The debate rages on about who holds the ultimate blame in corrupting our society. Is it the government or the big corporations that buy out the government? Where does the true blame rest?
When people talk about “power,” they often fail to distinguish between its forms. Economic power and political power are not the same thing—one is voluntary, the other is coercive. One persuades through value and choice, the other commands through force and decree.
Yet too many people, after seeing corruption and greed, point their fingers at business instead of the true culprit: government.
It is not money that creates tyranny, but the ability to use money to purchase political privilege. The problem isn’t that people with wealth want political influence—the problem is that influence is for sale in the first place.
Economic Power: The True Democracy
Every time you buy a shirt, a cup of coffee, a car, or a movie ticket, you are casting a vote. You’re voting for a company, an idea, a process, a service, a worker, and a way of doing things. If the product or service is good, that business thrives. If it’s bad, it collapses. There’s no need for a revolution or a law—people simply stop buying.
This is the essence of economic power: it’s distributed. It’s democratic in the purest sense, because every individual, rich or poor, gets a say every single day with every dollar they spend. It’s a system that rewards competence, innovation, and customer respect. When people say “vote with your wallet,” they’re describing real democracy in action.
Political democracy, by contrast, is hollow. You get one vote every few years, and even then, your choices are limited and of poor quality. Once the votes are tallied, you have no control over how that power is used. You can’t recall your “purchase.” You can’t refund your “vote.”
In politics, the minority must obey the majority—even when the majority is wrong. But in the market, the minority can still get what it wants. Vegans can buy vegan food. Conservatives can support conservative brands. Environmentalists can fund green tech. Everyone gets to live according to their values simultaneously.
The Marketplace: A Buffet of Freedom
A free economy is like an endless buffet of human creativity. Every dish on the table exists because someone somewhere decided to risk their time, money, and energy to serve others. Businesses rise and fall not through violence, but through voluntary exchange. No one is forced to shop at Walmart, eat at McDonald’s, or wear Nike. If you dislike them, alternatives abound—or you can create your own.
Contrast that with government, where you can’t opt out. You can’t simply “shop elsewhere” for laws, taxes, or regulations. The IRS doesn’t have competitors. The DMV doesn’t fear a rival with better service. Politicians don’t lose your “business” when they fail—they get re-elected by a different bloc, subsidized by others, or bailed out by lobbyists.
In the marketplace, bad ideas die naturally. In politics, bad ideas live forever, funded by debt and enforced by force. It's a helpless, irritating obstacle where the everyday person is guaranteed to lose.
Economic power is self-correcting; political power is self-perpetuating.
Economic Power Empowers Individuals
In a free market, every person is empowered. The entrepreneur can create. The worker can choose where to labor. The customer can decide where to spend. The supplier can negotiate. Each transaction requires consent. This voluntary nature is what makes economic power moral. It respects agency.
When someone becomes rich through commerce, they’ve done so (in a truly free system) by pleasing others. They’ve made something people value. They’ve improved lives, saved time, or provided joy. Wealth in this sense is not extracted; it’s earned. Economic success signals that someone served society well.
Meanwhile, government rewards the opposite—those who lobby best, not those who serve best. Bureaucrats rise by compliance, not competence. Politicians succeed by promising favors, not producing value. The entire mechanism depends on taking, redistributing, and commanding, not creating.
The Fatal Combination: When the Two Merge
Economic power by itself is harmless—it can only persuade. Political power by itself is dangerous—it can only compel. But when the two combine, that’s when a new brutal tyranny is born. Corporatism, cronyism, “regulatory capture”—these are the natural results of government power being up for sale.
People blame the corporations for buying influence. But who made it purchasable? Who built the auction house? The problem is not that the rich want to influence politics; everyone does; the problem is that politics has influence to sell in abundance.
When the state can grant favors, subsidies, bailouts, or monopolies, people will always line up to buy them. The moral fault lies in the existence of that coercive machinery, not in the instinct to protect one’s interests from it.
You can’t have bribery without something to bribe for. The solution isn’t to expand government to control the rich—it’s to shrink it so there’s nothing worth buying.
The Root of Corruption: Selling What Isn't for Sale
There’s a truth often overlooked in the debate about power: no company could ever buy political influence if no one were selling it.
If the government simply said, “No, you cannot buy this political favor. It is not for sale; we do not have it to sell anyway.” then the transaction would end before it began. The corrupt exchange doesn’t start with business; it starts with those who sell what they were never given moral authority to sell.
A business can only purchase a privilege that a politician is willing to grant.
And when those in power trade away laws, exemptions, and taxpayer money for influence, they aren’t just bending the rules; they are selling off the public’s freedom for profit.
Those who sell what does not belong to them — who regulate, subsidize, and legislate beyond the narrow purpose of protecting rights — are the ultimate enemies of a free society, not the businesses that seek it.
If government were truly restrained by libertarian principles — existing only to defend individual rights and private property — there would be nothing for businesses to buy. Economic power would return to the voluntary realm where it belongs, and political corruption would lose its oxygen.
In that kind of system, even the largest corporations would be harmless. They could grow as big as their customers allow, but never as big as their politicians permit. Their power would be bound by the consent of the people, not the favors of the state.
Government: The Final Arbiter of Doom
History is clear: every major atrocity—wars, genocides, censorships, economic collapses—comes not from entrepreneurs but from states. It’s not the bakery that sends men to die overseas, or the shoe company that censors speech. It’s governments that wage war, print money into oblivion, outlaw competition, and crush dissent.
We grant the government certain authority to protect individual rights and private property, but we do not authorize it to sell political favors.
The greater the government’s power, the more it attracts corruption. Power is the ultimate currency, and politics is the only market where coercion is legal tender.
So when people decry capitalism, what they’re really decrying is its distortion by government. True capitalism—the voluntary exchange of value for value—is the only system that empowers everyone equally and punishes exploitation naturally.
Economic power brings choice, innovation, and prosperity. Political power brings coercion, stagnation, and decay. One respects freedom; the other destroys it.
If the government didn’t have the power to grant favors, regulate competitors out of existence, hand out subsidies, or write special exemptions, there’d be nothing to purchase. The “demand” for political influence exists only because the supply of privilege exists.
If the government
The conclusion is simple: business isn’t the problem. Government is.
Resist government power, demand voluntary action in everything! 👇