to make government slower and less efficient, which can cause people to be dissatisfied and impatient with how their government works. While it’s always possible that some of these limitations on government are excessive and should be relaxed, it’s important to remember that power is a double-edged sword, and that the political allocation of that power often has unintended consequences.