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Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

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Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#71

Post by bdauvergne »

lm28469 wrote: post #21
retep_kram wrote: post #2

It looks like a tautology to me. Like: "Corruption erodes social trust in places where social trust exist and is key for the political system."

I think culture and education play much bigger roles than anything else, all the sources I find show Germany and France having similar level of corruption (on top of being geographically and economically close) but completely different level of "social trust". China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell https://ourworldindata.org/c…

It's the institutional part which is lacking in France. Look at the budget of the ministry of justice in France per capita and in Germany. Germany spend twice as much and has twice as much judges per capita than France (and everything which goes with it like clerks).

My company took the biggest telecom company in France to court for a violation of our license on a soft, license was GPLv2, we won, but it took 12 years.

Justice is a very poor and slow institution in France. For the same countries the budget of police forces per capita are nearly the same for example.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#72

Post by fer »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #59
throawayonthe wrote: post #31

> From V-Dem, we use two measures of democratic quality: the Regimes of the World (RoW) classification and the Liberal Democracy Index. The RoW (Lührmann et al., 2018) is a categorical measure distinguishing closed autocracies (no multiparty elections), electoral autocracies (multiparty elections that are not free and fair), electoral democracies (free elections but limited liberal protections), and liberal democraci…

They classify Germany and the UK as democracies. That's precious. Germany has sanctioned its own journalists as has the UK. I don't remember the number of ordinary citizens arrested in Germany for social media posts but I know the UK number was 12000 per year. Now let's look at the US: Tucker Carlson is under the gun for allegedly being a Russian or is it Iranian agent. But the US is a democracy. https://www.newsweek…

> Germany has sanctioned its own journalists

If we're talking about the same case, the EU sanctioned him, the man is at least dual citizen, and received Russian funds via his media company in Turkey, then proceeded to say it was all because it was about his coverage of Gaza. All of that is in the EU sanctions page, but "democratic" media coverage focused and pinned it on the Gaza bit.

If you're talking about Thomas Röper (of Anti-Spiegel) and Alina Lipp, well, it's even more clear cut, not sure how are you trying to sell legal action against those as lack of democracy. It's disingenuous in the best case.

Regarding UK, the 12k figure is real but related to all forms of communication, and by large involving threats, domestic violence and the like. Not for "social media posts".

>Tucker Carlson is under the gun for allegedly being a Russian or is it Iranian agent. But the US is a democracy.

Tucker Carlson took the grifter turn and makes money off it, not unlike Alex Jones. He'll behave like anything that can bring him manageable and profitable attention.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#73

Post by 1718627440 »

lnsru wrote: post #55
varispeed wrote: post #44

Corruption is rife in the West. Wealth managers wine and dine with governments and essentially order policies that nobody voted for that continue to be developed regardless of which party won the elections. Same faces meet with new cohorts of politicians and continue to get their way whilst security services supposed to protect democracy hide their heads in the sand. See things like Digital ID, censorship, surveillan…

I am in Germany. Apparently very democratic place. However nothing happens what people voted for. There is always few groups advertising affordable living in Munich. Never happened. Every year the rent climbs to new never seen high. The system very obviously does not work as advertised. The conspiracist in me however thinks, that the system works as intended.

> There is always few groups advertising affordable living in Munich. Never happened. Every year the rent climbs to new never seen high. The system very obviously does not work as advertised.

Or the problem is harder then to be solved with just wanting to solve it?

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#74

Post by hshdhdhj4444 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #22
dzink wrote: post #19

You have to understand how gears shift from there. Trust is essential for business transactions and specifically for long term investments. You can’t make massive leaps in technology or medicine or many other areas without trust (a lot of money on a leap means if you don’t trust the other side or the government to keep conditions stable, you won’t see a return). Now if you are in a high trust society, you may have a…

Are we living in the same reality? Look at how business works in the rich west works. Everything is formalized with contracts, risk is portioned out and offloaded to every party under the sun. You bring in people with licenses and accreditation, 3rd party consultants, etc, etc. All of this work and expense is incurred so that if things go wrong then the parties all have precisely defined ways in which they can (expen…

This is the difference between personal trust and a high/low trust society. Personal trust is about how much you trust an individual in the absence of enforcement mechanisms. But when looking at a society level those enforcement mechanisms matter. A high trust society could theoretically have extremely low personal trust and still be a high trust society because the enforcement mechanisms are strong enough.

Although in reality high trust softies tend to have higher personal trust (both as a cause and effect). The presence of functional enforcement mechanisms is not evidence of a lack of personal trust.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#75

Post by bojan »

Sharlin wrote: post #13
watwut wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it just means that in autocracy everyone assumes institutions are corrupt, so no trust is broken. If you don't have trust, it cant be broken.

Perhaps ironically, there are still institutions that to some extent rely on social trust in autocracies. For example, the black market is an institution. As is the "bribe economy" – the general understanding that getting X done generally costs you around Y, where Y is not arbitrary. Then there's the whole thing about criminal organizations that typically rely on social cohesion and upholding all kinds of rules.

