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00:00Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people?
00:03Or a cacistocracy, rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?
00:10Cacistocracy is a word that means rule by the worst.
00:14It is derived from the Greek words cacistos meaning worst and kratos meaning ruler power.
00:19In this video we explore why this term defines most modern governments.
00:24Good men of calm judgment, looking at the course of events, have seriously feared that our government is rapidly becoming
00:31a cacistocracy, a rule of the worst.
00:35In a cacistocracy, the highest levels of government are populated by corrupt, dishonest, power-hungry, manipulative, and in some cases
00:43sociopathic individuals.
00:45Rather than using political power to serve the population, they use it to advance their own interests, enrich themselves in
00:52their cronies, and satisfy their desires for wealth, power, and control.
00:57The result is a ruling elite that prospers while the average citizen is impoverished and society deteriorates.
01:04Modern states possess an inherent tendency to degenerate into a cacistocracy.
01:09For the state, by its nature, divides society into two classes, the rulers and the ruled, and grants those who
01:16rule powers, privileges, and access to resources that are unavailable to ordinary citizens.
01:22Positions of political authority, therefore, attract not only those motivated by public service, but also those who want to use
01:29the apparatus of the state to gain wealth and power and to control other people.
01:34Those who enter politics driven by the latter motives tend to be more cunning, manipulative, and ruthless than those motivated
01:41by a desire to serve the public.
01:43These qualities give them an advantage in the struggle for political power, and as a result, they come to make
01:49up a disproportionate share of the ruling class.
01:52The economist Frederick Hayek examined this tendency in a chapter of The Road to Serfdom titled, Why the Worst Get
01:59on Top?
02:00The readiness to do bad things becomes a path to promotion in power, he observed.
02:05The unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful.
02:08Even a democratic government founded upon a constitution designed to limit political power is prone, over time, to degenerating into
02:18a den of thieves, where voting amounts to little more than replacing one class of political predators with another.
02:24In his book, Reform the Kakistocracy, William Kovacs wrote,
02:28Our founders formed a representative republic. We have formed a kakistocracy.
02:33To make matters worse, as political predators rise to positions of power, they shape the institutions of government in ways
02:41that make it easier for them to commit their crimes.
02:44They enact laws, regulations, and reforms that protect their privileges, while appointing unscrupulous individuals to positions of authority within law
02:53enforcement, the military, judiciary, and other powerful government institutions.
02:57As the state becomes increasingly corrupt, principled individuals become less willing to enter public service, and the struggle for political
03:06power becomes a competition among the most ruthless, unethical, and power-hungry individuals.
03:12Or as the French historian Charles Forbes René de Montalembert wrote in 1855,
03:32In a kakistocracy, the politicians, legislators, presidents, prime ministers, judges, and bureaucrats who hold power are called kakistocrats.
03:42Kakistocrats spend most of their time in power participating in jobbery, which is the exploitation of public office for private
03:49gain.
03:50In a kakistocracy, politicians receive relatively modest official salaries, yet through immoral, corrupt, and criminal dealings behind the scenes, they
03:59become extraordinarily wealthy.
04:01And as Kovacs observes, forms of jobbery are in the news every day, and all read the same.
04:07Common man is elected or appointed to a position of power and uses position for personal benefit.
04:13The list reads like a crime blotter, except there is little prosecution, or in many instances, the conduct is actually
04:20approved by an ethics panel established by the kakistocrats.
04:24To help them engage in jobbery, the kakistocrats form alliances with powerful and wealthy individuals and institutions in the private
04:32sector.
04:33Kovacs calls these actors collaboratakers, a term combining collaborator and taker, and as he explains,
04:41Collabortakers are a group of people working together to take something.
04:44In a kakistocracy, the group collaborates with the kakistocrats to create a legal system that allows them to take as
04:51much of the wealth of the nation as they can take without inciting a revolt.
04:56Lobbying is one of the primary tools of the collaboratakers.
04:59Large corporations, pharmaceutical companies, defense contractors, tech companies, and special interest groups spend billions of dollars each year buying access
05:09to the kakistocrats who write laws and regulations, direct public spending, and determine economic and social policy.
05:16Through campaign contributions, political favors, gifts, and the promise of lucrative employment after leaving office,
05:22Lobbyists use state power to the advantage and enrichment of the wealthy interests they represent.
