[awakeasleep]

If you're interested, Machiavelli's "Discourses on Livy" is a good place to start.

He explores the institutions within different societies that allowed them to grow and develop trust. It's one the first book in history that I'm aware of that explored the idea of societal checks and balances, and how the non-enlightened self interest of a group of people can be healthy when its functions are tempered by the self interest of different groups with different agendas.

I think that idea is still fresh, and people don't play around with it enough.