Comment by aetch
1 day ago
Its rent seeking because they’re using the government role to bring in the dough for themselves after they get the role. It just takes a bit of money upfront similar to a landlord buying a house. That’s also how you restrict government roles to the rich who only use it for personal gain. Similar to people who believe that Trump is generously by “donating” his salary back but not realizing that he and his family are earning far more in bribes and kickbacks using his position.
You're asserting a lot of things that aren't in the article. If you want to argue Victorian-era MPs were all motivated by corruption then go ahead but you'll need to cite strong evidence for that, because the general consensus was that MPs of that time were not particularly corrupt. As the article says, they didn't even spend much time on lawmaking at all, so there wasn't a lot of legislation to abuse.
The pre-Victorian system was known as the "Old Corruption" (capitalized), so while it was less so there was still quite a high baseline.
https://historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/old-corrup...
It's not asserting corruption. they were the voluntary caretakers of a system designed to ensure their prosperity and they provided their time and energy so that the system would continue to do so.
The system was already set-up to their maximum benefit. Their corruption was in making sure nothing changed, no matter the clamoring of the vast majority.
The problem is the counter-examples. We have dysfunctional cleptocracies worldwide. They go nowhere. Last of all, they do not conquer- and transfer there money outside towards high-trust societies. Thus by the empire they conquered- they can not have been as corrupt as the others. If the machine you build kills it- you can not have eaten that machine faster than it produces pocket butter.