Welcome to Chicago.This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide. — The Untouchables

Corruption is a fact of life, no matter where you live.  In a large portion of humanity, getting business done requires the exchange of bribes and favors.  I’ve been in places and among people where corruption meant shorting some to help friends.  Those who can’t pay or have no favors to return in exchange for what is rightly theirs are frozen out and suffer.

What makes this possible is when someone in the government has the power to stop you from doing business if you don’t play the game.  When we increase the power of the government, we increase the likelihood that that power will be abused.  The larger, more intrusive the government gets, the dirtier it gets.  That can mean that the beat cop can force citizens to pay bribes for ‘protection’.  It can also mean that the power of the government can be used to harm and intimidate whole swaths of the citizenry.

I’m not saying that a smaller, less intrusive government would be cleaner than what we have now, because people will always be as venal as they have always been.  Petty bureaucrats will always find a way to manipulate the system to their own advantage.  But when they have a smaller reach, their corruption will only be able to spread so far before their influence runs out.