The black market is not an institution, it's a messy anarchy where you have zero guarantee you'll get what you paid for.

> As is the "bribe economy" – the general understanding that getting X done generally costs you around Y, where Y is not arbitrary

That's really not how that works. Sometimes your bribe will be refused. Sometimes they'll ask for more money even when you think you paid. Sometimes they'll simply not do whatever you bribed them to do. Sometimes it will work as expected.

There is no certainty in autocracies, no guarantees. If Americans only knew what they're heading into, they'd be fighting tooth and nail to avoid it.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#76

Post by bluGill »

arcticfox wrote: post #56
eru wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western Europe is a low trust environment compared to the beacons in (cultural) East Asia, like Singapore. I can leave my kid with an iPad in her hand here without fear of it being nicked, like in London. But business wise, western Europe is still relatively high trust. I suggest you read more about this.

Singapore is also an island that is ~twice as wealthy as the UK per capita. I believe you in general but I'd love a lower-income country that could be true for.

High trust builds wealth - thus what you ask is a direct contradiction of the thesis. There is a lot of 'well' and details of what high trust means, but low trust doesn't allow for many wealth building investments - there is no possible way to make a better life (money is only a proxy) so few try and those that do are worse off.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#77

Post by SanjayMehta »

fer wrote: post #72
SanjayMehta wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They classify Germany and the UK as democracies. That's precious. Germany has sanctioned its own journalists as has the UK. I don't remember the number of ordinary citizens arrested in Germany for social media posts but I know the UK number was 12000 per year. Now let's look at the US: Tucker Carlson is under the gun for allegedly being a Russian or is it Iranian agent. But the US is a democracy. https://www.newsweek…

> Germany has sanctioned its own journalists If we're talking about the same case, the EU sanctioned him, the man is at least dual citizen, and received Russian funds via his media company in Turkey, then proceeded to say it was all because it was about his coverage of Gaza. All of that is in the EU sanctions page, but "democratic" media coverage focused and pinned it on the Gaza bit. If you're talking about Thomas R…

One sided sanctions on journalists for publishing is a sign of autocracy, something you'd expect Idi Amin to do, but then it's Germany, I guess the Austrian influence still exists after 90 years.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#78

Post by bluGill »

rob74 wrote: post #30
lm28469 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think culture and education play much bigger roles than anything else, all the sources I find show Germany and France having similar level of corruption (on top of being geographically and economically close) but completely different level of "social trust". China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell https://ourworldindata.org/c…

> China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell There are a few reasons for that that I can imagine: - China is one of very few autocracies that has managed to significantly improve the standard of living of most of its population. - The public trials and (sometimes) executions of allegedly corrupt individuals might help improve the…

China was getting better for a long time. XI is changing that. Change is slow though and he is not rushing corruption though it seems to be increasing. He has purged some corrupt people as well making things slightly better in the short term - but he values loyalty over competence and so his short term changes are for less corruption but long term increase it.

That is China is a complex country and books (which are not written and many cannot be for decades yet) are needed to understand this, not a short comment box. [This applies to every other country anyone here mentions]

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#79

Post by ModernMech »

ecshafer wrote: post #46
tw04 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response just proves his point. All of that paperwork, all of those contracts- that assumes you can trust the government to fairly enforce the law. In a society where corruption rules, you have no reason to spend time and money on any of that because you know you’re one bribe away from it all being kindling for your next bonfire. So yes, in areas with high corruption they don’t bother. They either just set aside…

Lawyers in the west are a high status career, because we trust the rule of law. In China, its considered a joke career. What is the point of being a lawyer, when relative position, influence and power within the CCP is the lone factor in winning a case? Big companies all end up with shadow positions that are there just to pay money out to CCP honchos and their kids. Board positions and executive positions go to the C…

And that's exactly what's happening here too, starting with the high-powered law firms who settled with Trump when he sued them instead of fighting. Overnight they ruined their reputation, because who is going to trust them when they folded so easily to government pressure? Moreover, as Trump's will becomes law, literally everything they went to school for becomes moot. All their experience about intellectual property or contract law or whatever is worthless when the law is actually whatever the guy in charge wants on any given day.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#80

Post by AlecSchueler »

ecshafer wrote: post #46
tw04 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response just proves his point. All of that paperwork, all of those contracts- that assumes you can trust the government to fairly enforce the law. In a society where corruption rules, you have no reason to spend time and money on any of that because you know you’re one bribe away from it all being kindling for your next bonfire. So yes, in areas with high corruption they don’t bother. They either just set aside…

Lawyers in the west are a high status career, because we trust the rule of law. In China, its considered a joke career. What is the point of being a lawyer, when relative position, influence and power within the CCP is the lone factor in winning a case? Big companies all end up with shadow positions that are there just to pay money out to CCP honchos and their kids. Board positions and executive positions go to the C…

> In China, its considered a joke career.

Is there a source for this or is more of a vibes thing?

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