Checks in Balance: The Secret to All Sustainability

We call them checks and balances, but they’re not two separate things. Checks and balances are really checks in balance. Checks are constraints that prevent runaway effects like the rich getting richer, the crazy getting crazier, the wild getting wilder. Balanced checks prevent runaway effects in every direction.

We call it the “rule of law,” but authoritarian states that have fallen into runaway effects have the rule of law too. Hitler and Stalin had the rule of law. The rich and powerful who ruled made the laws until the checks in balance got way out of whack.

We call it liberalism, but that doesn’t quite get it either. It’s not just about loosening things. It’s about loosening and tightening things such that things stay in balance. It’s like auto mechanics: tighten here, loosen there, so bolts don’t fly, the engine doesn’t seize up, and the car doesn't collapse.

It’s like life itself. Your life with other people, but also your biological life. You are your checks in balance. As we age, things get out of balance. Dying results from checks out of balance, a cascade of runaway effects, one out-of-whack consequence leading to another out-of-whack consequence until the whole house of cards falls apart, no more checks in balance.

When we’re playing a game, we want to win. A good game starts out with checks in balance, but just barely. An exciting game has alternating dominance, one team ahead, then the other, until one prevails and you hope it’s yours. Same with wars, which we hope end with our side’s victory.

But what if you wanted to keep a game going? You don’t want it to end. You want your life and good government to keep going. How do you pull that off? With checks in balance.

Checks in balance are difficult to maintain. It’s not easy staying even. Your body works hard to maintain them. A healthy marriage works hard to maintain them. We’d rather feel unchecked, liberated. We bridle at feeling constrained. We get outraged. We say “no fair (to me)!” and assume it proves we’re fair-minded.

All the more so when it’s a marriage of millions, a country trying to keep its house of cards from toppling as the rich folks on top impose rules that make them richer, no longer playing the game but gaming the play.

Still, it’s worth knowing what the goal is—not “checks and balances,” not “rule of law,” not “liberalism,” but checks in balance.