There are a many, many more axes for government performance than just equality of opportunity for people under it, though. Simply comparing the reaction of the government to the recent financial crisis to the past reactions makes it easy to see that something has been lost. In previous financial crises, significant regulations were brought to bear to patch the bugs. This time, despite some extremely significant structural problems that are easy to identify (complete regulatory capture of the ratings agencies and the SEC, for example), relatively little has been done.

I'd argue that government is more pervasively corrupt today because it pretends to be clean. We aggressively try to stamp out "transactional" corruption, but pretend that systemic corruption doesn't exist.

In 1960, a salesman would give a government buyer a bottle of whisky for Christmas. That's a serious crime these days. But today, we eliminated to a large extent the "upfront" influence and instead launder it through "lobbying" firms. A $30 bottle is a crime, $30,000,000 of advertising through a PAC is ok.

> Personally, my hunch is that we simply have quicker/more effective means of disseminating information about corruption now.

Corruption matters more now.

When govt is only 3% of GDP and has little regulatory power, corruption can't affect much.

Although I don't buy the whole article, I think this is an interesting viewpoint.

One could argue that the brand of libertarian politics often espoused in american hacker circles is pretty much the politics of this "meritocratic elite who can't admit they're an elite".

I worked hard to earn it, I deserve it, I resent the idea that society should impose on me any responsibility towards those who didn't/weren't lucky enough to. (A cognitive bias where one discounts the role of luck in one's own success is perhaps quite important to this viewpoint.)