FE144—If Only Men Were Angels

Institutional Wisdom for an Imperfect Species

1.0 Introduction

In Federalist No. 51, James Madison famously observed: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” He went on to explain why the Constitution incorporates a system of checks and balances. This essay explores how that principle and related insights have appeared throughout human civilisation, and how they can guide not only the design of governments, but other institutions that shape society as well.[1]

Human beings are capable of extraordinary virtue and extraordinary failure, often within the same hour. While we should continually strive to perfect ourselves, we need to realistically understand that we have not yet arrived. Any society that expects pure altruism or assumes perfect self-restraint builds its future on illusion. If Only Men Were Angels examines why enduring political and economic systems must not be designed for imaginary perfection, but for the predictable patterns of a yet imperfect species.

This essay traces a line of insight stretching from Ulysses to Madison, from Mises to J. Reuben Clark, and from Martin Luther King Jr. to Peter Drucker. Although separated by centuries and approaching human society from very different perspectives, their insights help illuminate a common challenge: how imperfect human beings can build institutions that preserve liberty, encourage prosperity, and move society toward greater justice. Together, they help us explore the institutional wisdom required for people as we actually are, rather than the angels we might wish to be.

FE144 is intended to be encountered early in a visitor’s exploration of the U2D2 website. It introduces the philosophical foundation for EconStitutionalism, a framework that embeds constitutional principles directly into economic life. Much of the material that follows explores decentralized governance, transparent validation of value creation, and previously unnamed principles and features that become easier to recognize, discuss, and apply once they are given names. Together, these ideas can help us design better systems.

This essay sets the stage. What follows in the series is built upon the recognition that human beings are not angels—and that wisely designed institutions can harness our strengths, mitigate our weaknesses, and guide society toward the long arc of justice.

2.0 Men Are Not Angels: Why Love Matters

The Madison passage noted above is the most quoted passage in the Federalist Papers. If men were angels, perhaps we would be better equipped to follow the divine commandment to love one another. Human beings genuinely desire justice, prosperity, and peace, yet we remain susceptible to ambition, temptation, bias, incomplete knowledge, and error.

Throughout this essay, we will return several times to the idea of love—a word more familiar in religious and personal discussions than in papers about economics and institutional design. One of its most familiar expressions is the biblical commandment “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” which Jesus identified as the second great commandment in Matthew 22:39. Whatever one’s religious beliefs, the principle expresses a remarkably simple social ethic: we should value the well-being of others as we value our own. A closely related principle is expressed by the familiar Golden Rule: treat others as you would want them to treat you.

But men are not angels. Even people who sincerely love their neighbors remain susceptible to human weaknesses. The important question, therefore, is not simply whether we should love one another, but how a society of imperfect people can put that love into practice.

3.0 The Ulysses Principle

Modern behavioral economists use the term Ulysses Contract to describe a voluntary pre-commitment that limits one’s future freedom in order to avoid predictable mistakes.[2] The name comes from Homer’s Odyssey, in which Ulysses wants to hear the legendary song of the Sirens, whose irresistible voices were said to lure sailors to their destruction. He therefore instructs his sailing crew to plug their ears with wax and bind him to the mast as they sail past. He knows that when temptation arrives, his future judgment cannot be trusted. Rather than relying upon willpower alone, he deliberately binds his future choices in advance.

The lesson is profound.

Ulysses does not bind his future self because he despises his future self. He does so because he understands him. By arranging the restraint in advance, Ulysses makes a pre-commitment: a decision made while thinking clearly that will constrain his choices when circumstances later threaten his judgment. He willingly limits his future freedom to preserve something he values more highly.

Civilizations make similar choices. Constitutions, contracts, markets, accounting systems, courts, and countless other structures of human cooperation are forms of collective pre-commitment. They recognize that human beings can be strong and wise at some moments, yet weak and vulnerable at others. Rather than assuming that our best judgment will always prevail, we establish safeguards while thinking clearly to limit the harm we might cause in moments of future weakness. This is not pessimism. It is institutional wisdom. In fact, if we truly care about others—if we love them—we must sometimes restrain our own ambitions, impulses, and desires. Binding our future selves can be an act of love.

