"Corruption is a regular effect of interventionism."
Ludwig von Mises
"Human Action," 1949
Muy relacionado con este post de Luis sobre los problemas que ocasiona el estado cuando mete la mano en el mercado, la gran Anastasia se refiere al caso particular de Brasil en su columna "The Americas" en el WSJ de ayer:
Slow economic growth and corruption are but two offspring of the monster government in Brasilia that has badly damaged Lula's legacy. Von Mises predicted it: "The advocates of interventionism pretend to substitute for the -- as they assert, 'socially' detrimental -- effects of private property and vested interests the unlimited discretion of the perfectly wise and disinterested legislator and his conscientious and indefatigable servants, the bureaucrats." In the world of the anticapitalists, he explained, "only those on the government's payroll are rated as unselfish and noble." Von Mises anticipated the outcome: "Unfortunately the office-holders and their staffs are not angelic. They learn very soon that their decisions mean for the businessmen either considerable losses, or -- sometimes -- considerable gains." In other words, buying influence is normal when influence has a cash value. This is what one Brazilian family did when it allegedly paid kickbacks to politicians who helped it secure contracts for medical equipment. Such simple observations from classical thinkers have been routinely dismissed as "ideological" by both Latin American socialists and fascists -- that is, by the left and right. Yet the wisdom has proven timeless and universal, and there is no shortage of oppressed citizens who can attest to its veracity. At a World Bank panel to discuss corruption last week, Dele Olojede (an award-winning journalist from Nigeria) had this to say about the problem: "We should recognize that in societies where the bureaucracy is vast, the press is weak, the private sector operates under the yolk of government, these are the clearest indications of corrupt societies, and you cannot begin to fight corruption if you have all powerful government in any society."
Creo que cualquier persona que alguna vez haya tenido que algún tipo de experiencia con el sector público de algún país del tercer mundo sabe que es exactamente como lo describe el artículo. Mucho más si alguien alguna vez vivió en un país del tercer mundo. El canadiense promedio se puede sorprender con estas cosas pero a nosotros no nos puede agarrar por sorpresa.
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