In this way it is similar to democracy, which was (in the U.S. among other places) originally intended to, and certainly does now prevent the government from accomplishing much of anything, on the logic that one black-swan period of tyranny is worse than considerable amounts of efficient authoritarian development. Consider the idea of the "separation of powers": it cannot be called anything other than a handicap on all activities and conscious long-term sabotage (except that I am told that it affects little in practice, for good or ill).

I don't really endorse that line of thinking - anyways, the vast majority of tyranny operates in a rather "democratic" grass-roots way and starts in the family (see The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke, an excellent film) - but it certainly has many proponents.