Minnesota, Fraud, and Selfishness

The recent examples of fraud in Minnesota are one of the greatest examples of government ineptitude and waste in recent memory. Billions of taxpayer dollars were sent directly into the hands of criminals. The weakest in society were taken advantage of those with no regard for human dignity and right or wrong. The fraud was not a clever scheme, but rather a series of half-hearted attempts at theft that were enabled by an administrative state that seemed to distribute money with little care as to where it ended up. The people who should have recognized the depths of the problem were either incompetent, lazy, or focused on more polemic matters. They had no personal investment in how effectively the money was being used, and now they are paying for it in a massive national scandal. However, both the fraudsters and those who allowed the fraud share one key similarity: they are extremely selfish. The profit motive of the fraudsters let them siphon money away from an administrative state with selfishness that prompted them to laziness. 

The profit incentive pushes entrepreneurs to set up frameworks for their employees that reward effectiveness and push them away from using time poorly. While each employee is not driven by the profit of the company directly, someone in charge of them will ultimately benefit from higher efficiency, and thus companies naturally have no great tolerance for waste. While many companies also are driven by altruism, the alignment of selfishness with productivity serves as a safety net for even those who would not choose to benefit the world by their own choice. Companies who do allow waste and fraud will get out competed by others and soon be forced to leave the market. While profit is not the only driving force of a company, its necessity keeps businesses on track and does not allow the same sort of unbounded destructiveness we see in government. Even if we could count on people in government positions to be driven by altruism, differing opinions about the best and state, for the world would make significant action almost impossible.…