Illegal bribes mean a politician is corrupt, but the legal things he does are just as immoral

By David McElroy · June 10, 2011

Every time an elected official is arrested for corruption, the media and other politicians point pious fingers at the individual, distancing themselves from the guy in the expensive suit taking the perp walk. That misses the point. It’s not just the individual who’s to blame. The statist system itself is immoral.

Let me be clear. Politicians such as Jack B. Johnson deserve scorn, but not just for the things they do that are illegal. The legal things they do are just as bad. Until he was arrested, Johnson was the chief executive of the county government in Prince George’s County, Md. During his eight years as the county executive, he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for steering development to favored companies. Nobody will ever know the total that he took.

When things such as this happen, the politicians supporters are hurt and feel betrayed. And newspapers go into overdrive to start covering the story after it’s too late. (In this case, the Washington post has quite a collection of stories documenting various aspects of the case.) But why does no one in these stories question the system that’s at the root of it? Why doesn’t anyone question why a government official has the power to decide who gets to build what?

The key insight that started me down the path to becoming a libertarian years ago came when it occurred to me that politicians had the ability to accept illegal (and legal) bribes to make things happen because the state system gives them power to pick winners and losers. Because the modern state has the power to hurt some companies and individuals, those people and companies have the incentive to make friends with politicians — to buy them off, either legally or illegally. And because the modern state has the power to make some people and companies hugely wealthy, those people and companies have the rational incentive to make make deals with those politicians to get licenses, permissions and contracts. If you take away the politicians’ special power to grant licenses and permissions, they have nothing to sell to the highest bidder.

Why does a politician get to regulate so many things about our lives? It’s because well-meaning people agitate for government to have the power to “protect” people by making decisions for them. Most of the restrictions we have that lead to these people having too much power goes back to well-meaning people — the spiritual descendants of the so-called “progressive movement” that started in the 19th century — demanding that governments take more and more power to “help” in one way or another. Of course, by the time the power is actually implemented, incentives take over. Human rational beings end up acting in the ways that the incentives predict they will. The step further and further over ethical, moral and legal lines — until the point where people who might have started out with good intentions are taking millions of dollars to make decisions to favor certain people, decisions they have no business making.

Pretty soon, most politicians are so full of themselves that they’re doing petty things at the public expense that make it clear where their interests lie. Most of them are discreet about it, in my experience. Some of them, though — such as Johnson — as open about it. At least as far back as 2006, it was clear that Johnson thought the public owed him something. In fact, he makes it clear in this story that he thinks taxpayers expect him to fly first class:

Johnson flew business class to Senegal in December 2005 to attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony for homes built by a local developer. The cost of his travel was $6,003, charged to the county, and paid for by taxpayers. Johnson was quoted as saying, “I always fly business class or first class. I think the people of Prince George’s County expect me to. I don’t think they expect me to be riding in a seat with four across and I’m in the middle.” He also generated controversy by staying at the luxurious Bellagio Hotel and The Wynn when traveling to Las Vegas for recent shopping center conventions, two of the most expensive hotels in the city.

For many politicians, it’s not just about the money. It’s also about their colossal egos. As Johnson was preparing to leave office last year, he spent nearly a quarter of a million in tax money to print 300,000 copies of a glossy booklet to be mailed to every home in the county. This booklet celebrated himself, of course. After his arrest, the expensive print job sits in a warehouse with addresses still printed on them, waiting to be mailed. (See the photo at right.)

It’s tempting to see Johnson as just a sad case of a man who’s gone wrong, but the truth is that he’s the perfect example of a man responding to the incentives that the system gives him. It’s true that he’s corrupt. It’s true that he should go to prison. (He pleaded guilty last month.) But it’s the state that his behavior really indicts.

There are many good and well-intentioned people working in the state political system. Many of those will never be in positions to abuse the public trust. And some of those won’t take the chance to abuse their positions anyway. But even if we take the honest, well-intentioned politicians who will never do anything illegal, they’re making decisions about our lives that they have no rational or moral justification to make, even though the majority of people accept it.

It’s time to accept that we must indict more than just dishonest and corrupt politicians. We have to indict and dismantle our enemy — the state.

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There was a time when I was idealistic enough to believe that if a writer expressed his thoughts clearly and simply enough, any bright and honest person would understand his point. I know better now. We all bring so many unconscious assumptions to the things we read that we often see what we expect to see instead of what the writer intended. This is incredibly frustrating to me as a writer, but I’m trying more and more to just say what I need to say — as clearly as I know how — and then ignore the inevitable responses which show that others perceived something which was not intended. I have to write for those who “get” where I’m coming from, not for those who see my words through personal filters that change my meaning. I hope my intentions are clear to you and I hope what I write can be useful to you, but if not, maybe my work just isn’t right for you. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I found out this evening that someone I casually knew killed himself last Wednesday. I didn’t know him well — and I never found him personable — but he had started work a couple of months ago at a restaurant where I go. He was a 26-year-old who struck me as a confused and unhappy person, but I didn’t think much about it since he stayed to himself and resisted my efforts to chat with him. It turns out that he had a history of depression and had a lot of gender confusion. He seemed very androgynous to me and I learned today that he presented himself as female in some situations. He was rejected by a romantic interest last week, so he went to the woods and killed himself. His body wasn’t found for three days. It’s tragic how miserable people around us can be and how we so rarely know the truth about things they struggle with.

I’ve been with people for most of this day, but I feel lonely tonight. I’ve had things on my mind for the last few days that I feel the strong need to talk about. I need someone to share my thoughts with — someone who’s interested in ideas and how they affect us. Someone who gets excited to discover new things and can find joy in seeing new ways those things might change our lives. I feel lonely tonight because I painfully remember what it feels like to have that — and I’m craving that sort of connection. I miss having someone I can call and say, “I’ve been reading something and it’s sparked some thoughts I want to share with you.” Those sorts of conversations have lasted for hours for me in the past — or for thousands of words if it’s an exchange of mail — and it feels wrong that there is nobody who wants to hear such things from me tonight. I used to think being lonely was about being alone, but I understand now it’s a longing for one particular person. The loneliest place to be when you need one person is in a crowd composed of people who cannot be who you need.

I don’t agree with everything the late Neil Postman wrote, but I would argue that no other recent scholar gives coherent structure to the last few hundred years in the way his books do. I’m currently re-reading his book, “Technopoly,” and I’m comforted to have a scholar give structure and definitions to things which I’ve observed and barely understood. I was enough of a technophile when I first read this book that I bristled at much of what it said. I didn’t want him to be right and it was easier to dismiss him as a Luddite. But as I see technology continue to enable an information glut which is changing society for the worse, I find comfort in his explanations for how we got here. I don’t yet know the solutions, but I finally understand the problems more clearly. I suspect that much of what we need to make life more meaningful can be found in things we accidentally threw away in the past to make room for technologies. I strongly urge you to read the book and think about its implications.

I’d like to write a modern version of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” — a more cynical one — with a realistic ending for today’s audience. In this new version, the little boy points out on social media that the emperor is naked but nobody listens to him. Instead, everybody keeps posting grander and grander praise for the emperor’s non-existent clothes. The cognitive dissonance makes the people unable to hear the child who tells them the truth, because they’re getting social media praise — likes and so forth — for their lies. The confused child eventually feels so defeated that he shuts up and walks away. He’s so hurt and disappointed by this that he withdraws from the world and spends years in therapy, trying to figure out whether the rest of the world is crazy or if he’s the crazy one. Ever since I was a child, I wanted to be that little boy, but few want to hear the truth today. Either I’m crazy or else our culture has gone insane.

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