Want Less Corruption? Try Having Smaller Government.
People can never be made incorruptible. We can, however, design governmental systems filled with checks and balances that limit the temptations.
Whenever some astounding corruption scandal explodes onto the front pages, the public is aghast and policymakers cobble together new reforms that promise to keep such outrages from occurring again. Occasionally, prosecutors (who are sometimes corrupt themselves) file charges. Soon enough, however, we learn about new abuses—or some other scandal grabs the headlines.
Unfortunately, tamping down corruption is like rooting out wasteful spending in the federal budget. There is no line item titled "waste," but instead it's baked into a government that has amassed a $31.5-trillion debt. Likewise, corruption is inherent in a system where officials dole out public money and regulate almost everything we do.
What is corruption? Transparency.org defines it as "the abuse of entrusted power for private gain." As the website's name suggests, transparency is a time-tested antidote. But let's not kid ourselves. Corruption is a fundamental part of humanity. As far back as Genesis, its author discussed it: "And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth."
It's crucial to recognize people can never be made incorruptible. We can, however, design governmental systems filled with checks and balances that limit the temptations. I often roll my eyes at progressives who look at our history and find glaring imperfections, or point to imperfect or corrupt behavior from some historical luminary and use it to undermine the nation's founding.
Good luck finding any human who passes the perfection test. But the central takeaway is that our founding built structures that limit any official's unchecked power through a series of independent and divided bodies. It guaranteed rights that applied—theoretically, but with obvious glaring exceptions—to the least-powerful individuals. We have a president, not a king.
A new public-opinion survey published by Cambridge University Press found that "a wide range of the American people, of all political stripes, seek leaders who are fundamentally anti-democratic." Large percentages said they want leaders who will protect them "by any means necessary." If that's an accurate representation, then we're in for a long period of growing corruption.
The most corrupt nations are, of course, those where dictators, politburos, bureaucrats and security officials can do as they please—and where lowly citizens lack the right to free speech or due process. Our current government may be a far cry from the one the founders designed, but it attempts to limit government power, which is the main source of corruption.
The Declaration of Independence was a jeremiad against corruption: The King "has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." The king's minions used their power to enrich themselves, just as modern-day police departments use asset forfeiture to seize people's cars and cash without convicting them of any crime.
Recently some conservatives, who traditionally strived to conserve the nation's founding principles, have been tempted by authoritarian promises. Some national conservatives disdain the idea of a "neutral" political system that limits the size of government, but instead seek power to run the table on their opponents. Some have made pilgrimages to authoritarian Hungary.
That's probably a rather small (albeit creepy) contingent. But modern progressives, who loudly decry our nation's past and present injustices, seem intent on shifting even more power from individuals to government agents in an ever-expanding orbit of bureaucracy and regulation (e.g., single-payer healthcare and bans on anything that "threatens" the climate).
Early 20th century progressives such as California Gov. Hiram Johnson, the creator of our system of direct democracy, wanted to create the tools to fight against corrupt railroad robber barons. Despite the good-government rhetoric, progressives built a regulatory state that empowered "experts" to re-order society in the name of the "public good." By giving government so much power, they increased opportunities for the misuse of power. Individuals may be inherently corrupt, but so are the individuals given vast powers over others.
Some corruption is of the illegal variety, such as fraudsters who grabbed billions of dollars in illicit payments from California's Employment Development Department. That was the result of the government having so much taxpayer cash to hand out—and too little competence. Some of it is legal, as the way public-sector unions have exerted control over our government and enriched themselves with six-figure pensions—or how redevelopment agencies abused eminent domain on behalf of politically connected developers.
Everyone is corruptible, so of course private citizens operating in a market economy must be (and are) subject to the rule of law. But corruption fundamentally is a problem of government power, as official actors use immense powers to help themselves and their allies. If we want less corruption, the solution is obvious: We need less government.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
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Happy Presidents’ Day
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Well yeah, sure, butt butt-fuck fat-ass Donnie Trumpie ass well! “Fair and BALANCED”, ya know!
#BeenTrumpledUnderfootForFarTooLong
Despite your comment, the old guy seems to be doing quite well. He was on the news this morning strolling in Ukraine.
Did anybody fuck him?
Was Brandon was inspecting the bioweapons labs? It isn’t like there was a domestic emergency in the actual United States where a sitting potus could be onsite to observe aid efforts and listen to the people for whom he works. Carter visiting Harrisburg immediately after the TMI incident was presidential.
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Wanted to pick up his 10% in person
His masters in Moscow stopped bombing Ukraine so that Xiden could put on his show.
Moderate proxy wars forever, apparently. You really are a dim bulb partisan.
“…reflexive deference to government”
that would be you, M4E. And you shill for them by encouraging others to do the same. Fuck you.
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His handlers must have given him some extra dosage and maybe some electro shock therapy to get him upright and somewhat mobile.
It’s just a matter of time when none of the meds and other treatments work and then the freak show is over.
“Whenever some astounding corruption scandal explodes onto the front pages, the public is aghast…”
Not this part of the public. I wonder why so few get exposed (actually, I don’t).
