Money in Politics

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Money in Politics has become the villain du jour in American politics. While it is true that money is exerting an ever more and more pernicious influence, it is also true that money, like guns, is a neutral force. It has no will of its own and it can be used for both good and evil.

One of the things that seems particularly alarming about the vilification of money in politics is that proposed solutions generally involve allowing the government to abuse our basic constitutional rights. Along these lines, the Supreme Court struck down many key campaign finance laws in Citizens United, and this has been met with disgust and ridicule. Nevertheless, the decision was correct. The laws in question were unconstitutional because no authority had been delegated to the federal government to enable such regulation. The law had already been used to infringe the first amendment rights of people all over the country and if the Supreme Court failed to rule as they did, such precedent would have threatened even further abuses.

A characteristic of the fight against money in politics has been that no matter what laws get passed, a workaround gets found. Some new undetectable form of quid pro quo turns up, or the laws become so vague as to be easily used by politicians as tools of vindictiveness rather than to help protect people from abuse.

Voter Apathy as Cause

Even if this weren't so, however, what improvement would we expect to see if money weren't in politics? Would this suddenly make politicians good, capable, and incorruptible? The answer, very simply, is that it will not do any of these things. Political power will still be sought out by evil men. That power will still require intelligence to use effectively, and will still be susceptible to abuse. Very simply put, we aren't getting corrupt politicians because there is money in politics. We are getting corrupt politicians because we don't care to find out whether they are corrupt, but we feel a need to vote anyway.

It is our view that money in politics is not an evil in and of itself. Rather, we hold that it is symptomatic of an evil that is far more pernicious, and that is the general apathy and ignorance of the voter. Uninformed people who feel obligated to vote are just waiting around for some plausible excuse to choose one person or another. Money in politics is merely a means of buying the opportunity to spoon feed us these plausible excuses. There is nothing inherently evil about politicians trying to tell us why we should vote for them. We really should want that. However, when we put in so little effort to hear from these politicians, we should naturally expect that they are going to need to expend more effort (in the form of money, generally) to bring that message to us, and that the message will have to be simple and dumbed down for our poor attention spans. Not only that, but the message can be completely empty, and even false, because we will not think critically about it. No amount of getting money out of politics will ever fix the problem of our inattention.

The Problem of Amassed Wealth

Regardless of the fact that money in politics is not an inherent evil, we still see problems with large amounts of amassed wealth. Such amassed wealth is a form of power. That "power corrupts" is an adage well known to virtually all. Thus, delegating too much authority to a central government (or, similarly, allowing too much power to be usurped) will lead to corruption. Likewise encouraging the gluttonous amassing of wealth also leads to corruption. Power and wealth should be distributed more evenly. However, the usual prescriptions applied to resolve the problem tend to make the problem worse. Giving the government more authority to steal and redistribute wealth increases the power of the federal government. It further centralizes power and leads to further corruption. It would seem that this would at least solve the problem of amassed corporate and personal wealth. However, our experience should have taught us by now, that such is not the case. As we centralize power more, corporations have actually grown fatter and more abusive. They can focus their resources on appeasing federal regulators while basking in the comfort of reduced competition.

If the usual solutions make the problem worse, it would seem at least worthy of consideration that the opposite will make things better. If we strip the federal government of its illegitimate regulatory powers, the federal government's centralized power would shrink, by definition, and large organizations would be less protected from competition. This would lead to a rise in small business development and corporate wealth would naturally decentralize as well.

External Resources

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