> If this is true, how could one design a government that naturally trends away from self preservation as an emergent phenomena?
You need something besides human beings to run the government. That's why we have the emphasis on limited government in the US - the founders understood human nature enough to realize that nobody could be given unchecked power.
Yet they didn't understand systems enough to realize their models would easily precess and we'd end up with the unchecked behemoth we have today. But people are still blinded into believing the government is "limited", making it seem that the current state is manifest behavior rather than overt control.
Not completely sure why you think they didn't realize that. As a counter-point, Thomas Jefferson once wrote:
And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
So they realized it, yet didn't attempt to design for it.
His handwavey mechanism fails to the same complexity-induced irrelevance. People violently revolt only when they are hungry, not when they are merely unfree.
I believe that history provides many counter-examples to your claim. The American Revolution was not a peaceful coming of terms with Britain. The US Civil War was due to more than just the South being hangry.
"Yet they didn't understand systems enough to realize their models would easily precess and we'd end up with the unchecked behemoth we have today."
[citation needed]
A review of the literature will produce a lot of skepticism dating all the way to the beginning (and a bit before) that this could work at all. It is completely ahistorical to believe that the Constitution was written, approved, and everybody involved considered it a perfect work that was certain to stand forever after without challenge.
I tend to agree that they may not have forseen the exact ways in which their goals have been subverted, but then, even if they had, I'm not convinced it would have changed much. I mentally run historical simulations in my head (just to be clear about the exact level of reliability you should place in that), and even had, say, the commerce clause included a "No Seriously Only When The Commerce Is Literally Between States, You Should Never Use This For Anything That Is Even Remotely Plausibly Isolated To One State" clause, I don't expect it would have held for much longer. The historical pressures to violate that were strong, and the stronger you make the commerce clause, the only thing that you do is make it more likely that it would be wiped away with an actual amendment.
People inevitably get the governments they create for themselves, with a 20-40 year delay on them.
Anything more than sitting in an anonymous room watching uh, water dry. It's easist to see by doing a rundown of the Bill of Rights and pondering the actual troubles you'd face if you asserted them.
Badnarik's constitutional law videos illustrate the process in the context of government affiliates (eg driving/RMV) better than I ever could. Although you have to interpret what he is saying with the goal of finding out how we got to this point, rather than falling into thinking you just need to assert your rights "harder" to regain freedom.
The same thing happens with the "private" sector - complexity grows and its effects on the individual remain unregulated because it does not conform to the simplitic base case of "the government" doing something, even when it has formed a de facto government.
For example, a person can't exist without paying large rents, which necessitates they go contract for a "job". This then controls what they can do even when not working. Historically this inconsistency was resolved by private behavior staying private, but we're in a time of upset because pervasive communication has changed that.
Government applies a hazy justification of "commerce" to regulate absolutely everything. And the constructive behavior of this third "commercial" realm certainly impacts fundamental individual rights. But rather than longstanding "constitutional" rights being applied to the commercial realm, even more complexity is generated as half-baked adaptations are created to address the singular issues of the day. Back to my example of employment, someone can't be fired for being gay but someone else can be fired for wearing a red sweater on Sunday.
Everyone dreams of being free of this yoke (eg "FU money") and finds ways to push back in areas that really matter to them. But don't confuse carving out a niche for yourself with addressing the fundamental problem. Not everyone can be a winner, and the trend is for freedom to be further eroded as the world becomes flatter and winners and losers are more pronounced (eg the destruction of cottage industry).
I'll forgive "the founders" for not seeing that complexity creates contradictions (especially as they preceeded the explosion of logic and computation that makes this fact painfully apparent), but their ideas should not be considered sacrosanct. Of course this same conclusion can be used to support taking even more rights, and in this climate any constitutional amendment certainly would be doing so. So my argument is to enlighten thoughts and change culture rather than any revising of the constitution.
> That's why we have the emphasis on limited government in the US - the founders understood human nature enough to realize that nobody could be given unchecked power.
I don't see how limited government necessarily achieves this aim. If anything, it could be argued that limited regulation leads to the existence of corporate and financial elites who wield a vast amount of power.
I'm rather hostile to the standard form of government.
I certainly wouldn't be better disposed to one that has been tried in practice, and--likely without significance due to very low n and poor experimental controls--demonstrated to be worse by comparison.
First off, "we" aren't anything. This was at the height of the cold war vs. the USSR so it is strategic common sense that the government be on the lookout for spies and sympathizers.
edit - If this is true, how could one design a government that naturally trends away from self preservation as an emergent phenomena?