> You are implying that these reasonable and good willing people dont exist.
More subtly I am not arguing that many people get into public service twirling their mustache and going "MuuuuAHAHAHA!". I am arguing that many people go in with their adolescent ideals and are convinced that they are doing good by doing the evil that they do. That is "banal corruption". They are not corrupt because going after money. They are not corrupt because going after fame and power. They are corrupt by letting their own ideals / philosophy / religion get in front of more provable, cold realities of what the polis actually needs done now.
Let's take a very banal example: Traffic engineers in one of the cities I live in (there might be only one traffic engineer). Their duty is to make traffic work ever better - that's required for the city to work well for its inhabitants. Other people have other missions. For that office, that's cars and bikes mostly - I don't know if public transit is this particular office's duty - and to keep pedestrians safe from that traffic and vice et versa. However in practice they work much more specifically to make it ever harder to drive cars. Based on the evidence of living in that city, they are actively working against car traffic. They are now NOT working to "honorably discharge" their duty. They are instead working on "what THEY think is good". That is NOT the same thing. It has a name. That name is "corruption".
Fine, another example at a different scale: You might remember the quote [The piece of paper is not a suicide pact] - as justification for one high office politician to ignore his sworn duty and do whatever he wanted. To which much of the country then cheered. Now that one is Corruption with a capital C.
Does the EU commissioner think they are doing the right thing? Probably yes. Would they acknowledge privately that they are stretching the limits to breaking point? Quite likely - they didn't get there by being stupid. Would they (privately) argue that it was worth doing "for the cause"? Yep. Corruption.
> the accumulated failure of voters, that enables the sociopathes their careers
Well, sure. I believe that in democracies, the buck does not stop with the president but with the voters. But I think this is at a deep level. That is, our current institutions are very vulnerable to this kind of takeover. And many voters cheer on that corruption (because it furthers THEIR ideals, and fuck the constitution.) Which is why I feel that "How we run institutions" is one of the current Big Challenges on humanity. How we do that currently really doesn't cut it. We have to find ways to do better.
> [libertarians vs democracy]
Facts not in evidence! Democracy as we run it currently is a fantastic breeding ground for this kind of corruption.
Authoritarian regimes are a different thing: They are completely dependent on whether the leading person or group is enlightened. It's a "luck of the draw" kind of thing. But yeah, they are "by design" there to pursue the obsessions of the leaders - whether good or bad.