[Spooky23]

I'd argue that government is more pervasively corrupt today because it pretends to be clean. We aggressively try to stamp out "transactional" corruption, but pretend that systemic corruption doesn't exist.

In 1960, a salesman would give a government buyer a bottle of whisky for Christmas. That's a serious crime these days. But today, we eliminated to a large extent the "upfront" influence and instead launder it through "lobbying" firms. A $30 bottle is a crime, $30,000,000 of advertising through a PAC is ok.

[crusso]

What you describe is the unintended consequence of thinking that we can legislate ethics by continuing to pile on detailed proscriptions or requirements within our laws.

As the number and detail of laws has increased, the fragility of the system has decreased. It's like software, the more special-case tightly-coupled components you have; the less robust the system.

Our laws could use a good refactoring.