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A Universal Ethic for All Mankind: A Detailed Review and Synopsis of The Ethics of Liberty
by Murray N. Rothbard
Chapter 17: Bribery
Compiled and Edited
by
Dr. Jimmy T. (Gunny) LaBaume
The general belief is that bribery should be illegal but that is not necessarily the case. Take, for example, a typical bribe contract. Black, in an effort to sell materials to the XYZ Company, pays a bribe to its purchasing agent, Green. All Black has done is lowered the price of the materials to XYZ as he would have been just as happy to have charged the lower price directly. The inner workings of XYZ are not Black's responsibility.
The illicit action here is on the part of the bribe taker Green. His employment contract requires that he make purchases in the best interests of his company. He violated that contract either because he bought from someone he would not have otherwise dealt, or he paid a price that was higher than necessary to the extent of his rebate.
In other words, the briber does nothing illegitimate, but the person receiving the bribe does.
This is akin to the problem of payola where a record company bribes a disc jockey to play a certain record. In a moral sense, the public is being betrayed but the public does not have a property right in the radio program since they receive it without cost. In the same manner, other record companies were injured because their products were not played as frequently. But, as with the public, they have no property right in the program or the radio station. On the other hand, the employer's property rights were aggressed against by the disc jockey's violation of his employment contract. So, if the record company had bribed the employer (station owner or sponsor) directly, then no one's property right would have been violated.
Continue to the next chapter...
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