Several days ago, I read a news story that said Super PAC’s raised $594 million in 2016.  (Ninety percent went to losing candidates, it claimed.)  Another internet story claims the cost of just the presidential race was over $2.6 billion, (down from the previous race.)

This raises the question:  why the great outpouring of money for an election?  People and corporations don’t spend money, big money, for little or no reason.  They expect to get something for their money.  So why the spending?

There are two reasons that I can determine.  One reason is, simply, that it is protection money.  Corporations and people see the expenditure as a way of protecting themselves from the politicians’ actions once they get in government.  Whether you give the money to candidate X to protect yourself from candidate Y, or give it to candidate Y to buy his favor, it is still protection money.  It’s the equivalent of the local bully’s shakedown payoff.  By the way, that’s why many corporations give to both candidates in a race; they can’t afford to anger either party.

The second reason is even worse.  For some corporations (especially – and given what we saw this last election, perhaps we should add countries?), the purpose of the election expenditure is to buy special privileges.  Perhaps it’s to persuade the candidate to support a new bill that will cripple an adversary, or one that would provide special subsidies for themselves.  Historically, mostly starting with the railroads, then down to the alternate energy “entrepreneurs” of today, companies have used this to fleece the public.  In short, to anyone other than a political scientist, the expenditure is a bribe.

Both reasons are a sad commentary on our political scene.  No person or corporation should ever feel the need to pay money to protect themselves from the government.  And the use of political contributions as a bribe is unethical and – should be – illegal.  Neither reason occurs under a just government.  Both reasons occur, inevitably, under a government that involves itself in the economic affairs of its people, attempting to manipulate affairs to its liking.  Under a just government, there should be little more reason to contribute to a presidential race as there is to contribute to a race for local sheriff.

Each election time brings to mind a story told by Albert J. Nock.  The story goes as follows:

It was once quite seriously suggested to me by some neighbours that I should go to Congress.  I asked them why they wished me to do that, and they replied with some complimentary phrases about the satisfaction of having some one of a somewhat different type “amongst those damned rascals down there.”  “Yes, but,” I said, “don’t you see that it would be only a matter of a month or so – a very short time, anyway –before I should be a damned rascal, too?”  No, they did not see this; they were rather taken aback; would I explain?  “Suppose,” I said, “that you put in a Sunday-school superintendent or a Y.M.C.A. secretary to run an assignation-house on Broadway.  He might trim off some of the coarser fringes of the job, such as the badger game and the panel game, and put things in what Mayor Gaynor used to call a state of ‘outward order and decency,’ but he must run an assignation-house,, or he would promptly hear from the owners.”

Nock based his conclusion on a studied belief in a specific theory of the State.  Nock saw there are two ways for a person to satisfy his needs and desires.  One is by working, applying labor and skill to natural resources to produce an asset, then using or exchanging that asset in order to meet the need/desire.  This, appropriately enough, he called the economic means.  An alternative method is to appropriate the asset of others, without trading for it or compensating them.  This, again appropriately, he called the political means.

The State, he concluded, “may be described as the organization of the political means.”  The primary purpose of the State is to take resources (usually financial) from one group and give it to another group, while taking a hefty portion of the exchange for itself.  Parties organize around ‘who’ will be the beneficiaries of the plunder, as multiple groups of people vie for the largess.

Nock’s conclusion was that putting a different rascal in Congress would not, could not, by itself, change the game.  But yet, the game stinks!  What to do?

Nock’s solution borrowed from another great thinker in the conservative tradition, Edmund Burke.  “If a great change is to take place, the minds of men will be fitted to it.”  Change must come about by a change of thinking, by a rejection of the political means and an embracing of the economic means as a way of life.

If true – and it is – this makes preaching about, and living out, the eighth and tenth commandments truly revolutionary acts.  “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not covet,” when rigorously applied, provide the moral grounds for denouncing the actions of the State and point the way to a better society, based on voluntarism, not force.

[Story and quotes from Nock’s Anarchist’s Progress.  https://mises.org/library/anarchists-progress-0%5D

Lord Acton is famous for his statement that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  As a long-time libertarian, then Christian, I have used it to explain a myriad of actions by politicians over the years.  How else explain the actions of John Adams or Thomas Jefferson as president, for example?

But today’s political circus is a perfect illustration of its truth.  The Clinton machine has wielded political power for a long time now, and the corruptions have become legendary.  Few doubt that the corruption will become even worse if Hillary is elected president.

But that should not blind our eye to the fact that a Trump election would inevitably result in the same corruption.  This is not a Republican versus Democrat analysis.  Nothing tips the hand of the corrupt politician as quickly as the authority to “wipe out” (literally) one’s enemies – whether via clandestine drone strikes, fomented revolutionary coups, or heavy-handed IRS tactics.

Regardless of who becomes our next president, the job of the voters, going forward, must be to be sure another saying by Lord Action is kept in front of our minds.  “Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.”  We cannot afford to abandon the political scene until the next election.  What “we ought [to do]” must be known by us, and demanded of our politicians, for every issue we face.  Both vigilance and knowledge are the price of liberty.

[For the quotes, see the Wikipedia article on John Dalberg-Acton.]