Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Bribery. It’s wrong, isn’t it?

 

So why are election bribes okay?

2 comments:

  1. This post demonstrates what is wrong with the 'political Party system'. The application of the Binding Citizen's Initiatives as in the Swiss model is one way of providing a check on such bribery aimed at getting a party into power using 'other peoples money'.
    Does Libertarianz have better answers?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Richard McGrath19 Oct 2011, 23:16:00

    Don, the Libz approach is to tie up government so tightly with a written constitution that it becomes difficult to violate the rights of others - for instance, taxation would be unconstitutional, and any law that tried to levy new taxes would be struck down.

    Binding Initiatives are a good idea, but what if the result of such a referendum was a recommendation that all Pacific Islanders should be deported, or some other populist and discriminatory proposal?

    As far as bribery goes, ideally Libz would want it to be impossible for politicians to issue favours to their friends, which will remove all motivation to offer bribes. As mentioned earlier, the way to do this is by making NZ a constitutional republic.

    ReplyDelete

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