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In a previous business that dealt with both the private sector and state government, the only times I have been asked for a bribe was once from a politician and once from a high state bureaucrat.

But as with all things liberal, we must be very careful about the meaning of words. So, what exactly is “corruption”? I would suggest that corruption has become so sophisticated that it wear a suit (or pants-suit) and stand in front of a press conference and tell us with a straight face what it plans to do, and the media will cheer it on.

What is it when a politician signals to his supporters that anyone who presents a plan for a brand new business, using brand new technology that could be touted as advancing the green agenda would quickly receive full funding via grants with no strings attached and little oversight?

The Solyndra debacle has the appearance of a vast plan to payoff friends, where there was no downside, and only upside. How many press conferences was Solydra good for touting? Now that it has collapsed, of course the government investigation is “ongoing”, but we are assured it will be thorough and any wrongdoing will be dealt with. But should this not be true, even in part, will it also be a form of corruption if these efforts turn out to be kabuki, that is elaborate theater which has a known outcome, mainly to excuse those involved so they escape.

We all know that when the bartender waters down the drinks, that is a form of embezzlement or theft. If the owner of the tavern told all his bartenders they must water down the drinks, we would say he ran a corrupt company.

If so, then what is it when government deliberately by official policy stated in study papers, Congressional testimony and in press conferences, tells us its targeted rate of money dilution? Well, just Google “Federal Reserve targeted rate of inflation”. There will be lots of news stories and even speeches by members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

Here is the subhead from one news story, a Reuters story from January 25, 2012: “The Federal Reserve took the historic step on Wednesday of setting an inflation target, a victory for Chairman Ben Bernanke that brings the Fed in line with many of the world’s other major central banks.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/25/us-usa-fed-inflation-target-idUSTRE80O25C20120125

And there is this press release from the Federal Reserve itself:

Press Release
Release Date: January 25, 2012
For release at 2:00 p.m. EST

...
The inflation rate over the longer run is primarily determined by monetary policy, and hence the Committee has the ability to specify a longer-run goal for inflation. The Committee judges that inflation at the rate of 2 percent, as measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures, is most consistent over the longer run with the Federal Reserve’s statutory mandate. ...

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20120125c.htm

Keep in mind that the price (in dollars) of assets like land and homes held by US citizens will generally respond to inflation. If the monetary policy of the Fed causes the general price level to double, the market price of a home or piece of land should also roughly double. But government has given itself to define what exactly it considers to be “income” for purposes of taxation, and it taxes changes in the number of dollars as if it was “income”.

So, if you bought a field for $100,000 and ten years later sold it for $150,000, your “gain” was $50,000 and you owe taxes on that gain. But what if that “gain” was solely due to the Fed’s monetary policy of printing money? What if your field was not really more valuable in relation to any other nearby field and the gain was just because of Fed inflation?

This is corruption on such a massive scale that many people cannot see it. To them, it is like when a fish cannot see the water he is swimming in.

Yes, corruption is strangling the ability of the private sector to create wealth. And the vast majority of that corruption originates in government. That corruption started with the corruption of the 13 enumerated powers and the corruption of the Courts and legislatures to allow government to break the bonds of those powers. Since personnel is policy, it also is rooted in people who love the power that government gives them more than they love the moral law that God gives all of us.

As a result of all of this, we are lurching towards socialism, a system that is corrupt, a system that is based on lies, coveting and theft. In the end, socialism corrupts the human spirit. This is exactly the theme of Václav Havel’s essay on life under socialism: The Power of the Powerless [1]

...
Our system is most frequently characterized as a dictatorship or, more precisely, as the dictatorship of a political bureaucracy over a society which has undergone economic and social leveling. I am afraid that the term “dictatorship,” regardless of how intelligible it may otherwise be, tends to obscure rather than clarify the real nature of power in this system...

...
To wandering humankind it offers an immediately available home: all one has to do is accept it, and suddenly everything becomes clear once more, life takes on new meaning, and all mysteries, unanswered questions, anxiety, and loneliness vanish. Of course, one pays dearly for this low-rent home: the price is abdication of one’ s own reason, conscience, and responsibility, for an essential aspect of this ideology is the consignment of reason and conscience to a higher authority. The principle involved here is that the center of power is identical with the center of truth....

Havel goes on to explain that under socialism, government must seize control of what it defines as “truth” for the sake of maintaining power. But the “truth” it seeks must violate economic laws and the truth about socialism is that its economics are not sustainable, a concept the left loves to scold us about. This was proved by economist Ludwig von Mises [2] [3]

The more that truth must be subverted to sustain the State, the more natural tension builds up in society. The more conflicted the average person must be and the more corrupt that government must become in order to sustain its version of the truth. And many people give themselves over to lies in order to gain access to power.

Socialism is massive corruption of the economy and the human spirit. Sadly, we are headed in that direction at warp speed.

[1] http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=eseje&val=2_aj_eseje.html&typ=HTML

[2] Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Ludwig von Mises— http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf

[2] Why a Socialist Economy is “Impossible” by Joseph T. Salerno— http://mises.org/econcalc/POST.asp