Libertarians Supporting More Governmental Regulation?
April 17, 2008
This post at Kipesquire provides a remarkable example of bribery that can never be proven in a court of law. Here's the summary: The government entered into a contract with a contractor that would cause the government to lose money. The contractor gave huge campaign contributions to the three government officials who gave them the contract.
Absent corruption, why in the world would a government official enter into a losing contract? People are incompetent, but not that incompetent. It's clear what went down.
Yet there is no way that a federal bribery case could be made. When you give a federal official an envelope full of money, bribery is easy to establish. When you give a federal official a campaign contribution, it's almost impossible to prove bribery.
It is precisely because of this that many of us support sweeping reforms of campaign contribution laws.
Yet supporting restrictions on campaign contributions puts us into the libertarian paradox. Because of some bad government laws, many of us are required to support more bad government laws. How is that consistent with liberty? Where is the stopping point?
I don't have a great limiting principle. In general, I think the best approach is to not support more laws unless a practice is so entrenched that there is no way to end the underlying practice.
So, for example, the reality is that the government will continue awarding no-bid contracts to members of the private sector. This will never change. Thus, preventing people who do business with the government from giving campaign contributions is a reasonable way to mitigate corruption and waste.
On the other hand, there currently is not a universal system of socialized medicine in this country. We should fight like Hell to prevent it from existing.
If there were universal socialized medicine, it might be reasonable to deny some care to smokers, obese people, and others who make lifestyle choices that affect health care costs. Absent socialized medicine, I have no business caring about what you eat: It's your right to give yourself diabetes, heart disease, or lung cancer. But when I am being forced to pay for your decisions, it becomes my business - even though I don't want it to be.
It ain't easy being a libertarian.