Why corruption is bad, actually
It's about so much more than money
My friend Mona Charen has been a roll lately over at The Bulwark, crisply delineating and explaining the Trump administration’s blizzard of corruption scandals (although is it a scandal when so few are scandalized?).
This stuff grinds my gears to an extent you can’t imagine, based on my long association with Africa. I grew up under President Daniel arap Moi, who stole billions of dollars to enrich himself and entrench his power. The largest scandal of his presidency had his government contracting with a company to facilitate fictitious exports of gold and diamonds worth $500 million. But that amount was easily eclipsed by the mundane, regular operation of a machine that ran on graft.
As an Africa analyst, I had an even closer view of the corruption that plagues Africa. The worst case is probably South Sudan, a country rich in oil deposits that could have generated real economic development after its independence in 2011. Instead, President Salva Kiir has used almost all of it to enrich himself and pay off his allies/potential rivals. South Sudan is on the verge of another civil war and remains one of the world’s poorest countries. The UN has called South Sudan’s corruption “a human rights crisis.” “It is driving hunger, collapsing health systems, and causing preventable deaths, as well as fueling deadly armed conflict over resources,” a recent UN report stated.
By the numbers, Trump is nearly matching the haul of the worst African dictators. The Trump family has reportedly made about $4 billion in office, compared to notorious Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko’s $5 billion, although that’s more like $9 billion in today’s money. But don’t worry, Trump has two and a half more years. I bet he’ll be wearing a leopard skin hat at least metaphorically by the end of this ride.
And any time I compare Trump to an African dictator, I am contractually obligated to repost Trevor Noah’s brilliant analysis:
In Africa, this kind of theft has had devastating effects. By some estimates, corruption costs the continent $150 billion annually, which is equal to 25% of GDP. The African Development Bank estimates if you add more general illicit finance enabled by weak rule of law to government-related corruption, that number rises to $580 billion per year.
Then there are the follow-on effects of creating an environment that discourages investment and robs ordinary people of the resources, infrastructure, education, and basic sustenance they need to thrive. There is the massive wealth disparity, with political and ethnic contours that often feed into deep historical animosities, as those with political connections are rewarded at the expense of those who are out. Then there are inflated stakes for political competition. Then there is violence, war, insecurity, extremism.
The US is not Africa. For one thing, its economy is nine times the size the entire African continent’s. By the numbers, the American economy can absorb Trump’s corruption, although the juxtaposition of it with things like the mass firing of federal workers, the shutdown of USAID, cuts to families with disabled children, and the slashing of funding for scientific research makes it seem all the more obscene. We have other structural advantages, like robust federalism, that mitigates the impact of corruption in the federal government.
But we can already see the beginnings of corruption’s corrosive impact on our political economy and envision how it could directly harm ordinary Americans. Here’s why it’s bad, even in America.
Corruption degrades government services. When government contracts and hiring are determined by patronage and payoff instead of skill and expertise, the quality of the product inevitably suffers. While we are a long way from Americans waiting months to get a passport like you see in Africa, I don’t expect his Pool Boy to be doing quality work on the reflecting pool.
He wasn’t hired for his reflecting pool repair skills. Made with AI. Relatedly, corruption filters down from the top. When the boss is on the take without consequence, it tends to be inspirational. If you’re the Secretary of Transportation, for instance, why not take a family vacation funded by the industries you’re supposed to regulate? And if you are his deputy and you see him getting away with it, why wouldn’t you, too, start flouting the rules? Eventually such corruption can make its way down to the lowest levels and creates an entirely new operating system that runs on graft. In some countries, the end point might be air traffic controllers getting their jobs through bribery or nepotism, not great for the flying public.
Corruption distorts the market. If you own a fly fishing store in Montana, your business is probably unaffected by the Trump kids’ shenanigans (his idiotic economic policies might cost you). But what if you have an investment firm, and your clients are looking over at the killing Jared and DJTJ’s clients are making because they have insider knowledge of whatever insanity Dear Daddy is gonna pull next? What if Melania becomes interested in fly fishing and starts selling government-subsidized gear that your stuff can’t compete with?
A Sewer Runs Through It. Made with AI. What if Jeff Bezos agrees to make a documentary for every single Trump family member at a massive loss and raises the cost of a Prime subscription beyond your budget and you have to actually go into a store again?
In Africa, the reorganization of economies due to corruption is absolutely ruinous. The political elite basically corner every market and suffocate competition, harming consumers and business owners, discouraging investment, and fueling unemployment and inequality. Our economy is of a scale and complexity that things are never going to get that cataclysmic. But over time, here, too, corruption alters economic logic and depresses growth, with worse outcomes for everyone except the favored few.
