This is actually one of my own fears for efficient organization at state level and above: - any new technology, any new opportunity either has checks and balances or gets exploited by smart optimizers with no regards for the commons or human flourishing - checks and balances are as you say a constant drain on public attention and resources: you need smart people doing the checking (finite resource), and receptive eyeballs (finite also) - it is thus an optimization problem. attack_surface - check_capacity = societal_explots I worry that the check_capacity term is constrained, but that the attack_surface keeps aexpanding with new technologies. At some point, we started playing whack a mole, frantically jumping from one check to another, and we're holding the fray stochastically. but at some point it's going to become extremely adversarial.