US President Donald Trump recently announced that professional work visas (H-1Bs) for the United States will now cost sponsoring institutions 100,000 dollars. This is not a fee; it is the price that any company or university that wants to hire a foreigner must pay.

Visas have become transactions, and so, too, has naturalisation. The White House is selling "Trump gold cards" that grant a quick path to permanent residency, and eventual citizenship, for one million dollars. Much else is now for sale. The ability to sell goods in the US is itself now for sale, subject to a price that varies by country and depends on Trump's judgment about how deserving or unworthy that country is.

Everywhere, government actions are becoming transactions with a price tag. Columbia University, where I work, had to pay 200 million dollars to reinstate already approved government research funding. Similarly, the Trump Administration denied big US law firms access to government buildings and clients unless they offered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of legal services for causes that Trump cares about.

Running a research university is no longer a question of competing for government funding on the merits, and operating law firms is no longer a matter of offering independent professional services. Instead, these activities are subject to presidential approval and one's ability to pay the price he demands.

Pricing everything is not unique to the Trump administration. It is the logical result of seeing the state as a business enterprise. In a February 1981 executive order, President Ronald Reagan required all major regulations to undergo an impact assessment. "Major" was defined as any regulation that would cost the economy 100 million dollars or more annually. Significantly "increase costs or prices for consumers, individual industries, Federal, state, or local government agencies, or geographic regions"; or might adversely affect "competition, employment, investment, productivity, innovation, or the ability of US-based enterprises to compete with foreign-based enterprises in domestic or export markets."

In other words, the government would no longer govern for the people, but for business. True, it is one thing to assess the cost of government regulation largely in monetary terms, and quite another matter to sell government services for a price. Still, the underlying logic is similar. In both cases, the state subordinates its own policies to the price mechanism, or, as Karl Polanyi famously put it, the entire society is subjected to the market principle.

What's the problem, though? Isn't business supposed to be more efficient than government?

One obvious problem is that paying for a government action is awfully close to corruption. Those who study the issue argue that in cases where government services are need- or merit-based, paying money to a government official amounts to a bribe. This problem can easily be avoided, however, if payment is sanctioned by law and goes into designated state coffers, not into bureaucrats' pockets. But this description is too simple.