4.0 Love, Trust, and Collective Self-Restraint

In his original draft of the 1798 Kentucky Resolutions, Thomas Jefferson warned against placing unlimited confidence in those entrusted with power. He argued that limited constitutions exist “to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power,” adding that the Constitution had “fixed the limits to which and no further our confidence may go.” Elsewhere in the same draft, he expressed the principle even more vividly: “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”[3]

Here the theme of binding recurs, now applied not to Ulysses but to political power. Jefferson was not suggesting that society can function without trust; his own words acknowledge that some people must be trusted with power. Rather, he was arguing that trust should have limits. At first glance, distrust may seem incompatible with the commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” But love does not require unlimited trust. When viewed through the lens of self-restraint, trust and distrust can work together.

Love does not eliminate human weakness. It acknowledges it. Because we value one another, we willingly establish structures that protect us from the predictable consequences of our own imperfections. We bind ourselves to the mast. We accept constitutional limits on our own future actions because we recognize that our neighbors deserve protection from our future mistakes just as we deserve protection from theirs.

5.0 Madison Continued: Constitutional Self-Restraint

Madison’s observation that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary” was only the beginning of his argument. He continued in Federalist No 51: “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Madison’s requirement that government be obliged “to control itself” is collective self-restraint in constitutional form—a free people establishing in advance the limits within which their own government may exercise power. Government must possess enough authority to perform its necessary functions, but that authority cannot depend upon those entrusted with it always choosing to exercise it wisely.

Madison therefore proposed something more durable than good intentions. Rather than attempting to eliminate ambition, he sought to counterbalance it. As he famously put it: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

The principle echoes what we have already seen in the Ulysses Contract. Because men are not angels, we establish restraints while thinking clearly rather than depending upon our future selves—or our future leaders—to exercise perfect judgment when circumstances change. Constitutional checks and balances make that pre-commitment structural, allowing power to restrain power rather than relying upon virtue alone.

6.0 Mises: Knowledge Requires Discovery

Ludwig von Mises addressed a different problem. Suppose political power has been restrained. A society must still determine what to produce, how to allocate scarce resources, and how to recognize value.

For the sake of argument, Mises was willing to assume an extraordinarily capable and benevolent economic leader. He asked us to imagine a director possessing “extraordinary capability and goodwill,” assisted by “a staff of the most brilliant experts.” Even under those remarkably favorable assumptions, Mises concluded that the director would remain unable to allocate resources rationally because he would lack “the guide which market prices alone can provide.”[4]

This brings us back to the title of this essay. Even if men were angels—or at least considerably closer to angels than experience suggests—good character and extraordinary intelligence would still not make them all-knowing. Perhaps angels might know more than ordinary human beings, but human decision-makers remain limited by the information available to them. Virtue cannot reveal knowledge that no individual possesses.

Mises therefore extends Madison’s realism in an important direction. Madison shows why good intentions cannot substitute for constitutional restraint; Mises shows why good intentions cannot substitute for information. Only genuine market prices provide a process through which the subjective valuations of many people can be discovered and communicated. Because men are not angels—and certainly are not omniscient—economic systems must provide mechanisms for discovering knowledge that no central decision-maker can possess alone.

7.0 Human Prosperity Requires Justice

The preceding sections might leave the impression that human progress depends primarily upon restraining our weaknesses. J. Reuben Clark reminds us of the other side of the argument. Recognizing that men are not angels does not mean abandoning the effort to become better.

Clark was deeply concerned about the relationship between capital and labor. He warned against exploitation and argued that capital and labor should move toward what he described as the social equivalent of an economic partnership, with a just sharing of the proceeds of their joint enterprise.[5] Later U2D2 essays and whitepapers will return to Clark’s challenge and propose mechanisms for connecting the just sharing of economic rewards.

But Clark’s ultimate prescription was not merely structural. He returned to the moral principle introduced near the beginning of this essay: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Clark believed that if capital and labor could genuinely conduct their economic relationships according to that principle, they could move into “an era of prosperity and goodwill that the world has never before witnessed.”[6] That is an ambitious vision. Perhaps imperfect human beings will never practice it perfectly, but recognizing our imperfection does not make the ideal less worthy of pursuit.

Nor does greater virtue make checks and balances unnecessary. Ideally, well-designed restraints need seldom be exercised. Their presence can itself influence behavior, establishing boundaries within which cooperation and trust can flourish. As the familiar saying suggests, good fences can make good neighbors. The fence need not constantly restrain the neighbor to serve its purpose; sometimes knowing where the boundary lies is enough.

