I believe in nature. I believe order is better than chaos. In the universe, order is information and chaos is entropy. Order is good; chaos is bad. There are forces that push toward order and forces that pull toward chaos.
I strongly believe that the vast majority of individuals are good. When you meet someone new, with few exceptions, you can find a good heart in them. Even in those exceptions, there is still some goodness.
But something strange happens when you put people together.
Humans are naturally social. We form groups for everything, work, learning, business, fun. At first, these groups are loose. Then they grow. And once they grow, they need structure. So they add rules. Roles. Hierarchies.
The structure that was supposed to help the group starts to become the point of the group. Instead of serving the original purpose, the organization begins to serve itself. The rules stop being tools and become ends.
You can often spot the moment this happens: it’s when the administrators take over. Not necessarily bad people. But their incentives shift. The goal becomes maintaining the system, not fulfilling its purpose.
So you get a paradox: individuals are mostly good, but organized groups tend to become corrupt over time.
I believe this is the tragic destiny of every organized group created by humans, without exception.
At first glance, this seems bleak. But there is hope.
Nature provides a mechanism to avoid corruption. It is everywhere, for anyone willing to see it. Every living organism is a group of cells working together toward a shared goal: survival. Regardless of individual circumstances, nature provides a path forward for the survival of the species.
The fittest individuals survive and reproduce. The less fit do not pass on their genes.
There’s a version of this in human systems too, but only in certain environments. The clearest example is competitive markets.
Rue Wellington in Montreal is one of the most competitive restaurant streets in the world. If you open a restaurant there, you must serve great food, provide excellent service, and charge reasonable prices. Otherwise, you will be forced to close quickly.
And it’s not just customers. Employees leave if they’re treated badly. Neighbors complain if you’re disruptive. Pressure comes from all sides.
Any restaurant that fails at these things will eventually go bankrupt. Competition acts like a natural force, ensuring a good experience for customers. Bad restaurants do not last there.
The result is that the system corrects itself. Not perfectly, but reliably enough.
You could call this a kind of natural selection for organizations.
The problem is that most human systems don’t have this property.
There are other areas where this “natural law” limits corruption, but they are rare.
One might think democracy is one of them. That is only partially true. Democracy is simply a mechanism that allows citizens to remove a government without bloodshed. Nothing more. It does not guarantee good governance, though the risk of losing power does help align leaders’ incentives with the public.
Government is only one part of a nation’s administration. Elections replace only that part. Many public organizations, client networks, rent-seekers, and unions persist across administrations and tend to grow over time.
Once these groups acquire certain “rights,” it becomes very difficult to take them away. Their power increases, leading to more regulatory capture.
Historically, the only things that reset it are extreme events, wars, revolutions. Those are crude and costly ways to do what markets do quietly.