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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

#81

Post by graemep »

tw04 wrote: post #34
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

In societies where the government is corrupt, or even where the courts are slow and expensive, people then trust in the individuals becomes more important.

Being able to rely on being able to enforce contracts means you need less trust in people you do business with.

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

#82

Post by andai »

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…

I have an unusual perspective here.

In my country the politicians are openly very corrupt. (Well, possibly yours too ;)

Recently there has been a lot of improvement to the infrastructure. I realized that what has happened is, a lot of EU funds have been made available for development, and people are lining up to skim a little bit off the top.

How you say, the incentives are aligned, yeah?

I find myself in the odd situation where for each dollar that gets embezzled, a little bit of actual construction happens. That seems like a force you'd want to work with, rather than against.

I mean yeah ideally we'd get rid of corruption, but haha good luck with that. At least now they're fixing the roads.

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

#83

Post by bluGill »

bojan wrote: post #75
Sharlin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most are not making one trip to the black market - they start to figure out who delivers and this reputation matters. However there is a limit to how much you can deliver in a black market and so it is low trust not zero trust.

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

#84

Post by marcosdumay »

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.

The purpose of a system is what it does.

"As intended" is something that doesn't exist at all.

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

#85

Post by nyeah »

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…

Yeah, exactly. One example of a low-trust society was the US in the decade after 1929.

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

#87

Post by bluGill »

PaulHoule wrote: post #69
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the idea that I heard somewhere or watched but the idea's basically "slowly at first, then all of a sudden" My understanding of US/America/even-other-parts-of-world is that they weren't always like this but slowly turned into something where instead of voting for the better candidate, you are voting for a slightly less worse candidate and that opens up a can of worms because you just have to be or you have to so…

Actually here in the US the "politically sophisticated" voter chooses a party first, votes for their party every single time and chooses policy positions to fit their party rather than other way around. A few percent of people just kinda blow in the wind and might on a lark join in with a presidential candidate to "have a little fun" and those people are who make the difference in competitive elections.

Having been involved those choosing the party positions often are secretly voting third party. They are trying to change the party potition and when it works the vote for the party, but when it fails they vote for who they like.

people who only vote in the general election, and maybe the primaries have choosen their party and then potitions based on the party.

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

#88

Post by consp »

andai wrote: post #82
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…

I have an unusual perspective here. In my country the politicians are openly very corrupt. (Well, possibly yours too ;) Recently there has been a lot of improvement to the infrastructure. I realized that what has happened is, a lot of EU funds have been made available for development, and people are lining up to skim a little bit off the top. How you say, the incentives are aligned, yeah? I find myself in the odd sit…

Depends on how it happens and what your goal is, it starts with a little bit off the top, and ends with it being the prime goal. Somewhere on that gliding scale people get hurt because a bridge collapses because the money went into someone's pockets instead of construction.

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

#89

Post by akdev1l »

andai wrote: post #82
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…

I have an unusual perspective here. In my country the politicians are openly very corrupt. (Well, possibly yours too ;) Recently there has been a lot of improvement to the infrastructure. I realized that what has happened is, a lot of EU funds have been made available for development, and people are lining up to skim a little bit off the top. How you say, the incentives are aligned, yeah? I find myself in the odd sit…

I am not sure the incentives are aligned.

those people fixing the roads are incentivized to do the work cheaply so they can skim more “off the top”

And you still need to fight corruption to some level or it will come to a point where there’s more skimming than work being done

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

#90

Post by triceratops »

eru wrote: post #42
ses1984 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The same harsh penalties mentioned above might influence people to declare a higher level of social trust than they actually have. This 100%. Political imprisonment and reeducation camps are antithetical to any definition of a high trust society that I would subscribe to.

Doesn't matter too much what you subscribe to. Eg Nazi Germany still benefited from a high-ish level of social trust, despite numerous atrocities.

What's the benefit of social trust when a society can commit such atrocities? The entire point of a society is to care for its members.
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