This returns us to an important distinction running throughout FE144. We design systems for people as they are, while encouraging people to become better than they are. Checks and balances establish the safeguards; love of neighbor gives us a reason to make those safeguards increasingly unnecessary.

8.0 King: Hope and the Long Arc of Justice

Martin Luther King Jr. had ample reason for pessimism. He confronted legalized segregation, racial violence, imprisonment, threats against himself and his family, and determined resistance to the reforms he sought. Yet his message remained remarkably hopeful.

King frequently expressed that hope through an observation that has become closely associated with him:

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”[7]

The word long matters. King was not suggesting that progress toward justice would be quick or easy. He knew firsthand that it could encounter fierce resistance, painful setbacks, and even violence. King himself would not live to see much of the progress that followed his work. He was assassinated in Memphis in 1968 at the age of thirty-nine. That fact makes his confidence in the long arc of justice all the more poignant.

King’s optimism provides an important complement to the realism developed throughout this essay. Recognizing that men are not angels does not require us to become pessimistic about what human beings can become. We establish safeguards because we understand ourselves as we are, while continuing to strive toward what we might become. The arc may be long, but King’s hope reminds us that its length is no reason to abandon the pursuit of justice.

9.0 Beyond Restraint: Enabling Human Strengths

Peter Drucker approached human strengths and weaknesses from the perspective of organizational management. In his 1967 book The Effective Executive, he repeatedly emphasized that effective organizations should build upon the strengths of individuals rather than expect people to overcome all of their weaknesses. His central point is that an organization can make individual strengths productive while making individual weaknesses increasingly irrelevant.[8]

Drucker did not suggest that organizations could somehow eliminate human weakness. Quite the opposite. He explicitly acknowledged the weaknesses with which every person is endowed. The task of an effective organization is not to create people without weaknesses, but to arrange responsibilities so that what individuals do well can become productive while their weaknesses matter less.

That insight is particularly relevant to If Only Men Were Angels. Organizations can be designed around the reality that people possess both strengths and weaknesses. People need not become angels before they can work together effectively; we can acknowledge their imperfections while deliberately organizing cooperative efforts around the strengths they already possess..

10.0 Conclusion

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

But governments are not inhabited by angels. Neither are businesses, markets, families, or communities. They are inhabited by people—real people, capable of remarkable strengths and predictable weaknesses.

The thinkers and principles considered throughout this essay approached human imperfection from very different directions. The Ulysses Contract illustrates the wisdom of binding our future selves before temptation can overwhelm our better judgment. Madison and Jefferson showed why political power requires constitutional self-restraint and checks and balances. Mises demonstrated why even extraordinary intelligence and goodwill cannot substitute for knowledge discovered through markets. Clark reminded us that prosperity should not depend upon exploitation and challenged capital and labor to practice “love thy neighbor as thyself.” King gave voice to the hope that, despite opposition and setbacks, the long arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. Drucker reminded us that good organizations should make our strengths more productive and our weaknesses irrelevant.

These insights are different, but they are complementary. We need humility about human nature—especially our own. We should strive to become better people while designing systems that do not require us to have already become angels. Constitutional checks and balances are not acts of cynicism, but acts of love tempered by realism. We willingly limit ourselves because we understand that we are human—and because we care about the other humans with whom we share our lives.

That is why we willingly bind our future selves. We establish constitutions and contracts. We accept rules and boundaries. We preserve markets through which information can be discovered. We create checks and balances before we know who may someday need to be restrained. We choose some limits on our future freedom because we value something more than unrestricted freedom in the moment.

And sometimes we bind ourselves because we love one another.

The remaining papers in U2D2 explore how these principles might be applied to economic and organizational design. They begin from the premise established here: constitutional wisdom need not end at the boundary of government. The same principle of deliberate, self-imposed restraint can help us design other systems through which imperfect people cooperate.

We do not design for angels. We design for human beings as they are, while never abandoning the hope of what they might become. We build wisely for the world we have, even as we strive toward the world we might have—if only men were angels.

