Mo' Money Mo' Problems

One of the reason's I am for a small government is that I believe large governments are more prone to corruption, for the simple reason that there is more money in large government, thus more incentive for unscrupulous individuals to develop creative ways to get at that money.

Case in point: the California public pension fund. This pension fund is huge, holding the retirement savings of 1.6 million employees of the state of California. Instead of just stuffing the fund under the mattress, California, like most groups with a pension fund, decided to invest it.

Now this is where it gets interesting. The California pension fund is enormous, worth approximately $180 billion dollars. Thus any fund manager who gets the California pension account will be instantly rich beyond his dreams. So it should come as no surprise that prospective fund managers regularly wined, dined, and bribed California officials to try to get the pension account.

Big piles of government money attract lobbyists and corruption like a big pile of shit attracts flies. It is a law of nature. Yet we act surprised when we find out about the corruption.

[Reason via Instapundit]