Reminder that the fact WG appears worse for the average person than pirates is essentially tunnel vision because as the story progresses, we simply focus more on their depravities. For the first 300 chapters, there was a total of three bad government officials: Morgan, Nezumi and Crocodile, all of them flying under the radar instead of having their actions sanctioned (two of them would later be imprisoned); the only wrong thing that actually comes from the central was covering up Crocoboy being beaten by Luffy (+ Void Century research ban, but we still knew next to nothing on this). Meanwhile pirates and other wanted criminals were a problem every other step you took. This is the average person's life in the WG country, protected by marines and threatened by pirates.