If you've ever gone crabbing, you've seen the selfish behavior of crabs. When you pull your crabs out of the trap and put them in a bucket they will try to escape. Inevitably whenever one tries to get to the top, the others will pull him back down. The bucket stays full of crabs because none of them will allow any of the others to get out.
Usually we think of this attitude being a bad thing, i.e. not allowing someone in your community to achieve and leave their bad circumstances. Businesses, too, will explain the negative effects of the crab in a bucket mentality to inspire their workers to work more efficiently.
When applied to a government, however, this is a great thing. The different branches of government have a tendency to try and do more and take more power. The Founders used checks and balances to allow the different branches to use that mentality to stop other branches from taking more and more power (for more detail on that see here).
The more the government does, the less we are able to do ourselves. The less they do, the more freedoms we have. This built in feature of using jealousy to have government restrain itself is kind of comforting.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Quick Thoughts: Protecting us from Carbon Dioxide
The whole idea of checks and balances built into the Constitution is to stop the government from gaining too much power. Just think of the crabs in the bucket analogy and you'll understand the reason why. (read more...)
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