Originally published May 2023
How the costs of owning a politician, justice, or public servant are skyrocketing and causing worry among the nation’s elite
Inflation is a bitch. I think it might have been Adams who said that, or maybe it was Madison. I get them confused. One of the ones worried about giving too much power to the little people. It’s a crisis foretold from the very beginning, unfolding in real time before our very eyes. One day, you’re a well-respected oligarch, with so many judges and politicians in your pocket that your friends call you Corleone, and the next, you’re being outbid by oil-rich foreign governments, multinational organized crime syndicates, and adolescent tech bros. What’s a humble plutocrat to do?
It used to be a darkly held secret that, because public servants were so poorly paid, you didn’t really need to spend a lot of money to influence them. A free flight on your private jet here, an exotic vacation there, maybe a few semesters’ tuition in a private school for their sister’s grandson. It was a pittance. A trifle. Give them a few leftover crumbs from your most recent acquisition or merger, and they’d follow you to the bowels of hell.
Ever since this imbroglio with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has come to light, anyone with a few million dollars to throw around has realized that they, too, could own a Supreme Court justice. Of course, there’s a limited supply, so exclusivity has become a thing of the past. No longer can you expect to be the only one with a financial arrangement with a member of the Federalist Society. You have to share.
Forgive my coarseness. It’s such a dirty word.
But when times are tough, you do what you have to do. Most of the oligarchs have reportedly resigned themselves to lesser desires, and have lined up to purchase lower federal judges like those on one of the Circuit Courts, or Court of Appeals. Many of our most tenured Senators are already spoken for, but plenty of hungry Representatives in the House can be had for a middling quid pro quo, and word has it that state Supreme Court justices can be had for a song.
The point is, there has been a run on public servants, and the cost of influence in government is rising exponentially. What once could have gotten you a reasonably well-behaved congressman from a decent industrialized state will now barely land you a state Senator or assembly caucus in New Jersey. Even city council members with pending criminal indictments are getting uppity when it comes to buying their votes.
It’s always been hard to predict markets long-term. Some are calling it a bubble. With so many aspects of society changing, it can be challenging to discern the difference between a paradigm shift in power and a momentary shortfall in supply. One thing is almost always true: prices go up and rarely come down when it comes to buying influence. Once they get a taste of the good life, serving the public just isn’t enough anymore. Who can blame them?
Both Crain’s and Bloomberg are bullish on the value of elected officials long-term. Analysts argue that the explosive growth of billionaires worldwide and the artificially constrained number of elected officials, despite enormous population growth, have produced a rather raucous environment where demand has far outstripped supply. They see no end in sight and no reason to believe the upward trend will end anytime soon.
It goes without saying that the primary mitigating factor is the lack of any ethical accountability in government, combined with widespread public apathy. The people don’t care, and the bureaucrats no longer have any shame. It’s a free market economy, and everyone is for sale. As long as that doesn’t change, we see no reason to worry.
The good news is that even at these elevated prices, buying influence in government has never been more cost-effective. Where you once had to go through the elaborate ruse of lobbying officials through formal channels, you can now just directly pay the officials yourself, removing the middleman and giving yourself direct access to power.
It’s probably inaccurate to call it influence since they let you write the laws yourself now. You no longer have to ask for favors. You can introduce legislation. It’s much simpler, more direct, and much more effective and efficient. It’s what the founding fathers would have wanted.
As far as we can tell, the only danger on the horizon is that now that this arrangement has become more open, if there is no blowback from the public, we risk a bidding war that could escalate beyond the merely wealthy and leave only the genuinely filthy rich with any hope of scoring a top-notch official. It’s admittedly unfair, but that’s what inequality is all about.
The other anomaly we are keeping our eye on is the rash of rogue politicians who seem intent on biting the hand that feeds them. The ones who have gotten so caught up in the kabuki theater of culture war nonsense that they’ve lost the plot line. Some of these characters have forgotten what real power looks like and have begun to delusionally believe they hold the reins. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis comes to mind.
We are confident that the market will eventually crush him like a bug, most likely in the form of a giant mouse, but in the meantime, he’s spooking the investors. We have a plan if it becomes a problem, but for now, we feel it’s best to see if things can’t work themselves out on their own. They usually do.