“It is necessary for whoever arranges a republic and establishes laws in it to presuppose that all men are bad.”Niccolò Machiavelli · Discursuri asupra primei decade a lui Titus Livius · 1531 · cartea I, capitolul 3
Laws designed for bad people survive good ones, but not the other way around.
Machiavelli builds a logic of safety: if laws work with corrupt people, they work with anyone. If you design them for the good, a single bad actor can break them. The mechanism is separated powers, mutual checks and predictable sanctions. Example: a constitution requiring two chambers and a court to approve major decisions, precisely so it does not matter who holds office.
The next step is to see what happens when someone ignores this premise. Many founders of organizations believe their team is different: trustworthy people, friends, long-time colleagues. That is how half-written rules appear, leaving open space exactly where pressure will come. Machiavelli does not say people are simply bad; he says you cannot know who will be bad once the temptation grows. Think of a business partnership between two friends, with no written agreement about splitting up. Good years, then a dispute over money, and nothing stops it. If the rules had been designed for the day someone would act badly, the friendship might even have survived. So the question becomes: where in your life do you rely on goodwill where you could have rules?
Why it matters Relevant to any debate on checking power, from partnership rules to designing constitutions and codes of ethics.