More Government = Less Corruption

[Marko]

““I know of no better measure of corruption.””

whats wrong with using the total amount of expenditures added to the total amount of revenue collected?

Har! Har! They take money, and then they spend it. What’s that if not corruption!

[martinuspolonus]

Scandinavian countries are honest,but not because they are socialist.

[ClaytonB]

IF THE STATE, THEN, is a vast engine of institutionalized crime and aggression, the “organization of the political means” to wealth, then this means that the State is a criminal organization, and that therefore its moral status is radically different from any of the just property-owners that we have been discussing in this volume. And this means that the moral status of contracts with the State, promises to it and by it, differs radically as well. It means, for example, that no one is morally required to obey the State (except insofar as the State simply affirms the right of just private property against aggression). For, as a criminal organization with all of its income and assets derived from the crime of taxation, the State cannot possess any just property. This means that it cannot be unjust or immoral to fail to pay taxes to the State, to appropriate the property of the State (which is in the hands of aggressors), to refuse to obey State orders, or to break contracts with the State (since it cannot be unjust to break contracts with criminals). Morally, from the point of view of proper political philosophy, “stealing” from the State, for example, is removing property from criminal hands, is, in a sense, “homesteading” property, except that instead of homesteading unused land, the person is removing property from the criminal sector of society—a positive good.

…

Let us consider in this light the question of bribery of government officials. We saw above, that, in a free society or free market, the briber is acting legitimately, whereas it is the bribee who is defrauding someone (e.g., an employer) and therefore deserves prosecution. What of bribery of government officials? Here a distinction must be made between “aggressive” and “defensive” bribery; the first should be considered improper and aggressive, whereas the latter should be considered proper and legitimate. Consider a typical “aggressive bribe”: a Mafia leader bribes police officials to exclude other, competing operators of gambling casinos from a certain territorial area. Here, the Mafioso acts in collaboration with the government to coerce competing gambling proprietors. The Mafioso is, in this case, an initiator, and accessory, to governmental aggression against his competitors. On the other hand, a “defensive bribe” has a radically different moral status. In such a case, for example, Robinson, seeing that gambling casinos are outlawed in a certain area, bribes policemen to allow his casino to operate—a perfectly legitimate response to an unfortunate situation.

Defensive bribery, in fact, performs an important social function throughout the world. For, in many countries, business could not be transacted at all without the lubricant of bribery; in this way crippling and destructive regulations and exactions can be avoided. A “corrupt government,” then, is not necessarily a bad thing; compared to an “incorruptible government” whose officials enforce the laws with great severity, “corruption” can at least allow a partial flowering of voluntary transactions and actions in a society. Of course, in neither case are either the regulations or prohibitions, or the enforcement officials themselves, justified, since neither they nor the exactions should be in existence at all.

Murray Rothbard - Ethics of Liberty, 24 (The Moral Status of Relations to the State)

Clayton -

[Marko]

Not necessarily. I would say that it’s more of a function of the culture and ethics of the society.

Or it could be a function of state programming. It is possible Scandinavians believe there is a moral difference to using state power to pursue goals that appear to them to be in the national-state interest, but assume using the same for their private interest is not. Meanwhile the Africans are not so brainwashed and know both are morally coordinate. (Ie one is just as bad as the other, therefore if you’re a state official there is no reason not to line up your pockets, instead of foolishly spending the money on various government initiatives.)

[ClaytonB]

+1 Marko

Clayton -

[ToxicAssets]

Comprehensive welfare is not the same as socialism.

That’s what every liberal and most braindead conservatives believe, but that’s false. That’s precisely the opposite of what Hayek was trying to say in the Road to Serfdom.

In that book he warned that the pursuit of social security through socialism is a dangerous path to tyranny.

But socialism is defined as any political doctrine or ideology that defends the concentration and amplification of political powers wielded by a central authority government.

So, in that precise sense, the nordic countries and switzerland are NOT socialist.

They may have higher taxes and they may have the welfare system. They may have had their decades of social democratic rule.

But they have no central planning going on nor central authorities. Taxes are spent improving the communities where they were collected.

And, with the exception of Finland, they all declined the European Union/Eurozone full-membership. That’s because they understand that it’s better to keep their bureaucrats close. They realized that the whole thing was a socialist ploy designed to move government to Brussels and Strasbourg and away from their constituents, where they can project their evil more effectively.

A local hospital or school funded by local tax-payers is not socialism.

Socialism is what goes on inside the Kremlin, or in Brussels or D.C.

Socialism is the Patriotic Act. Socialism is the Q.E. rounds and the Wall St. bailouts. Socialism is the Greek financial tragedy. Socialism is UN Agenda 21.

That is, a bunch of technocrats in some distant place affecting decisions that impact the lives of millions of flesh and bone people but who they perceive as being abstract statistics.