Pay politicians like movie stars!

If there's one thing everyone agrees is very bad, it's cronyism.

And it really is very, very bad. Think of all the industries that are susceptible to political influence-peddling: defense, energy, health care, education, real estate, automotive, banking — the list goes on.

Some of the root causes are intractable. One, for instance, is the public choice problem of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, roughly meaning that small groups of very concerned citizens can outmaneuver large groups of sort of concerned citizens. Another is simply misguided public policy (one person's cronyism is another person's public-private partnership!). Good old-fashioned lobbying is probably not going away either, no matter who tries to end it.

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But much of it, as you already know, comes through because of the nasty business of the revolving-door. No one doubts that cronyism has gotten worse as of late, even as the revolving-door phenomenon has gotten worse. (And as the size and reach of government has increased, but that is a discussion for another day.)

If people who work in key roles in government — whether elected or unelected officials — know that if they work in the interest of a particular sector, they can make several times what they currently make after they leave their jobs, it's inevitably going to sway them. Don't get me wrong, a lot of times, the phenomenon is unconscious — we human beings are extremely good at convincing ourselves that our best interests and the moral thing to do just happen to coincide. Most of our public servants really are public-spirited; it's just that they're also human. We are complex creatures. But this only highlights how pernicious the system is, and therefore how much it cries out for real change.

It seems that the obvious remedy for the revolving-door problem is simply to pay top officials outrageously high salaries. Like, movie star salaries. That way, there's no reason for them to look for a "second act" in the private sector.

If a senator made $20 million a year, would former Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) be heading up the Motion Picture Association of America? Would former Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) be "utilizing" his contacts in defense and intelligence on behalf of a law firm in Atlanta? Would the Clintons have spent so much energy earning $100 million through "speaking fees" and other shenanigans?

For the record, the city-state of Singapore is known both for paying its politicians extraordinarily high salaries, and also for the extraordinarily high quality of its governance.

The reason why politicians pay a relatively small cost for the revolving-door and influence-peddling schemes is because, underneath our surface outrage, we know that if we were in their shoes we would do the same. I mean, think about it: After decades working tirelessly (you may not like their output, but people at the top of public service do work tirelessly) for pay that is orders of magnitude lower than what people with similar smarts and intensity make in other areas of work, if you were offered many millions of dollars for doing something in a gray area, wouldn't you? A "now you have no excuse" effect would deter that sort of stuff much more effectively.

Would this get rid of all influence-peddling? Of course not. Human beings are human beings. But it's hard to see how a policy like this wouldn't have a highly positive cost-benefit ratio. It would entail a few billions in additional spending a year, but think about the trillions in value that are badly invested, misdirected, or simply lost because of cronyism.

Something to think about.