OUR GOVERNMENT in South Carolina has evolved a great deal from the days when its only priority was the protection of the landed gentry. For all its shortcomings, there’s no better example of this than its fitful, but growing, commitment to public education.

But some habits are hard to break, and a major bad habit that permeates the way we do business in South Carolina is the penchant to protect those of status, sometimes at the expense of ordinary citizens who have been harmed by their actions. File a complaint alleging that an elected official has abused his office, and you can be put in jail if you tell anyone about it. The same is true for complaints about judges who might be unfair or lawyers who might have cheated someone or doctors or veterinarians or a host of other professionals.

The idea behind these gag rules in state law is to protect people from unfounded accusations that could do permanent damage to their reputations, and thus to their livelihoods. But the downside is that when the accusations are justified, the gag rules allow the public officials and professionals to continue to harm other individuals while a secret panel — usually of their professional peers — drags out its review for months or years, often ending in private reprimands that do nothing to protect or even warn the public in whose interest the panels are supposed to be operating.

And now we learn that this penchant for secrecy isn’t limited to professional disciplinary procedures. Our state law also prevents regulators from warning the public when they’re about to lose their shirts. As explained in The State recently, officials in the state attorney general’s office knew in 1999 that Carolina Investors and its parent company were in precarious financial condition, and wrote the company asking what it planned to do “to ensure Carolina Investors’ continued existence should HomeGold default.” As the correspondence between the state and the company continued, South Carolinians, oblivious to their government’s concerns, kept pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the company until last year, when it collapsed; if they’re lucky, these people will be able to recoup a few pennies on the dollar of their life savings.

Clearly, it is not — nor should it be — the job of government to act as a financial adviser. That’s a private-sector responsibility, and people who put their money in high-yield investments must take responsibility for the fact that high-yield means high-risk.

But there’s a difference between warning people away from certain investments because they’re risky and allowing the public to have access to the concerns their government communicates with investment companies. Such information would surely be met with the same assurances to the public that investment companies give to the state, and it’s quite possible that people would still keep investing. But at least they’d have access to the knowledge gained by the securities officials who study the situation and raise questions on our behalf, and at our expense.

In a government that operates on behalf of the entire public — and not just the landed gentry — it seems that we should all be privy to their conclusions.