2.7: 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 benefits that only society can reliably provide. We need politics to manage a diverse society, and we need government to provide public goods and sustain common goods. 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 its users’ happiness and quality of life. 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 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 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 those inherent dangers. 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 dissatisfaction and impatience with how 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 allocation of that power often has unintended consequences.