Search the Community

As you have probably heard, bribes are prevalent in Mexican government. In a truly free Mexico, the government would take care of courts, police, defence, and nothing else. When talking to my friends on how a free society would look like in Mexico, they frequently ask me back what would be the incentive of judges to reject bribes. OK, we have here Juan and Pedro on court. Pedro has violated Juan's rights. But Juan is poor and Pedro is rich. Pedro tries to bribe the judge and his staff. What would be the incentive of the judge to reject Pedro's bribe, if the judge is receiving a fixed salary from the State? In all free enterprises, self-interest is the main drive to avoid corruption and bribes. If you really care about the well being of your own business, and your employee is making a decision that hurts your business even when gets him better off in the short term, you just fire that employee... or put him in prison, depending on the fault. But what would be the interest of the State to keep only honest judges, if there are no competitor governments to which citizens may switch? What would be the interest if the State cannot go broke? What would be the interest if the Chief of State is not accumulating capital from his good performance as governor? With these questions in mind, anarchists seem to have a point here: if government were private companies, they would have the normal incentive all companies have to keep honest employees and get rid of the dishonest. What do you think?