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Comment by mike_hearn | Hacker News Reader

Rent seeking how? As the article says, most government positions were unpaid and to be an MP required paying all your own election expenses out of pocket, which were huge. They did it for the prestige and social rewards, not financial. Landowners were expected to take on government roles, also for free.

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Until the 1830s the British elections at least were openly corrupt, the system of 'Rotten Boroughs' meant the makeup of Parliament was still essentially mediaeval into the early industrial era. You had absolutely mad situations where Manchester sent nobody to Parliament, but an old village which had literally fallen into the sea long before still sent two MPs.

Fascinatingly bizarre. More info: https://ecppec.ncl.ac.uk/features/rotten-boroughs/

See also Potwallopers for further historical weirdness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potwalloper

I know! How could these literal landlords be rent-seeking by taking unpaid positions of political influence to increase literal rental income and protect their wealth?

Its rent seeking because they’re using the government role to bring in the dough for themselves after they get the role. It just takes a bit of money upfront similar to a landlord buying a house. That’s also how you restrict government roles to the rich who only use it for personal gain. Similar to people who believe that Trump is generously by “donating” his salary back but not realizing that he and his family are earning far more in bribes and kickbacks using his position.

You're asserting a lot of things that aren't in the article. If you want to argue Victorian-era MPs were all motivated by corruption then go ahead but you'll need to cite strong evidence for that, because the general consensus was that MPs of that time were not particularly corrupt. As the article says, they didn't even spend much time on lawmaking at all, so there wasn't a lot of legislation to abuse.

The pre-Victorian system was known as the "Old Corruption" (capitalized), so while it was less so there was still quite a high baseline.

https://historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/old-corrup...

It's not asserting corruption. they were the voluntary caretakers of a system designed to ensure their prosperity and they provided their time and energy so that the system would continue to do so.

The system was already set-up to their maximum benefit. Their corruption was in making sure nothing changed, no matter the clamoring of the vast majority.

The problem is the counter-examples. We have dysfunctional cleptocracies worldwide. They go nowhere. Last of all, they do not conquer- and transfer there money outside towards high-trust societies. Thus by the empire they conquered- they can not have been as corrupt as the others. If the machine you build kills it- you can not have eaten that machine faster than it produces pocket butter.

Someone’s never heard of regulatory capture

And to get a promotion in the army you had to buy it.

I don't know why this was downvoted, the practice of purchasing commissions in the army was only abolished halfway through Victoria's reign.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_of_commissions_in_the...

Careful, that's some of that stuff that they teach in humanities and classics courses. You know, what is being labeled as wasteful or impractical in this thread.

"The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent."

-- Karl Marx

> Landowners were expected to take on government roles, also for free

This was just the dying embers of feudalism. Which is still theoretically present in England, having been abolished in Scotland in the year 2000.

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