Why The Worst Rise To The Top In Politics

By Liberty Report Staff

George Washington said that "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force”.

Basic questions: What types of people do you think are attracted to such an institution? Those who believe in "live and let live"? Or those who have a lust to dominate others?

It's pretty self-evident.

The great economist F.A. Hayek once wrote an essay on why the worst rise to the top in government. You can read it here.

But for a more modern treatment of the subject, we can look to Jeff Thomas, who gives us the following thoughts:

In 1979, Saddam Hussein, having acceded to the presidency of Iraq, held a meeting of the Ba’ath party leadership. With hundreds of senior party delegates in the audience, he announced that some had been identified as being disloyal. One after the other, he pointed them out and, as each was named, was led off for execution. Those still in the room became more nervous with every removal, knowing that any one of them could be taken away. Did they condemn their leader? No, they began spontaneously standing up to praise the removals and to praise Saddam for the purge. At the end of the meeting, Saddam invited those who were most loyal to volunteer to become the executioners, thereby ensuring that they share the guilt of the purge.

In the ensuing years, stories were sometimes told of Saddam asking his top people who amongst them should become his successor. It became apparent that, if a name was put forward as someone who was favoured to be the next leader, he was certain to be executed. Thus he made it clear that there would be no pretenders to the throne.

Saddam Hussein’s approach to the avoidance of succession was not unprecedented by any means. In fact, the more dictatorial a leader becomes, the more paranoid he is likely to become that his lieutenants are seeking to replace him. Adolf Hitler was famous for provoking jealousy between his lieutenants so they wouldn’t get close enough to each other to plot jointly against him.

The more autocratic the leader, the more he will create ineptitude beneath him.

Those who are involved in the free market tend to assume that all leaders invariably seek to surround themselves with the most capable and inspired people. And, certainly, in business, this is often the case. In a free-market system, those who are productive tend to rise to the top. The support for them comes from the fact that all others involved in the company will profit by having the most capable individual in the president’s chair.

However, in politics, it’s far more common for those who are fundamentally flawed to rise to high office. Their achievement lies not in increased productivity and efficiency, but in hoodwinking the voters into believing that they can produce panaceas that will make everyone’s lives better. [...]

In politics, as we see in the first example above, rising to the point of significant power requires intelligence and capability, but the most valuable talents are often manipulation and deceit. [...]

This is not to say that manipulation and deceit cannot exist in the free market; they often do. But, in politics, they often serve as the cornerstone of the individual’s path to power. In the free market, productivity and efficiency are uppermost in creating success.

Read Jeff's entire piece here.