buying luxury items for oneself
Is this fact relevant to your political views or is it just a random example you came up with?
bribing public officials to overlook illegal behavior
It's hard to tell how much of a problem this would be. I guess there are different kinds of scenarios one could dream up. Suppose there is a dearth of evidence such that no reasonable legal system would convict the accused rich person. Then they would have little or no reason to bribe public officials. On the other hand, suppose the accused rich person has every reason in the world to bribe public officials, then it stands to reason that the evidence against them would likely have them convicted in a reasonable court of law. But then if the evidence weighs so heavily against such a person, it's hard to see why anyone of any repute would want to do business with such a person again, given that all of this information would likely become known by the general public. Such a person's livelihood and reputation would be toast. Who knows? Maybe they'd see that as a reasonable trade-off. I'm not sure. But what exactly do you propose? Do you propose taking their money away from them beforehand so as to diminish economic inequality? It seems to me that what it would take to reduce inequality enough so that these negative things are unlikely or nonexistent would be enough to have pretty bad consequences for the economy.
or donating to politicians in order to win support for legislation that unfairly benefits a company one owns.
Under what sort of regime would this be more likely? One in which the state is involved in the economy or one in which it isn't? I advocate for the total separation of business and state. How do we ensure that? Your guess is as good as mine.
I realise that there have been magnanimous business moguls throughout history who give much of their money back to the community, but they appear to be the exception rather than the rule.
Rich people don't even have to be magnanimous or have altruistic intentions in order to "give back to the community." Economic growth depends at least in part on capital accumulation and this requires savings. This is where those evil rich people come in, the ones with all those nasty profits. This, along with scientific innovation, has done far more to raise the standard of living than any redistribution scheme could ever do. In fact, it's sometimes argued that welfare programs reduce productivity. Some would argue that they only lessen productivity to a very small degree. But the bigger picture tells a different story. If between 1870 and 1990 the annual growth rate of America's gross domestic product had been 1 percentage point lower , America's per capita GDP would be less than one-third its present level. That would put it on a par with Mexico, and Mexico is a veritable shithole; believe me, I've been there many times. And in the US we don't even have that big of a welfare state, relatively speaking!
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "regulatory capture and rent-seeking" (I'm not familiar with these terms), but if by that you basically mean the act of manipulating legislators and laws for personal profit and/or an unfair competitive advantage, you're going to have to do some explaining to convince me that a more regulated government, as a rule, tends to favor such a thing.
Regulatory capture is when purportedly well-intentioned regulations end up benefiting special interests at the expense of others because those special interests invest enough cash flow, time, and energy into getting potential regulations of their particular industry to be crafted for their benefit. Rent seeking usually involves a business gaming the system to extract rent without doing anything productive. That is, they make use of government force to benefit their bottom line at the expense of others by way of regulations, subsidies, etc. The history of regulation in the states is littered with capture and rent seeking. I don't know about other countries. I'd give you a list of examples but I'm too lazy to look through my literature and this post is already on the verge of being tl;dr. Maybe in a subsequent post.
Do you mean to say that certain types of regulation (i.e. graduated income tax, inheritance tax, or anti-trust laws) will result in more corruption, that each act of corruption will tend to be more more damaging, or both of the above? I think we agree that the economy has to be competitive in order to be beneficial to the greatest number of people, but how can it be competitive if there's nothing stopping a handful of people from hoarding away the majority of the country's wealth?
I don't know enough about the details of taxation to say much, but I do have an opinion on antitrust legislation; I think it's a disaster.
I'd like to know why you think a handful of people are HOARDING away the majority of the country's wealth. It's not like they're putting their money under their mattresses. So what in the world do you mean? And what is the connection between this and competitiveness?
When the vast majority of wealth in a society is controlled by a tiny minority of people whose aim is to keep themselves in control, the economy becomes less competitive, which results in higher costs of living and fewer career opportunities for the average person, therefore less economic freedom.
In the absence of government force on their behalf the only way these people are likely to be so rich is if they sell people something they like/want/need at a lower price than their competitors. How would
that result in a higher cost of living? I'm confused by your argument here.
