Chapter 21 
Government at war with itself, 
and you
The framers of the 1789 United States Constitution were some pretty smart dudes. They were trying to design a completely new government, and had the freedom to propose all sorts of innovations. They tried to rethink the problem from scratch.
We wish todayÕs thinkers about government would adopt a problem-solving attitude and be as open to innovation as the framers were. Now, many details of government are so ossified with tradition that we canÕt change them and weÕve even forgotten why they were there in the first place. Remind me again why we vote on Tuesday?3
All the examples the framers had to work with at the time were either European feudalism, with its kings and queens and peasants; and third-world tribalism and chaos. The founders knew that ancient Greece had some form of Democracy, but it didnÕt survive, so many considered it to have failed. 
Some 18th century Churchill might have disdained the US Democracy project by saying, ÒFeudalism is the worst form of government, except for all the othersÓ. 
Design criteria for government
Like any design problem, the framers started by thinking about what the design criteria were, and what they wanted to accomplish. Then they tried to design realistic mechanisms that would meet the criteria they established, taking into account human imperfection. Some of the design criteria were:
They wanted everyday people to have a say in what their government would do. They wanted the government, generally, to do what the people wanted it to do.
They wanted individuals to have rights, things that the government could not do to them. 
They even incorporated many elements of the scientific process: They wanted a variety of opinions to be expressed, their pros and cons openly debated.
They wanted to have a public decision-making process, including feedback. 
They realized that neither centralized government nor fully distributed government was best, so they tried to design a federal system that incorporated both.
É and others. 
It was (mostly) awesome. It gave us > 200 years of stability, peace and prosperity, relative to many other places in the world. It was widely imitated, and those who did also enjoyed its benefits. Like any design, it also had bugs. Starting with Òall men are created equalÓÑfirst of all, it didnÕt include black slaves who were men, nor people who arenÕt men.
Architectures for cooperation, and for competition
In our terms, we can say what the founders intended to do was to create an architecture for cooperation. This is what government should be. Though this was 200 years before the PrisonerÕs Dilemma, itÕs clear that they appreciated the benefits of cooperation. They did all they could to foster it. 
They acted out of hope that the Òbetter angels of human natureÓ would lead us to a cooperative society. Many of the bugs came about because, although they had hope, they also had fear. What did they fear? 
At the time, Europe was ruled by kings and queens that had absolute power. The founders feared that whatever positions of power they established, like an elected President, could be twisted into a new kind of feudal aristocracy. The new government could, as it did in Europe, conduct a war against its citizens.
Many of the founders were soldiers, such as General George Washington. How do you stop runaway power? The conventional answer: Why, by fighting it with more power, of course. So, while they set out to make an architecture of cooperation between the citizens and government, much of what they wound up with, was in reality, an architecture for competition between branches of government. 
Remember what we said was the cause of war? Fear of war is a primary cause of war. The US government is constantly at war with itself.
Of course, we donÕt call it that. Sometimes we call it checks and balances. The three branches of governmentÑlegislative, judicial and executive, act as checks and balances against each other, so that no one can dominate. The House and the Senate check and balance each other. The Democrats and Republicans check and balance each other. This actually works. In 200 years of American history, no one faction in government has dominated for very long. 
But it works only in the same sense as opposing feudal powers act as checks and balances to each otherÑat the cost of perpetual war. And, the potential for instability, should the balance go awry. No wonder current US politics is polarized and gridlocked. 
Our system is designed to be adversarial and competitive. Legislators argue for and against bills, and vote for and against bills. Presidents can sign or veto bills. Lawyers argue for or against cases in the Supreme Court. One of the most common phrases of politicians is ÒIÕm fighting for youÓ. (Actually, theyÕre only fighting to get themselves elected.)
As weÕve seen, emphasis on competition makes cooperation increasingly unlikely. When was the last time you heard a senator on C-SPAN say, ÒYou know what, I just thought of a third option thatÕs better for all of us than either of the Democrat or Republican bills.Ó
Hopefully, cooperation sometimes occurs, even if the system doesnÕt encourage it. But mostly, the visible mechanisms of government are designed for fighting, not cooperation. What cooperation does take place has to happen in smoke-filled back rooms. Maybe anti-smoking laws are responsible for the breakdown of cooperation in government. 
DonÕt get us wrong. We think that some checks and balances, as in the design of the US government, are indeed necessary. There is always a danger of some piece of the government getting too powerful. 
But adversarial structures should be a last resort, only resorted to after everyone really, truly, made best efforts to cooperate and scarcity looms. The military or warmongering politicians say ÒWar is a last resortÓ but they endorse explicit mechanisms and incentives for fighting. Given short shrift are concrete plans, techniques, and funding for the supposed first resorts of cooperation, negotiation and peace building. So, in a competitive environment, last resorts have a habit of turning into first resorts.
Is US Democracy fixable?
Is the US Constitution of 1789 still a good idea? We observe that the context of a constitution matters a great deal. So whatÕs changed since then? Pretty much everything (except, amendments aside, the Constitution text itself). The framers could not possibly have anticipated the Internet, TV, phones, airplanes, assault weapons, super PACs, corporations, labor unions, modern political parties, etc. 
Also, scale. Average annual government expenditures in the late 1700Õs were roughly $16M. Today theyÕre about $4 Trillion, or 250K times as much. If you believe that ÒPower tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then the Federal government contains a quarter of a million times more Òcorruption powerÓ than it did when the Constitution was written [Madison 1787].
Today many political pundits complain of the paralysis of Congress due to partisan fighting (Democrats vs Republicans). As articulated in this chapter, the Framers set up competition between government segments to guard against any one segment gaining too much power over the others. If everyone was in the government, if there was more idealism (as appeared to be the case in 1789) and if there were fewer resources at stake, perhaps this strategy could make rational decisions. But none of those conditions now apply. 
In particular, most people are not in the government but remain a resource from which the government can extract wealth from (under threat of jail). Those not attracted to power are pretty much excluded from it, considering the difficulty of getting elected. Democratic idealism has come down to buying votes with the citizensÕ own money via special-interest politics.
What about fixes that involve amending the Constitution? The last amendment was made in 1992. It was introduced in 1789 for a Ògestation periodÓ of only two centuries. Well, it must be a pretty good amendment if they had 200 years to get it right, right? The amendment delays approved congressional salary changes from taking place until the next representatives election (never more than 2 years away) [Wikipedia 2016b]. 
WhatÕs so great about this amendment? It protects sitting representatives from being accused of voting themselves a pay raise (immediately). But since the vast majority of congressmen who run are re-elected, its not much of an arms-length decision. Furthermore considering the several trillion dollars in the Federal budget, its not a monumental decision. Imagine how long it would take for one that enacted significant change? 
So, unfortunately, we donÕt see much hope of fixing the fundamental problems of power-based government by incremental changes such as constitutional amendments or passing laws one-by-one. ItÕll take a redesign. 
We titled this chapter, ÒGovernment at war with itself, and youÓ. The branches of the government, and our representatives, are constantly fighting with each other, but, as we explain in the PrisonerÕs Dilemma chapter, thatÕs a Òpretend warÓ sideshow.
The real war is the government vs. the citizens. While the government is supposed to Òbe the peopleÓ, it often acts in a self-interested way, to the detriment of the citizens. At $4T a year used for blowing up far away lands to bailing out Wall Street to subsidizing large corporations, you could argue the citizens are losing the competition.