Why do Americans complain about corruption? Americans create their own corruption. Power does not magically appear. It must be created. A person who wants power must create it himself or have others give it to him. Anytime a government agency is established, power is created. Anytime a law is passed, power is created.
Does power corrupt? Are there any exceptions? I don’t know of any exceptions. Do you? Perhaps an exception can be found, but just one case would not be enough to qualify as a counter example.
So, what do we do collectively when we need to solve one of society’s problems? We empower people and organizations in an effort to solve the problem. We create power and the power we create becomes corrupt. The more power we create. The more corruption we create.
How much corruption we have in government really depends upon how much we wish to have. There is a huge difference between being anti government and anti corruption. It turns out that the only way to reduce corruption is to reduce power. The obvious way to do that is to have less of what creates corruption naturally. This is not easy to do. Another point of natural law is that power is never relinquished voluntarily. Once power is established it can only be removed by force, even if it is through a gentle force like voting. The powerful will never leave on their own.
Mainstream economics disregards natural law. Mainstream economics would assume, that a person such as a member of the Open Market Committee, or the Chairman of the Federal Reserve as no more corrupt after taking the position than they were before taking the job.
The fact is that the more power a position has, the more corrupt the position holder will be. The longer an institution exists, the more corrupt it will become. The less concern the voting public shows in reining in authority the more corrupt the authority will be.
So, by deciding how much power we wish to create and let grow, we are deciding how much corruption we are going to have. The problem here is there is a complete lack of awareness that we are making a choice. Perhaps it would be helpful to create more awareness.
The truth is a hard sell. Fantasy Free Economics gains readers one at a time. Major search engines simply do not list blogs which disagree with their political agenda. As long as folks share the link to this blog and others speaking out against the grain, the truth will at least trickle into the public consciousness.
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