Power does corrupt

Lord Acton has received empirical verification.  Power does corrupt, according to a very interesting article from The Economist.  (HT: Stephanie)

I wonder if people who call for government intervention in our lives will take anything away from these experiments.  Too often, people who want government intervention (in particular, liberals) claim that markets don’t always produce the best outcomes, at least according to their standard.  However, they fail to provide any convincing argument demonstrating that government would do a better job.  They tend to assume that individuals in government will look out for the good of others and of society and that they are able to produce good results, despite ample empirical evidence to the contrary.  They tend to put libertarians on the defensive, when really it should be the other way around.  Libertarians can do a better job of making it very clear to them that without a convincing argument outlining how government will produce better outcomes, accounting for the lessons to be gleaned from empirical evidence, they have no argument (although even then, such an argument may not be sufficient).

Anyway, now we have even more evidence undercutting the idea that those in power (e.g., politicians) have the public interest in mind.  Read it carefully and learn.