05:29Lobbyists are those citizens whose job it is to persuade Congress, the president, or the bureaucrats to do something for
05:35them, writes Kovacs.
05:37The best interests of the nation are not relevant to the lobbyist.
05:40The lobbyist is hired to get results, and the more the lobbyist can secure for his or her master in
05:46terms of money or advantage over others, the more successful the lobbyist is.
05:51Lobbyists influence some of the most important decisions a government makes.
05:55In the defense sector, they play a role in determining military budgets, weapons contracts, foreign policy, and the decisions that
06:02move a country toward war.
06:03In healthcare, lobbyists influence drug pricing rules, patent protections, and the regulatory standards that determine which drugs reach the market
06:11and which are banned.
06:12While big corporations use lobbying to shape regulations in ways that restrict competition, secure favorable treatment, and tilt the economic
06:21playing field in their favor.
06:22Or as Kovacs writes,
06:43Banks and financial institutions are among the most active collaboratakers.
06:49The great writer J.R.R. Tolkien recognized the close relationship between banks and governments nearly a century ago,
06:56and he pointed out that some bankers wield so much political influence that the politicians are little more than their
07:02puppets.
07:02Or as he wrote in a letter,
07:04The main mark of modern governments is that we do not know who governs.
07:09We see the politician, and not his backer, still less the backer of the backer, or, what is most important
07:15of all, the banker of the backer.
07:18One of the most powerful tools of a cacistocracy is the central bank.
07:22Through its ability to expand the money supply, the central bank can finance government spending and debt on a scale
07:29that would otherwise be impossible to sustain through taxation and borrowing alone.
07:34In a cacistocracy, this monetary power is a tool through which the ruling class gains access to vast sums of
07:41money without having to raise taxes directly on the population.
07:44Some of this newly created money is poured into bloated and inefficient government programs, allowing the cacistocrats to present their
07:52spending as serving the public good.
07:54Some is used to finance foreign wars that benefit political and corporate interests while costing lives and damaging the economy.
08:01And some is used to engage in jobbery and is funneled into contracts, subsidies, and programs that enrich the cacistocrats
08:08and reward their collaboratakers.
08:10While the cacistocrats and collaboratakers benefit from access to newly created money, the ultimate cost is borne by the citizenry.
08:18For an increase in the money supply, all other things being equal, leads to a rise in prices and a
08:24decline in the purchasing power of money.
08:26Ordinary citizens find that their wages and savings buy less than before, while the cacistocrats and collaboratakers who gain access
08:34to the newly created money first benefit from being able to spend it before prices rise.
08:39In other words, monetary expansion functions as a hidden tax that enriches the cacistocracy while transferring purchasing power away from
08:48the citizenry.
08:49Or as the economist Murray Rothbard explained,
08:53Monetary inflation, then, acts as a hidden tax by which the early receivers expropriate, i.e. gain at the expense
09:00of, the late receivers.
09:02Increasing the money supply, therefore, is inflationary, redistributive, distorts the economic system, and amounts to a stealthy and insidious robbery.
09:12It is not only the financial system that is corrupted and co-opted by the cacistocrats, but also the judiciary.
09:18In Western democracies, the judiciary was established to serve as an independent check on political power and to protect citizens
09:26from abuse by those who govern.
09:27In a cacistocracy, however, the judiciary is absorbed into the corrupt system of power it was meant to restrain.
09:34And as Kovacs writes,
09:36While an independent judiciary is essential to a constitutional government of limited powers, the judiciary has become just another political
09:44branch of government.
09:46Individuals are appointed or denied appointment to a court based on political belief, political affiliation, and the support of cacistocrats.
09:53Under the present legal structure, these cacistocrats have laws that protect them from the people.
10:00With the judiciary no longer serving as an effective check on their power, the cacistocrats are free to enact laws,
10:07regulations, and policies that protect their privileges and advance their selfish interests.
10:12The result is the perpetuation of a corrupt ruling class.
10:16And as Ayn Rand warned in her novel, Atlas Shrugged,
10:20When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing,
10:25when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors,
10:30when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work,
10:34and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you,
10:39when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice,
10:43you may know that your society is doomed.
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