"The risk with a powerful government that can do this is it can be bought." A government can be bought?, your implicit assumption is that a government powerful

"The risk with a powerful government that can do this is it can be bought." A government can be bought?, your implicit assumption is that a government powerful enough will serve the interest of others and this is bad. The problem for me is that a government powerful enough will serve their OWN interest, the personal interest of the people in power, and this is bad. Part of my family comes from a former communist country. In theory, it was "the government of the people", in practice it was the biggest concentration of power ever in so few hands, the politburo. And the people there had nothing to do with those that generated wealth. In theory those in the politburo were not rich, in practice they could do or get whatever they wanted. Money was not needed for that. Only one political party, only one company for the entire nation. This meant you could be the best worker in the world, if someone high enough wants you to sweep streets, you seep streets or starve. Not only that, if your brother mother or your sister does something the party does no like(like not getting in bed with someone up), you will pay for it too. People in change of the police(Beria) will rape hundreds of young women and we will only know decades after with zero consequences to those that took part on it. When taxes become too high, over 50% of what you earn, you become a slave of government. The problem is that for people like Piketty taxes are never high enough. Mr Thomas Piketty is French. What we see in countries like France is that 60% of the economy is public. They become more and more communist-central planned. Money is wasted in those societies in terrible malinvestments(like the Great Leap Forward or Qualitative easings), and they never have enough as they are the most incompetent people around until society collapse. If you can buy the government, then you are lucky, it means the power is not monopolized in only one place.