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By the time it makes the front page of the MSM, the alt-media have already been covering it for weeks/months/years depending on the magnitude of the event, the timelime, and how hard the MSM has worked to suppress the truth (Rachel Maddow’s audience probably still thinks the Steele Dossier was mostly true).
Hey, why even have government if not to enrich selected people? See: stationary bandit.
What do you mean if you want less corruption you should want less government? We need more government, but it needs to be the right people. We have the wrong people now but once we fix that we’ll be golden.
So, sorta like, “But they weren’t real Socialists.”
The weren’t the right socialists.
It wasn’t the right kind of socialism.
Except, of course, no one can point to an example of a government ever getting smaller that didn’t involve firearms and guillotines. And even then, the results were usually sub-optimal.
What does happen strangely resembles a pincer strategy – the libertarians busy themselves removing barriers to shitty things happening, usually in the name of reducing government, while progressives pass legislation to ensure they will.
Oddly complementary stratagies.
It’s hard to say that the one involving guillotines actually shrank the government. I haven’t done any deep study of that era of French history, but the “Reign of Terror” being followed by Napoleon’s wars of conquest don’t suggest that the revolution really brought the people any period of relative freedom.
Most revolutions ultimately just put the leaders of the movement (or their successors) into the positions of privilege they claimed to have set out to tear down; which might be a fact that makes the American Revolution somewhat exceptional in that it took over 100 years for the “progressive” movement to come along and create the significant and continual expansion of the U.S. Central government to get from what it was 100 years ago to the current result of the compounding expansions of the “New Deal”, “Great Society”, Cold War, “No Child Left Behind”, “Hope and Change”, and “Dark Brandon” regimes.
Most revolutions ultimately just put the leaders of the movement (or their successors) into the positions of privilege they claimed to have set out to tear down;
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Yet Greenhut continues campaigning for the bigger government, more corrupt, covered up for by mass media, and controlling all institutions option…
Well, yes. But with the Right People in charge.
“We can, however, design governmental systems filled with checks and balances that limit the temptations.”
Yeah, it is called the US Constitution.
What’s an old wooden boat got to do with endless government expansion?
The problem is that so many people just don’t care. Now of course, so many are just getting by, they no longer care what the government is about.
I fear it’s going to take something very bad to happen that will enrage and ignite the people.
What a pant-load. Everyone at Reason votes for Democrats which means everyone at Reason want bigger government. Especially after being so unfairly unfair and mean to Trump who made government shrink like a penis doing the polar plunge.
Poor sarc.
I assume you mean Hunter’s penis.
That’s you guys’ obsession, not mine.
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I guess I need to remind you that you outed yourself as a Progressive when you took my sneer at Progressives personally.
https://reason.com/2023/02/18/l-a-plans-to-scrap-its-genuinely-good-outdoor-dining-program-and-replace-it-with-rules-fees-and-paperwork/?comments=true#comment-9932087
Two elections ago I voted straight Libertarian. This last one I voted Republican.
I will, however, never vote Democrat again.
Can’t have smaller government when the party favoring small government keeps saying how urgent it is to have bigger government so that they can fight the big government types.
It’s not their fault! The evil party made them do it!
An interesting comment. Nick Gillespie has, in the past, made the case that our distrust of government often results in more government rather than less.
Maybe you three should get a room.
Maybe you should stop staring at pictures of Hunter’s penis.
Now you have the same phallic obsession as Pluggo?
You brought up Hunter.
https://reason.com/2023/02/20/want-less-corruption-try-having-less-government/?comments=true#comment-9933769
I was just making a joke about shrinking.
Da faq? I’m not even anywhere near that link, sarc.
reflexive deference to government”
Again, fuck you.
“Large percentages said they want leaders who will protect them “by any means necessary.”
Seems they asked Tony.
And protected from what I wonder. Want, need, offense, viruses, different opinions, people they do not like or agree with?
Protect them from Drag Queens, books they dislike, history that makes them uncomfortable. To be fair too many progressive also want to never be made uncomfortable being forced to hold two ideas in their heads at one time.
Okay groomer
So you think a grown man dressed in drag should wag his scantily-clad nether regions in the face of a six year old puting dollar bills in his thong? This isn’t Mrs. Doubtfire. It’s more like the drag version of DejaVa Showgirls.
“reflexive deference to government”
Fuck you.
A simple rule would be for government to be there for things that individuals and the market cannot address. The problem is when people cannot agree on where government is needed. The simplest example is the issue of social safety nets. There is general consensus that social safety nets are needed, but little consensus on the criteria for them.
The function of government is to defend liberty, period.
Correct. It was never meant to be someone’s daddy/breadwinner and support people on welfare from one generation to the next, who by the way should NOT be allowed to vote.
Simple rules are usually a symptom of a simple mind.
Individuals and ‘the market’, whatever that means, can handle anything without the government.
RE: Most of human history.
You may not like how individuals or the market ‘handle things’, and that’s where people weaponize ‘government’ against each other.
