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If you're going to debate this, at least read Federalist 51. The whole point of checks and balances is to get good results from imperfect people. You can use t

If you're going to debate this, at least read Federalist 51. The whole point of checks and balances is to get good results from imperfect people. You can use the ambitions of one individual or group to hold the ambitions of another group in check. I feel like you're just trying to be snarky and or gratuitously negative though.

fweespeech 11y ago
Reasonable results that allowed most people to go about their lives unmolested from imperfect people. I don't think they imagined "good results".
woodman 11y ago
Oh I remember my highschool civics lessons, but I then went on to study game theory. Consider the incentive imbalance: if it costs me 10k hours to legislatively get one penny from every citizen, and the same number of hours are required to frustrate my attempt - guess who has the greater incentive.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Checks and balances are fine in theory. In practice, the executive and judiciary are overpowered. Judicial review quickly becomes judicial activism. Executive orders are a unilateral get-out-of-checks-and-balances-free card in many cases, lamentations of scholars notwithstanding. Additionally, there is no proper "federalism" so to speak of. It's a marble cake federalism of various entangled relationships and procurements between federal, state and private institutions with disparate enforcement and contractual obligations. Americans have deified their Founding Fathers to such an absurd extent that they seem to be unable to think critically. That maybe Hamilton and Madison were engaging in wishful thinking. That maybe the anti-federalists were right. That maybe Henry Clay's American System and his antecedent in Hamilton largely botched the ideal separation-of-powers republic from the beginning.
- mentat 11y ago
  And congress isn't overpowered because it just makes laws and authorizes spending?
- ktRolster 11y ago
  <quote> Executive orders are a unilateral get-out-of-checks-and-balances-free card in many cases</quote> If congress wants to, they can overturn most of the executive orders by passing a law. It's not like those are magical powers.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Assuming they can get past the veto-2/3 majority dance. It also strongly depends on the nature of the EO. Major economic restructurings have been struck down before, though usually by judicial review. Military deployments, most infamously WWII-era internment, are less likely to be challenged - especially if they're perceived as "ephemeral" irrespective of consequences.
kordless 11y ago
> The whole point of checks and balances is to get good results from imperfect people. Granted, it uses an imperfect system of consensus to "do" this right now.

fweespeech 11y ago

Reasonable results that allowed most people to go about their lives unmolested from imperfect people. I don't think they imagined "good results".

woodman 11y ago

Oh I remember my highschool civics lessons, but I then went on to study game theory. Consider the incentive imbalance: if it costs me 10k hours to legislatively get one penny from every citizen, and the same number of hours are required to frustrate my attempt - guess who has the greater incentive.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

Checks and balances are fine in theory. In practice, the executive and judiciary are overpowered. Judicial review quickly becomes judicial activism. Executive orders are a unilateral get-out-of-checks-and-balances-free card in many cases, lamentations of scholars notwithstanding. Additionally, there is no proper "federalism" so to speak of. It's a marble cake federalism of various entangled relationships and procurements between federal, state and private institutions with disparate enforcement and contractual obligations. Americans have deified their Founding Fathers to such an absurd extent that they seem to be unable to think critically. That maybe Hamilton and Madison were engaging in wishful thinking. That maybe the anti-federalists were right. That maybe Henry Clay's American System and his antecedent in Hamilton largely botched the ideal separation-of-powers republic from the beginning.

mentat 11y ago
And congress isn't overpowered because it just makes laws and authorizes spending?
ktRolster 11y ago
<quote> Executive orders are a unilateral get-out-of-checks-and-balances-free card in many cases</quote> If congress wants to, they can overturn most of the executive orders by passing a law. It's not like those are magical powers.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Assuming they can get past the veto-2/3 majority dance. It also strongly depends on the nature of the EO. Major economic restructurings have been struck down before, though usually by judicial review. Military deployments, most infamously WWII-era internment, are less likely to be challenged - especially if they're perceived as "ephemeral" irrespective of consequences.

kordless 11y ago

> The whole point of checks and balances is to get good results from imperfect people. Granted, it uses an imperfect system of consensus to "do" this right now.