We were discussing whether to order certain diagnostic tests. In the past, he said, he would have spent more time weighing whether the tests were cost-effective. But now, after watching money and favors flow through Washington, he cares less.
There is money for almost everything powerful people want, he said. So why hesitate to give patients what they need?
I do not want doctors to stop caring about costs. No health care system can work that way. But his frustration points to something larger: What happens when people believe that restraint is expected of them but not of those with power?
Corruption does more than waste money or enrich insiders. It teaches.
The Brennan Center for Justice recently summarized research showing that even the perception of corruption can reduce political participation, erode trust in government and neighbors, and increase citizens’ willingness to engage in corrupt behavior. That last finding deserves more attention.
A functioning society depends on millions of acts of voluntary restraint. We pay taxes we would rather keep. We follow rules when no one is watching. Professionals consider the costs borne by others. Public employees safeguard resources that are not theirs. Citizens accept election results they dislike.
Why?
Partly because we believe everyone is supposed to play by roughly the same rules.
Citizenship involves reciprocity. I accept limits on myself because I believe others are also expected to do so. I conserve a shared resource because I expect it to be treated as such. I follow rules I might prefer to evade because I believe the system has a legitimate claim on my cooperation.
When that belief weakens, civic responsibility can start to feel less like a virtue and more like being taken for a sucker. That danger is especially acute when questions about private gain and public power surround the presidency.
A Reuters investigation estimated that the Trump family made $2.3 billion from four cryptocurrency ventures between mid-2024 and April 2026, while outside investors lost roughly the same amount, including paper losses. Reuters reported that the family put little or no money at risk in several of the ventures. The White House has denied that the businesses create conflicts of interest and has said President Trump is not involved in managing them.
And remember when the Pentagon also accepted a luxury Boeing 747 from Qatar for presidential use? The Defense Department said the aircraft was accepted “in accordance with all federal rules and regulations”. Trump defended the arrangement as a way to save taxpayers’ money. Critics, including some members of Congress, raised constitutional and ethical concerns about accepting such a valuable gift from a foreign government.
The point is not that every controversial transaction is illegal, or even that every allegation of corruption is justified. Criminal law sets one standard. Civic trust operates by another.
Citizens notice who appears to benefit from public power, who receives special treatment, who is expected to sacrifice, and who seems exempt from the sacrifices others are asked to make. Over time, those perceptions can shape behavior.
This is not an inherently partisan problem. The mechanism would be corrosive under any president or political party. A 2026 Brennan Center survey found that 92 percent of registered voters, including 90 percent of Republicans, 93 percent of Democrats, and 93 percent of independents, view corruption as a major problem in politics and government. That breadth should tell us something.
Democracy depends on more than statutes that prohibit bribery or self-dealing. It also depends on a civic culture in which restraint is the norm, public service carries obligations, and political power is understood to be held in trust. This is why example matters.
When leaders disclose conflicts, respect limits, accept scrutiny, and treat public resources as belonging to the public, they reinforce those norms. When citizens instead perceive a system in which powerful people operate by different rules, they may begin recalculating their own behavior. That recalculation does not necessarily begin with anything dramatic.
A business owner becomes a little more aggressive in claiming a tax deduction. A public employee becomes less careful with expenses. A professional becomes less concerned about imposing costs on a system he believes wastes far more elsewhere. A citizen concludes that following every rule is admirable mainly for those who lack the power to escape them. My physician friend was doing exactly that.
He was not proposing fraud. He was not abandoning his patients or his professional obligations. He was simply becoming less willing to economize on a system he increasingly believed did not practice comparable restraint.
That is how civic erosion can happen, not only through dramatic violations of the law but also through millions of quieter calculations. At some point, “What do I owe?” begins to turn into “Why should I?”
That shift matters because democratic government relies more on voluntary cooperation than we usually acknowledge. No government can audit every tax return, monitor every expense, police every professional judgment, or compel every act of civic responsibility. The system works in part because most people accept limits without coercion.
Once enough people conclude that restraint is for the powerless, rules become harder to enforce and trust harder to restore. This is why corruption, whether real or perceived, is not simply an ethics problem. It is a behavioral one.
Leaders do not merely make policy. They set expectations about what conduct is normal, acceptable, and rewarded.
My friend’s frustration was understandable. It was also a warning.
When responsible people start to question why they should continue exercising restraint, the damage has already spread beyond Washington.
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