Why Anti-Corruption Strategies May Backfire
One of my US high school history teachers once taught us that bureaucracy and endless mounds of red tape were the natural consequence of Americans valuing fairness over efficiency, and in the end getting neither.<p>We want a system that is:<p>1. fair, and Americans immediately suspect that humans tend to favor their friends<p>2. based on clear, written rules, so everyone can compete on an even playing field<p>3. good enough to handle any edge case, so that &#x27;exceptions&#x27; to rules via human override (and potential corruption) can be avoided<p>Implementing 1-3 means building a giant, inflexible bureaucracy, where responsibility is widely distributed (so nobody can be corrupt) and an immense book of rules and red tape (so it can handle every edge case).<p>Unfortunately Americans don&#x27;t even really get fairness in practice.<p>The cost of following all the rules to the letter is <i>so incredibly expensive and inefficient</i> that obviously government agencies and their favored contract bidders have back channels with one another so that they know exactly how to structure their bids to win.<p>This is why conservatives sometimes have a point - many regulations not only do <i>not</i> do anything for the public good, but they actually help entrenched interests.