I agree that the problem is concentration of power, and I’ll add that having long-term employment positions available in that power center (the Career Politician) makes corruption inevitable. The size of the government doesn’t matter, although it should be sized to be as efficient as possible for the population it serves.
Although more transparency can only help, the people involved will still find a way to hide their corruption, so it isn’t a complete solution. What is needed is to change the very structure of all government (city, state, and federal) so that there are no corruption beneficiaries. Much larger groups should make the decisions, not individuals or small groups, but also not the uneducated public, unless voting is by 2/3 majority (the bullet train bond measure passing is a perfect example of public ignorance resulting in bad decisions). I have no idea how this would be accomplished, but it’s obvious to me that it’s necessary. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that anyone (liberal or conservative) who thinks concentration of power is a good thing has, by definition, a god complex – i.e., their party should be the ones defining behavior and morality.
The ideal government would be self-correcting and free of individual human weakness. Maybe all citizens would be required to serve in the government for a few years, like jury duty but only once. Their position would be determined by aptitude and education. If politicians existed at all, their job would be to propose measures and help the mandatory service employees understand the issues they’re voting on. They would have zero real power. The job of regular government employees would be to perform the work of running a society and military, while very large groups of appropriately educated service employees would make decisions regarding corporate regulation, taxes, foreign policy, and defense. The “common” would be back in common sense – imagine 10,000 randomly chosen academics with graduate work in political science, history, and international relations voting on whether to go to war, instead of one man making that decision, or (chuckle) a congress full of lawyers and the wealthy, the majority of them (on both sides) bought and paid for. Iraq would never have happened. Government pay and benefits would be in line with the private sector. The bullet train proposal would have been instantly squashed (amid much incredulous laughter that it was proposed in the first place). My tax dollars wouldn’t be spent studying the mating habits of squirrels because some congressman’s donor’s daughter is a zoologist.
Of course this is a change which won’t occur without a real revolution taking place (probably after economic collapse), because it would require politicians to work to eliminate their own jobs.
