ARI’s Steve Simpson has recently given a number of great talks on the subject of Cronyism, Corruption and Government Power. In this talk, he covers  in more depth an issue that I brought up in one of my posts on money in government, namely that the problem of cronyism and money in politics is at root a problem of government involving itself in the economy. As Steve Simpson puts it, business is not corrupting government, government is corrupting business, or at least providing very perverse incentives to business.

You can find another version of this talk on C-SPAN, including nearly an hour of Q&A. (Fans of Philosophy in Action will have a pleasant surprise of seeing Dr. Diana Hsieh as the first person to ask a question during the Q&A period of the C-SPAN video, at about the 1:05 mark.)