Corruption steers policy away from the public good. While trading government favors for goodies has always been somewhat of a feature of American politics, Trump has taken it to the extreme, especially in the realm of foreign policy, to the detriment of our national security. He has taken so much cash from foreign sources, I doubt any of his foreign policy decision making is influenced by much else. Just one recent example—After the UAE invested $500 million in his crypto company, Trump allowed them to import 500,000 Nvidia chips despite serious national security concerns. On the domestic front, the TechBros are clearly hoping to trade flattery and cash for deregulation at a time when AI could have far-reaching negative effects. Ideally, we would have a government that would approach the issue with the goal of bringing the most good to the most people, but that clearly isn’t what we’ve got. In Africa, we’ve seen this dynamic particularly in the area of land policy, and not surprisingly, the result has been huge disparities in land ownership.
Corruption entrenches authoritarianism. Corruption and authoritarianism are BFFs.1 For the worst among us, money is a key motivation for gaining power, as well as the mechanism and imperative for retaining it. The more power you accrue, the more you can steal. The more you steal, the more you can consolidate and retain power through patronage. The more you consolidate power, the less accountable you are and the more you can steal. The more you steal, the more important it becomes to stay in power to prevent accountability. The more corruption eats away at economic life, the more association with power becomes the chief way to succeed, which further enhances the authoritarian’s power. Trump is repeating the pattern of every African dictator I’ve seen, and there’s a reason why he toys with a third term, or at the very least wants to ensure his successor will protect him. It’s the story of every authoritarian succession I’ve studied.
Corruption discourages political engagement. Not surprisingly, even the perception of corruption causes people to check out of politics. This is true even in America, where our votes still have the power to throw the bums out. But low participation only encourages corruption by reducing accountability. Worse, corruption on one side can encourage corruption on all sides, because why play by the rules when your opponents cheat? In Africa, if voters have a free choice at all, it is often between equally corrupt candidates, and hailing an opposition victory only to see it behave exactly like the preceding government is a familiar routine. In America, we are fortunate to have one party that still exhibits commitment to democratic norms, but the more frustrated Democrats and their voters become, the more that commitment will naturally slip.
But the very worst, least reparable damage done by corruption is that it destroys social trust, the foundation of liberal democracy itself. Democracy is the process by which societies of diverse interests agree to lay aside brute force as the basis for power in favor of abiding by a mutually agreed upon set of rules and deferring to neutral institutions. Democracy is incredibly difficult to get going, as you need some amount of trust to begin with. But it does become self-reinforcing over time, as trust builds and more and more people see more and more benefit from investing in and committing to the democratic system.
Most African nations have yet to get very far down this road, and progress is often turned back by another breech, another betrayal, another conflict. Having observed, with personal anguish at various points, this tortuously plodding journey, I find it that much more enraging to see Americans now squandering such a large amount accumulated trust, deposited in esteemed and steady institutions. Very hard won trust at that, amassed in an especially pluralistic society with some pretty tough history.
Trump’s destruction of it goes far beyond the corruption itself, or even his escape from accountability. I think his real devastation is the cynicism he has sowed with his lies, the way he’s made so many Americans believe that he’s simply the product of the system, that he’s nothing unique or new, and that they have no real choice. I can’t tell you how many friends and family members have told me something akin to, “they’re all corrupt,” or that voting is “a choice between two terrible options.”
Which is just utter bullshit. While our system has its corruptions and could use some reform, and while we have a fair number of sleazy politicians, few of them are like Trump in character, and none of them are like him in practice, if only because they don’t have his power. American voters are faced with possibly the clearest choice in our history, every time they go to the polls in the Trump era.
Trump has also destroyed our trust in each other, some to the point where they are willing to resort to violence. My friends and family who are Trump supporters don’t trust me at all, even on matters on which I have tremendous expertise, even based on classified information and provable fact.
And I must confess, I don’t trust or respect them, not after seeing them abandon their conscience, ignore their intuition, disconnect their reason, and surrender to the worst instincts of the human heart. I had already decided to leave the government before the election for more personal reasons. But I knew if he won again, I wouldn’t be able to stay. Not because I couldn’t work for him again, but because I couldn’t work for the American people anymore. The people who chose him.
I hate that that’s how I feel. I hate how Trump has changed how I view my fellow Americans. My family. My friends. I will never ever forgive him for it.
But I am still committed to democracy, because I have seen the alternative. I know we have no choice but to keep trusting even in the absence of trustworthiness. Not blindly or naively. You can trust shrewdly. You can vote relentlessly. You can resist non-violently. All of it is a kind of faith worth holding on to.
We believe because we have seen the work of the faithless. We can see the building of a system based on zero-sums instead of multiplication. That’s what corruption ultimately is.
But democracy is love.
One of my favorite books is Brian Klaas’s Corruptible.
Thank you for taking the time and making the effort to write this piece. There is so much in here that I don’t even know where to start with commenting. But I wanted you to know I really appreciate it, and I’m going to let it sit with me for a good while.
Came over here from JVL's newsletter - this is really fantastic. It's heartening that some Democrats are starting to build a compelling message around corruption (see: Ossoff), but it's also a bit sad that it had to come from Trump stepping on a ton of rakes that are directly effecting the economy. A more competent authoritarian wannabe is going to be a big problem in this country in the future, especially if they come from the right, with an ethics-free "media" in tow. Dems need a really solid plan to root it out if they can win big in 26 and 28.