There is general consensus that mankind can be perfected, but little consensus on who should be expunged to reach that goal. See how useful ‘consensus’ is?
All we have to do is prohibit government from initiating force and it couldn’t be weaponized.
Komrads Lenin and Stalin held just that ideal. So did Mao and Pol Pott.
“reflexive deference to government”
Fuck you [X 4].
Excellent! But accumulated authority/wealth is always susceptible to corruption, including rich people.
Accumulated wealth might be susceptible to corruption, but without accumulated authority to back up their corruption it’s vague and meaningless.
Democrats, “To defeat monopolization; [WE] have to create the biggest monopoly in the land and ARM it with GUNS.”
It’s entirely illogical to think those that run the economy should be the exact same entity that is SUPPOSE to be ensuring Liberty and Justice. Why not just put Google in charge of writing laws that will be enforced by GUNS against citizens??? Did you pay your Google Subscription Tax this Year? Off to Google prison with you.
There’s a reason the US Constitution forbid government from enforcing socialist policy. Now if only TREASONOUS voters would stop CONQUERING the USA.
It has and will *always* be CRONY SOCIALISM…
Fixing government is simple, prohibit it from initiating force.
Aggressive Force; You’re correct. It’s there for Defensive purposes.
Defensive force isn’t initiated by the defender, its a response to someone else initiating force.
Defensive force isn’t initiated by the defender
If an armed intruder breaks into your house, remember to let them shoot first.
“…let them shoot first?”
Sure, you have illegally entered my home, by force, while I am there.
Not going to give anyone doing that the benefit of “shooting [me] first.”
That is absolutely Bidenesque [and I’m not gong to “shoot ’em in the leg,” or try to scare them away by discharging a shotgun into the sky, either].
Ok, re-read you comment and I see the sarcasm now. My bad.
That’s ok. Biden doesn’t know where he is half of the time either.
How are we going to enforce that? Especially with a government that is addicted to using force.
I politely disagree that everyone is corruptible. Two of the trends that maximize official corruption are that corruptible people tend to be attracted to government positions; and that not all corruption is for “personal gain” – for example, reform zealots who seek to steer government power towards ostensibly righteous causes. It seems obvious to me that the more opportunity government creates for corruption, the more corruption there will be but it begs the question of how much scope and power is needed despite the inevitable corruption it engenders.
“how much scope and power is needed”
Well answered centuries ago in the US Constitution.
Today is the “re-invent the wheel” (FDR “New Deal”) effect and nothing else.
Or to the obviousness; Democrats history of conquering the USA for a ?better? Nazi-Empire…
I politely disagree that everyone is corruptible.
I would agree with you, but someone paid me $50 not to.
“But corruption fundamentally is a problem of government power”
LOL, seriously Reason? Ask yourself, how far do you trust Amazon or Facebook or big oil or big pharma? Are all of the big corporations lying and cheating us because they are simply incompetent? Come on. It’s because they are corrupt too.
The problem of corruption is and always has been a partnership between private money and government. Weakening government will not diminish corruption but just give the private wealth pools more free reign to operate. It’s astonishing how naive Reason is. Or is Reason just a front for private monied interests that want government weakened? But that would be corrupt…
I believe it is that the government that governs least that governs best.
More government begats more corruption.
Corporations are just as corrupt, but the difference is that government has the power to kill or imprison you
Corporations have to get the government to do that for them.
Corporations can’t make you buy or use their product, unless the government does it for them. And if they’re corrupt, it ends up hurting their share price, so the investors have an incentive to boot out anyone who’s stealing too much.
To a certain point they can’t yet again they can when they’re the MIC and push Washington into unneeded wars or funding and supplying certain governments elsewhere. Then the taxpayers are paying for it ….at gunpoint.
Uh, that’s a wide-ranging claim. Specific cite or STFU
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Local governments are just as corrupt. I live near a tiny speed trap “city” (of about 500 people) who has an entire police force just to extort revenue from motorists. They have their own jail, their own judges.
To a certain extent, the state finally tried to rein in places like that by limiting the amount of revenue they could get by traffic fines, but it didn’t solves the problem, just ameliorated it a little.
Reason did an expose on just that last year. Cited several small towns with four or five hundred people and 19 officers.
You, by chance don’t happen to live in Waldo, Fl.?
The nine most dangerous words ever uttered are:” I’m with the government and I’m here to help.” R. Reagan.
The purpose of the Constitution was to put chains on the government. Long past time but now’s as good a time as any.
Maybe a real coup with ole Joe out of town. he can remain in Ukie town playing kissy face with Zelly.
Ron Paul is right. Washington is addicted to foreign interventionism along with military adventurism and it’s driving the nation into massive debt.
Heck, at this point, I’d settle for a government as small as the one we had 5 years ago. As a bonus, the budget would be balanced right away, without raising taxes.
We had a POTUS who was actively pushing back on regulations in general seems he was named Trump.
And those who lie about being libertarians both lie about what he did and attempt to justify their raging cases of TDS by any means available.