Not a shocker that corruption ruins things. I guess then the question is how you can design a broadly distributed system that removes the incentives for corruption and minimizes its impact. My guess is that such a system won't be found in capitalism
Link: https://www.mr-sustainability.com/stories/2020/dictators-han....
While it becomes expensive to outright buy people, it also becomes prohibitively expensive to educate, and an ability to outspend with emotional appeals becomes more important than having a cogent argument.
In unregulated capitalism, corruption provides a huge competitive advantage, so controls must be put in place to counteract that. Typically that’s done with government intervention.
The idea that we can “blame cronyism, not capitalism”, is a red herring. Cronyism and corruption is something capitalism, as a system, must be able to deal with, or else capitalism is a poor system.
It’s like saying “don’t blame the engine, blame friction forces” for why an engine has poor qualities. Friction is a given and will always exist, it’s the poor engineering design of the engine that’s the problem. The design didn’t mitigate the friction appropriately.
But is that the world we want?
The fact of the matter is that corruption, like crime, will always exist, so the system within which the corruption exists better be able to handle it, or it’s a poor system.
The author’s argument is basically the opposite - “the system is fine, it’s the pesky non-idealities that are the problem!”
My point is that this is a totally useless take. It’s like trying to build a rocket and wondering why it collapses on the launchpad because you hand waved away all the non-idealities: “oh, the rocket design was fine, it was those pesky non-idealities that we’re the problem!”
It won't be found even harder in communism, where the cronyism is baked into the system of governance.
It won't be found in communism or socialism, either.
The problem is that the loudest voices arguing for capitalism, also tend to argue against regulation, accountability, and that sort of thing.
- Regulations are often used as a tool of corruption and cronyism, e.g. regulation of housing construction entrenching landowner power.
- Regulations can block legitimate progress, e.g. the private antigen tests that were blocked throughout 2020.
- Regulations create complexity which acts as both a barrier to entry which creates monopolies, and as a hidden tax.
- Regulations are often theatre.
- Bad regulations are sticky; they don't sunset.
That's why I favor less regulations overall. But I don't favor no regulations. I still want regulations (or just "laws") that stop pollution, deceptive marketing, and so on.
Not allowing pollution isn't regulation, it's enforcing property rights.
Not allowing deceptive marketing (fraudulent contracts) isn't regulation, it's enforcing property rights.
If you can't see the difference between regulations and property rights then yeah, opposition to regulations will seem a bit bizarre.
In a general sense, perhaps, but not in the sense that people mean when they say that they're opposed to regulation. Context matters. In this conversation, "regulation" means a deviation from natural property rights, whether that involves directly infringing them, e.g. by attaching extra rules or penalties beyond simply respecting the equal rights of others, or granting artificial "property rights" which will necessarily infringe on others' natural ones.
> Expanding property rights to more areas is regulation.
"Expanding" the concept of property rights to areas where they don't naturally apply (like copyrights and patents) is definitely regulation, in the negative sense. But at that point you're not really talking about property rights any more.
Blindly trusting regulators to know what's best is just as bad as blindly trusting corporations to know what's best.
Read "The Path to Power", LBJ biography. They describe this process plainly and how he continuously used his across his entire career in this way. Its very enlightening.
If it is the government then it goes back to the people being aware of their interests and not allowing themselves to be manipulated. Which is never going to be the case.
There is no one to regulate the regulators because the state in its entirety is isolated from accountability to the public.