On the libertarian (ish) moment (part ii) – Corruption and the Appearance Thereof

Recap: I’m doing a series on the libertarian (ish) moment looking at why it feels like its happening, and thinking about if we can expect it to continue. Last post I looked at big issues and claimed that we couldn’t completely distinguish between a rise in the general level of knowledge about these issues and a rise in libertarian sentiment.

For this post and the next few, I’m going to try to zoom in on libertarian sentiment. The internet is a big deal. This is not a particularly novel insight, but its true. In the past, people suspected that there was corruption or undo influence at various level. Everyone “knew” Albany was a cesspool of corruption, but this was just a cultural background assumption, people didn’t see specific evidence. On the occasion people were confronted with evidence, it would have been local reporting so they wouldn’t see the collection of evidence from all sources. Now people see specific evidence for their area and for many other nearby areas also.

Here are some recent local scandals: Cuomo, Christie, more Christie, a bunch of random guys in Albany. And for a general summary there’s the Wikipedia list of scandals. [note: these links are just provided as examples, you don’t actually need to read them (other than maybe the Coumo piece if you haven’t read it yet)].

Reporting provides a near real time view of the operation of corruption. Here is a great and very interesting report on how existing auto incumbents are paying state legislators to write bad laws to reduce competition and keep Tesla out of the market.[note: this is a very interesting story and worth reading]

In addition to reporting, the internet empowers individuals to do some digging of their own. A while back I read this article on a conflict over a bridge on the Canadian border. Using the internet I was able to check director and officer positions at several involved companies and incorporated charities, ownership of some of the involved properties, and campaign contributions to some of the involved political figures. The news story isn’t about corruption, but someone with an internet connection can find it from what’s in the story.

All this will inevitably lead to more anti-government sentiment. When you know an institution is crooked, you are less inclined to vest it with power. Even if, on balance, the government is less corrupt now than it was in the past (may or may not be true) it is seen to be more corrupt now and so will be trusted less. Absent some significant crackdowns and good governance initiatives, it seems unlikely this trend will reverse.