Dear Friends,
It seems to me, there’s a natural force of government leading it to despotism and corruption, like a prion twists proteins into bent versions of itself, incapable of being useful. Once met the disease is inescapable. That conversion to corruption and despotism can’t be shielded, hidden from, or protected against. The source of this disease is the human soul. Historically, all governments have become corrupt then collapsed… but here I’ll concentrate on incentives and the Logic of Collective Action. We are who and what we are. Our abilities to coordinate effort is astonishing as is our ability to innovate our way out of trouble. Using our brains instead of claw has granted us hegemony on the planet, but it came at a cost. That cost is perpetually corrupt and despotic government.
People who seek power want to use it, while people who don’t want to wield power over others don’t seek it. Why? Because accessing political power is a difficult process. One must work diligently to mask oneself and instead project an image on the cave wall of perfection. Hypocrisy is a sacrament to politicians as well as are egoism and narcissism. Those then who think they are smarter, wiser, and better people… with ideas how to rightly marshal the world, work to get power. Obviously, limited government is ill suited to rewrite human civilization, that requires an all powerful government. So they set themselves to empowering government. In order to do that though, they need money and backers. That’s where cronies and rent seekers come in.
Power is magnetic to rent seekers, who pump some of their grift back into the system to corrupt it further, by increasing the power of corrupt politicians. Corrupt politicians then feed money into the pockets of the grifters like NGOs, creating a virtuous cycle of corruption. Grift leads to kickbacks, empowering the corrupt politicians over the honest ones, giving them more power to hand out contracts… and the cycle starts anew. This cycle once started is impossible to rein in. Regulators get captured by the cushy jobs waiting for bureaucrats after they retire with 80% pensions. Universities become bastions of the corrupt faction, then produce judges who are pawls to corruption. Even as anyone who points at the corruption is destroyed by the system, to protect itself.
The combination of rent seekers plowing money into corrupting the system and would be despots always seeking power must lead to despotic and corrupt government. The outcome is inescapable. Now, I’m not arguing that just because every government that has ever existed in the written record has collapsed from internal corruption, long before a foreign invader toppled it, I’m saying that all governments no matter what… will collapse due to the incentives to corruption. People unlikely to be corrupted don’t seek office… while the purchasable are drawn to it like moths to light. Even if a saint gets power, the stench pervades… because swimming in a cesspool leaves an odor. Brilliant people throughout the ages have considered ways to stifle this long known predilection of mankind.
Solon instituted democracy and the ostracism to protect liberty but Pericles used those very tools to make himself despot. The Romans had a dual Consular system, that was perverted by Marius and Sulla, then destroyed by Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. Constitutions were the Enlightenment’s way of limiting power… and the courts have perverted those protections into progressivism. This means that no matter how well constituted, and with robust protections against tyranny… every government will become despotic and corrupt. Because power itself is like a prion disease. It converts the good into the bad upon contact. So I have to ask… how many prions do you want in your soup? Because that’s what government is, a prion, that makes more of itself until the system fails.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