Notes:

1. James Madison — If Men Were Angels. In Federalist No. 51, published in 1788 during the debate over ratification of the proposed U.S. Constitution, Madison explained why a government administered by imperfect human beings requires internal restraints. He famously wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” followed immediately by: “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Madison then identified the central constitutional challenge: government must first be enabled “to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” His proposed solution relied not upon perfect leaders but upon structural checks and balances, including the principle that “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” See Federalist No. 51, Library of Congress.[Return]

2. The Ulysses Contract — Binding the Future Self. A Ulysses Contract (also called a Ulysses pact) is a form of voluntary pre-commitment in which a person deliberately restricts future choices to protect against a predictable change in judgment, temptation, or weakness. The term derives from Homer’s Odyssey, in which Ulysses wishes to hear the Sirens’ song but knows that succumbing to it would lead to destruction. He therefore instructs his crew to plug their ears with wax and bind him to the mast, refusing his later demands to be released. The story has become a useful metaphor in behavioral economics and decision theory for making a decision while thinking clearly that constrains one’s future actions under less favorable circumstances. See “Ulysses pact,” Wikipedia.[Return]

3. Thomas Jefferson — Trust and the Chains of the Constitution. In his original draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Jefferson warned against allowing confidence in elected leaders to overcome concern for constitutional limits. He argued that “it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited Constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power,” adding that the Constitution had “fixed the limits to which and no further our confidence may go.” He later expressed the same principle even more forcefully: “In questions of power then let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” Jefferson’s argument is particularly relevant to FE144 because it does not eliminate trust; it recognizes that free societies must entrust people with power while establishing in advance the limits of that trust. See Thomas Jefferson, original draft of the Kentucky Resolutions, 1798, Ninth Resolution.[Return]

4. Ludwig von Mises — Goodwill Cannot Replace Economic Knowledge. In Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Mises grants the central planner unusually favorable assumptions for the sake of argument: “We may assume that the director of the socialist economy will be a man of extraordinary capability and goodwill, who will exert all his strength and all his intelligence to the fulfillment of his task. We may even assume that he will be assisted by a staff of the most brilliant experts.” Yet Mises concludes that even such an exceptional leader “will still be unable to cope with the problem because he will lack the guide which market prices alone can provide.” His argument is therefore not dependent upon assuming corrupt, selfish, or incompetent leadership; the limitation is informational. See Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Chapter 6, Section 1.[Return]

5. J. Reuben Clark Jr. — Capital and Labor as Economic Partners. Clark rejected both the exploitation of labor by capital and perpetual conflict between the two. He argued that “Capital and labor must come to what might be … the social equivalent of such a partnership,” adding that there must be “between capital and labor, a just sharing of the proceeds, the profits of such a joint industry.” Clark believed such an arrangement could remain firmly within a capitalist system, writing, “I have always thought that this could be done on a capitalistic basis, if only capital had the will to do it. I am sure it has the brains to devise a workable plan.” See J. Reuben Clark Jr., Selected Papers, ed. David H. Yarn Jr., p. 566.[Return]

6. J. Reuben Clark Jr. — “Love Thy Neighbor” and Labor-Capital Rapprochement. Clark identified a moral principle underlying his proposed reconciliation between capital and labor: “the underlying, guiding principle for this labor-capital rapprochement is the Divine command, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’” He argued that if both groups were guided by that principle, they could “move into an era of prosperity and goodwill that the world has never before witnessed.” Clark’s argument was not simply an appeal for personal kindness; he envisioned a different economic relationship between capital and labor based upon mutual interest, fairness, and what he elsewhere described as the social equivalent of an economic partnership. See J. Reuben Clark Jr., Selected Papers, ed. David H. Yarn Jr., pp. 572–573.[Return]

7. Martin Luther King Jr. — The Long Arc of Justice. At the conclusion of the Selma-to-Montgomery march on March 25, 1965, King repeatedly asked, “How long? Not long,” expressing his confidence that the struggle for justice would ultimately prevail. Near the conclusion of the address he declared, “How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” King used variations of this expression on numerous occasions throughout his public life. The metaphor traces back to nineteenth-century abolitionist minister Theodore Parker, whose much longer formulation King adapted into the memorable phrase now closely associated with him. See Martin Luther King Jr., Our God Is Marching On!, Montgomery, Alabama, March 25, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University.[Return]

8. Peter F. Drucker — Strengths and Weaknesses. In The Effective Executive (1967), Drucker repeatedly develops the principle that effective organizations should build upon individual strengths rather than attempt to eliminate every human weakness. He writes, “In an organization one can make his strength effective and his weakness irrelevant.” Elsewhere he explains that making strength productive is the unique purpose of organization, which cannot eliminate the weaknesses with which people are endowed but can make them increasingly irrelevant. See Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive (1967), chapter “Making Strength Productive.”[Return]