25A031 Corruption by Jim Davies, 8/5/2025

The idea is that something is optimal or even perfect, but has been spoiled or marred. For it to have become corrupt, it must have, or once have had, an ideal or non-corrupt version. If no such unspoiled variant has existed, it's not correct to describe something as "corrupt."

So is there such a thing as "corrupt government"?

The media assume there is; they publish examples of it every day. For example Vlad Zelensky's government in Ukraine is widely believed to be deeply corrupt in that its leaders skim many millions of dollars off the billions donated by NATO and US governments; he is reported to be immensely wealthy as a result and will enjoy that loot if he survives. The assumption in that case is that the gifts of help were uncorrupted, generous donations to a nation in peril, and that these wicked public servants have stolen some of it for their private enjoyment. Shocking!

That assumption however is false. The "gifts" were stolen in the first place, from taxpayers back home who had earned the money with their own labor. True, there is less outright criminal behavior in some governments than in others like his, just as there may be some Mafia "families" less brutal than others; but they are all crooks. There was never an "unspoiled variant" capable of being corrupted.

A comparable case: R F Kennedy Jr has brilliantly shown that under the guidance of Fauci, vast sums have been ripped off taxpeyers and transferred to pharma firms, Congrescritters and federal bureaucrats. Isn't that "corruption"? - we might well think so, but it was perfectly legal. Government wrote the rules, and kept them. No corruption - except that government and its rules are utterly corrupt to begin with.

A third example: can there be such a thing as a corrupt murder? That would require the existence of a "perfect murder", but that's impossible because murder is intrinsically evil, already deeply corrupt. (Sometimes a murderer escapes detection, but that's "perfect" only in a quite different sense.)

That's exactly the case with government; there can be no such thing as a "perfect" one, because in its very nature all government is already profoundly corrupt.

Why so? - because the core nature of government is to govern; to rule, hence to over-rule the wishes of people who have an absolute, natural right to rule themselves and make freely-chosen, market exchanges. In fact, one good definition of government is "that which negates the market", or causes its absence or smooth functioning. Since market exchanges are the optimal way for humans to transact with each other, government is intrinsically corrupt to begin with; there is no unspoiled version.