Expose them to enough different ideas and some of them might actually start to think for themselves.

If you took Nazi Germany and ran it with decent human beings that weren’t inherently evil and corrupt, then you a.) wouldn’t have the Nazi Germany we remember, and b.) would probably have a decent place to live. Same-same with the Stalinist Soviet Union. Likewise, the government structure bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers is going down in flames around us because of the people running it–Despotism and corruption is ever with us, and no “enlightened design” is going to fix that.

You want a good government? Concentrate on the people running it, and making up the citizenry. We have failed, across a very broad spectrum, to ensure that our citizenry is up to the job of running this place. Some of that is by design of the corrupt (see education for examples of what they’ve been doing), and some of that is down to simple failure to pass on values, mores, and practical understandings across generations.

For example–Trying to tell today’s kids why it’s a bad idea to not have a citizen-based militia-style military won’t work; you want them to grasp that, and work out the implications, they have to have had the experience. And, the experience that taught us that lesson is a.) somewhat obsolete in the face of today’s military condition, and b.) not being produced by our system. For something like the vision of the Founder’s to have worked, over the long haul, you needed the cultural and situational conditions of Switzerland to be present, and the values/mores passed down the way they were in Switzerland.

Bad government comes out of bad culture and people participating in it. Good government comes out of good civic culture and good people taking part in all that. The fundamentals of design with that government influence things, but the reality is that if you take a government designed by the angels, and then try to run it with people? LOL… I give it a max of five-ten generations, and you’re going to find it having problems. A major part of those problems being from people saying “Wow, there ought to be a law…”, and “Well, the government did so well with that problem that they can solve this one, too…”, when the plain fact is that the government can’t solve shit stemming from culture, like the collapse of the inner cities here in the US.

If it works at all, then more of it will work better, and less of it will work less well.

The president doesn’t control the presidency, as seen with the open revolt against Trump.

What actually happens is that rather than pointlessly fight each other, the people in government come to an accommodation and unite against outsiders. No man willingly goes along with the idea of checks and balances.

Give me checks and balances, to manage the unrighteousness.

Now we’re discussing the empirical question of government design and the historical record is very clear that “checks and balances” do not do what was advertised.

“Cursed is he who trusts in man.” – Jeremiah 17.

There is no righteousness to be found here on Earth. So says the Bible, and all experience corroborates it on this point. Give me checks and balances, to manage the unrighteousness.

Natural resource endowment does correlate with wealth, but only in a very limited sense. It’s one factor among many.

If natural resources didn’t matter at all, colonialism would never have been necessary. If natural resources were all that mattered, colonialism would never have been possible. There’s a reason Europe conquered Africa, and there’s a reason Africa didn’t conquer Europe.