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Well maybe, but there's a question of degree. Free Market / Capitalism proponents, will argue until they are blue in the face about how much more clever and int

Well maybe, but there's a question of degree. Free Market / Capitalism proponents, will argue until they are blue in the face about how much more clever and intelligent and better actors in a free and competitive market will behave compared to alternative systems, so why wouldn't these actors also apply that competitive edge to the business of "corrupting the government for personal gain" and end up doing the corruption better than an alternative system would? Perhaps you could have a liberal democracy that copes fine in one era with various built-in systems to combat corruption, but if you make the market more competitive/free-er/better then it can no longer cope in subsequent eras? Who knows, but it certainly seems to match my perceptions of certain countries following market liberalisation.

nickik 8y ago
> end up doing the corruption better than an alternative system would? Because the same people who advocated free markets also thought long and hard about the problems of corruption. Lets remember that scottish enlightment thinkers are not just responsable for many of these ideas but also many of the ideas about how to design parlaments and politics in general. The reason a govenrment in a mostly capitalist state can be resistant is because it can be keeped relativly small and focused a small number of task. There are a large number of safeguards that can be built into the governemnt as long as the government has a limited scope. I also think that as long as government focus on the essentials, a large part of the population will agree that what the government does is good. The mechanism however to not scale having a government that needs to fight massive wars and plan the economy. In his book 'Road to Serfdom' Hayek goes into details about the tention between powerful government action and democratic institutions.

nickik 8y ago

> end up doing the corruption better than an alternative system would? Because the same people who advocated free markets also thought long and hard about the problems of corruption. Lets remember that scottish enlightment thinkers are not just responsable for many of these ideas but also many of the ideas about how to design parlaments and politics in general. The reason a govenrment in a mostly capitalist state can be resistant is because it can be keeped relativly small and focused a small number of task. There are a large number of safeguards that can be built into the governemnt as long as the government has a limited scope. I also think that as long as government focus on the essentials, a large part of the population will agree that what the government does is good. The mechanism however to not scale having a government that needs to fight massive wars and plan the economy. In his book 'Road to Serfdom' Hayek goes into details about the tention between powerful government action and democratic institutions.