It's almost as if government corruption is not a byproduct of the system of government, but a byproduct of the fact that it's filled with people, and when people accrue power they will, by and large, abuse it.
> It's almost as if government corruption is not a byproduct of the system of government, but a byproduct of the fact that it's filled with people, and when people accrue power they will, by and large, abuse it.
If only there were a system to align incentives toward a common good under the assumption that everyone is corrupt and will therefore seek to maximize their own interests....
What are the incentives for corrupt people to fix potholes under a purely capitalist economy? No one's making any money from that. But it causes damages to everyone.
You need some kind of government for such things as education, healthcare, roads... fixing potholes...
> What are the incentives for corrupt people to fix potholes under a purely capitalist economy?
Well, in a purely capitalist economy, the answer would be property rights, competition, and liability. For example, a road would be owned by someone, and you could sue that someone for damages if the road damaged your car. A road owner could discharge liability risk by purchacing insurance, and insurance underwriters could require some minimum standard of maintenance from owners in exchange.
> You need some kind of government for such things as education, healthcare, roads... fixing potholes...
The whole point of the article that spawned these discussions is that society has already delegated the responsibility for fixing potholes to the government, and the government is doing a crappy enough job of fixing potholes that "art activists" need to make potholes into public art projects to get the government to actually do its job.
Some libertarians moved in the small town of Grafton, NH [0], with the explicit goal of turning it into a "Free Town".
> This resulted in eliminating funding to the county's senior-citizens council, town offices going unheated during the winter, poorly maintained roads filled with potholes, and the Grafton Police Department being reduced to one officer (the police chief), who said he was unable to answer calls for service as the town had no money to repair the one police vehicle left. Other issues were inconsistent basic public services, such as trash collection.
Most roads are unprofitable individually, but still beneficial to the greater economy. It's very unrealistic to expect private individuals to build and maintain them. And the logistics of paying for every street one drives one, and the profiteering this enables sounds hellish.
There was a time when the government was able to build and fix stuff. We should probably get to fixing that, by kicking out the parasitic contracters, actually hiring competent civil servants at competitive wages, taxing the ever-increasing wealth of the top 1%, etc. Not by privatizing roads, which is a nonsensical idea that failed miserably anytime it was tried.
The golden age of America (and the West) happened when redistributive taxation was maximal and the government had the means and the will to improve citizens life. We've been privatizing stuff ever since the 1980s with arguably disastrous results. It's time we came back to first base.
You can be a libertarian without being a capitalist, and you can be a capitalist without being a libertarian, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with a [completely accurate] libertarian dig when the original point was that if the system was more capitalist, it would get fixed faster and better.
> actually hiring competent civil servants at competitive wages
I think most people would be open to increasing cash government salaries if the rest of the job also matched the broader economy - at-will employment, no public sector unions, etc. You trade some of your cash compensation in the government for the cushy benefits, sub-40 hour work week and lots of time off, and the near impossibility of being fired especially once you've been there for a few decades.
The golden age of the West happened due to a war-time manufacturing boom that would put the industrial revolution to shame. If you're making a ton of money and your marginal tax rate is 90%, what incentive do you have to work another ten hours a week or open another factor or release a new product if you're only keeping 10% of what you earn?
I don't think corruption is a left/right axis like that.
And I don't know, maybe it's early days, but Mamdani seems less corrupt than his predecessors.