[smolder]

I'm skeptical there is a shortage of competent people to necessitate hiring idiots because you can't hire those with potential conflicts of interest. Finding and recruiting (and in some cases possibly grooming) competent people is hard, which makes it seem like they're extremely rare if you don't have success at it, but that's a different issue.

Corruption is a huge problem with huge costs to society, however hard they are to quantify. It's like a cancer that grows exponentially and kills institutions, and the fallout is messy and difficult. So while everything you said has some sense behind it, I don't believe the cost of eliminating those potential conflicts of interest (which I see as small) approaches the value of reduced corruption (which I see as large.)