Why Stop There?

I found the opening sentence of this editorial in the Washington Examiner thought-provoking:

The life cycle of labor unions is predictable, the late economist Sylvester Petro once wrote. Because they are born not out of mutual exchange, but out of state-backed coercion, American unions inevitably face eventual demise triggered by their own corruption.

from which point the editors proceed by chronicling the enormous amount of corruption infecting the United Auto Workers union. The editors may or may not be correct in their attribution of the source of the problem but the corruption is obvious.

But why stop there? So many of our institutions are hopelessly corrupt. Our government at all levels. Both political parties. Unions. Organized religion. Universities. Corporations. Not-for-profits. Newspapers. Hospitals and the practice of medicine. It might actually be easier to list the institutions that are free of corruption (“abuse of entrusted power for private gain”) that to try to catalog the corrupt ones. If I could think of any.

I think that all human institutions are prone to corruption and that the larger, more pervasive, more entrencyed, and more powerful they become the more inevitable and pervasive the rot. There is no remedy. It is an inherent condition. There isn’t even a mitigation other than constant vigilance and a willingness to prune back the dead and putrid sections to allow healthy new growth. That takes so much work and care it is no wonder it is done so rarely. Especially since the dead and putrid sections fight back with all of their not inconsiderable power.