Bribes, II.

One way to make bribes easier to find is to look for them at the end of careers. No public office-holder, for instance, should be wealthier when he leaves office than when he entered it. Such wealth is easy to discover. If found, such wealth should be confiscated and the former public official executed. That is the only way for bribery to be significantly reduced.

All office-holders say they are against bribery. One wonders why so few of them would vote to have confiscation and execution apply to bribe-takers.

The very best office-holders are those who leave public office with little more than they had when they entered it. If those people were to be awarded large sums of money on leaving public office, money obtained from confiscating the wealth of bribe-takers, we would have more good office holders and fewer bad ones.

As it is, we should all despise those who use public office for enrichment. Such people are the worst kind of liars and thieves. They make things worse for all of us while doing little but damning their own souls in the process.

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