You don't trust powerful people, plain and simple. Not because they're any worse than the average person, but because you can't do anything to stop them when they do something wrong.
There's a reason why we have three arms of government.
Take a look at who owns The Guardian:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust
- To secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity: as a quality national newspaper without party affiliation; remaining faithful to liberal tradition; as a profit-seeking enterprise managed in an efficient and cost-effective manner.
The Trust sees its main functions as being the following:
- To secure the Trust's own continuity by renewing its membership and by dealing with threats to its existence;
- To monitor the organisation, financial management and overall strategy of the Group, holding the board accountable for its performance;
- To appoint and 'in extreme circumstances' to dismiss the editors of The Guardian and The Observer,
- To act as a 'court of appeal' in the event of any dispute between the editorial and managerial sides of the operation.
This doesn't seem that complex to me.
That's a reason why people are made to believe there are three arms of government. In reality, government is just a bunch of people with a lot of self-interest fighting for power here and there between each other. But all of them are interested in keeping this myth going that because there are > 1 power-hungry guys it somehow represents "checks and balances" for a worried general public. It's a joke.
Government is a violent institution to extract resources from unarmed people under a promise of "fairness" and "interests of the nation". Being a "democracy" its nature does not change. Only extreme risks like "dictator kills 100000 people at once" are reduced, but the nature is the same: the will of people to command violence (politicians) and the will of bribed others to execute it (cops and army).
Just check the news about anything that people don't like about the government. E.g. NSA scandal. What do the branches do? There's a "secret court", congress does not care to fight against NSA and every government official still extracts your taxes for the same NSA, judges and congressmen.