The City Leviathan: How Corruption Killed Capitalism
If you want to see what’s really killing American cities, don’t look to capitalism.
Look at corruption.
Look to Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York — the modern capitals of powerful regional machine politics, where the ruling class has perfected the art of turning public office into private income.
In Chicago, Alderman Ed Burke — once the city’s most powerful politician — was finally convicted on 13 counts of racketeering, bribery, and extortion after half a century of shaking down developers and taxpayers alike.
In Los Angeles, City Council members José Huizar and Mark Ridley-Thomas were sentenced for selling influence and public contracts to the highest bidder.
And in New York, former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos both fell in the last decade for corruption schemes so routine they might as well have been line items in the budget.
These aren’t isolated scandals.
They’re the system working exactly as designed.
Machine politics has ruled America’s great cities for more than a century. What started as old-school patronage — handing out jobs and favors for votes — has evolved into a billion-dollar ecosystem of lobbyists, unions, nonprofits, and corporate cronies, all feeding from the same trough.
And every time the system collapses under the weight of its own corruption, the same politicians emerge from the wreckage and say, “See? Capitalism failed. We need more government.”
That’s theDemocrats and Leviathan’s favorite trick.
The Real Enemy Isn’t Capitalism. It’s Corruption.
When a city decays — when the potholes multiply, the rent explodes, the trains stop running, and the crime soars — people assume capitalism did it. “The rich got richer,” they say. “The poor got poorer. The system’s rigged.”
They’re right about one thing: the system is rigged. But not by capitalism.
It’s rigged by the political machines that took control of the markets and turned them into feeding troughs.
It’s rigged by city governments that treat every permit, every contract, every zoning decision as a chance for graft.
It’s rigged by public unions that fund the very politicians who negotiate their contracts.
It’s rigged by the “progressive” nonprofits that act as laundering operations for ideology and influence.
The actual residents and people who the government is supposed to serve are an after thought. This isn’t free enterprise—it’s a cartel with campaign slogans.
Machine Politics: The Fuel of the Leviathan
The Leviathan doesn’t live on taxes alone, though its voracious appetite always demands more and more of our hard earned money to launder it into their systems. It feeds on dependency.
And machine politics — the iron triangle of politicians, bureaucrats, and their cronies—creates exactly that.
Every failed policy becomes a new excuse for another program.
Every broken system becomes a new funding stream.
Every crisis — homelessness, housing, transit, crime — becomes a permanent industry.
They call it “public service.”
It’s really public parasitism. If we’re being honest, the system has created a parasitical class.
Chicago’s generations of patronage and union payoffs turned a once-thriving manufacturing hub into a hollowed-out bureaucracy with sky-high taxes and failing schools.
Los Angeles pours billions into “ending homelessness” while the tent cities multiply.
New York’s developers grease palms to build $3,000-a-month shoebox apartments under “affordable housing” mandates that guarantee nothing but red tape.
This isn’t capitalism failing — it’s corruption succeeding.
The False Salvation of Democratic Socialism
After decades of this decay, people lose faith. They look around and see inequality, crumbling infrastructure, and despair, and they conclude: “Capitalism doesn’t work.”
Enter the prophets of democratic socialism.
They promise fairness, equality, and moral clarity. They say the market must be replaced with the benevolent hand of government.
But here’s the truth: they’re not replacing the machine — they’re expanding it.
Every new “right” they invent — housing, healthcare, income — becomes another bureaucratic empire. Another justification for control. Another tributary feeding the Leviathan’s endless hunger.
Democratic socialism doesn’t dismantle corruption.
It entrenches it and nationalizes it.
The Real Solution: Freedom from the Machine
The cure for the disease of machine politics isn’t more government. It’s less.
Free markets — not rigged ones — create opportunity.
Competition — not favoritism — drives progress.
Local accountability — not distant bureaucracy — restores trust.
If we want jobs, affordable housing, and functioning infrastructure, we don’t need more programs. We need to pry the fingers of the political class off the throat of the market.
The answer isn’t to replace capitalism with socialism.It’s to reclaim capitalism from the corrupt.
The Leviathan thrives when citizens forget the difference between a market and a racket. When they mistake the corruption of power for the failure of freedom. When they trade liberty for promises from the same people who caused the decay.
America’s great cities don’t need more saviors in city hall. They need citizens willing to starve the machine — choosing competition over control, work over welfare, creation over dependency.
That’s how you kill the City Leviathan.
Not with bigger government, but with a free people unafraid to govern themselves.