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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

#111

Post by miroljub »

triceratops wrote: post #90
eru wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not like atrocities started with Nazis. Child prostitution, high unemployment, corruption, poverty, moral devastation, drug addiction, injustice, inequality ... all that existed before Nazis so many people ignored the warnings that came with the Nazi party since they were the only ones promising to act.

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

#112

Post by trollbridge »

nyeah wrote: post #85
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.

One of the "innovations" in the bank runs of 1929 was that a farmer or business owner would lose all their savings in the bank, because of the bank run.

However, the loans they owed to that bank were still good, and would get bought by an "investor" for pennies on the dollar. They no longer had their bank account to make their normal loan payments from, yet the full repayments were still due, despite the original bank that made the loan going under and closing its doors.

So many farmers ended up having to sell or foreclose on their farms and then attempt to rent them back from the new owners.

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

#113

Post by aleph_minus_one »

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…

> You can’t make massive leaps in technology or medicine or many other areas without trust

The Soviet Union did manage to get massive leaps in some areas (in particular related to armament, but not only) such as

- armament/weapons

- space technology

- mathematics

- physics

> (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).

I guess you can immediately see how the Soviet Union "solved" this problem by the fact that you simply couldn't gain a lot of money from your innovation.

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

#114

Post by AnimalMuppet »

PaulHoule wrote: post #35
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…

The corruption numbers break down into: (1) They didn't ask the question in China, (2) They asked somebody if they paid a bribe or if taking a bribe is every justifiable, and (3) "Expert estimates of the extent to which the executive, legislative, judiciary, and bureaucracy engage in bribery and theft, and the making and implementation of laws are susceptible to corruption" For (2) China doesn't look too different fr…

How do you see Xi's anticorruption campaign? Is it just a club to beat political opponents with, or is there a real problem and he's trying to fix it?

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

#115

Post by sigbottle »

scythmic_waves wrote: post #37
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."

It's not a tautology because it's not guaranteed. There are plenty of plausible sounding claims that fail to be true. That's why science is needed: to provide _empirical_ evidence for/against a claim.

Not to be an "uhm actually" guy but this goes into a lot of interesting philosophy in the first half of the 20th century. You would probably agree that "a fish is a fish" is a tautology, but for more complicated things it gets murkier and murkier. Separating out what are the tautologies from not was a big effort. Then Quine came along, and a big portion of people migrated away from the distinction

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

#116

Post by Stranger43 »

And completely understandable once you understand the narratives of both system.

An autocrat is supposed to be "Powerful" beyond all else and typically aren't required to be accountable to anyone so as long as the narrative of "Powerfully competent" holds corruption is merely an part of the narrative.

In democracies the leadership is very much meant to be by and off the people and held accountable under the same legal standard they enforce on everyone else, and when that leadership start to act with the impunity of an "entrenched" aristocracy and stop following the rules the narrative breaks.

And lets not forget that the original feudal aristocracy held their position almost entirely by the mechanism of unchallengeable property rights in an zero sum economy* and we begin to understand why the accumulation of property/wealth into fewer and fewer hands is a almost unmanageable threat to the narratives of western democracy.

*We are returning to an zero sum economy as the planet have essentially run out of unowned/unused resources and that means that modern western economic solutions(grow grow grow) is simply not available anymore.

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

#117

Post by bnjms »

PaulHoule wrote: post #35
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…

The corruption numbers break down into: (1) They didn't ask the question in China, (2) They asked somebody if they paid a bribe or if taking a bribe is every justifiable, and (3) "Expert estimates of the extent to which the executive, legislative, judiciary, and bureaucracy engage in bribery and theft, and the making and implementation of laws are susceptible to corruption" For (2) China doesn't look too different fr…

> though unlike India I think very few Americans have paid a bribe to a cop.

No one, left or right, thinks there is street level corruption. Not the kind accessible to someone in a traffic stop. I have experienced it in Mexico and think that kind of corruption would still be worse because I cannot imagine how to recover from it. I have hope that a few high profile arrests of c level fall his may turn the tide. If not then there are extrajudicial methods open to American culture.

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

#118

Post by aleph_minus_one »

vlovich123 wrote: post #110
terminalshort wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example isn't corruption. That's just crime. But it does do massive damage.

I’m confused. Corruption isn’t crime? I know white collar crime was controversial 100 years ago, but are we back to arguing whether corruption is crime or not?

> Corruption isn’t crime?

Societies have very different opinions which kinds of corruption are perfectly fine, and which kinds are criminal.

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

#119

Post by whstl »

speeder wrote: post #95
andai wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 from Brazil, and there is a famous politician there that has the non-official slogan of "Steals but Does". He is Paulo Maluf. "Everyone" knows he is corrupt. But people vote for him anyway, because he get things done, and he doesn't engage in certain kinds of corruption. That is the problem, how you get corruption to go the way you want? Lots of politicians see Paulo Maluf, and think they can imitate him, that t…

The copy part sounds a lot like Cargo Culting.

Copying the visible behavior but not doing the actual part that matters.

Also incredibly common in corporate.

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

#120

Post by mb7733 »

vlovich123 wrote: post #110
terminalshort wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example isn't corruption. That's just crime. But it does do massive damage.

I’m confused. Corruption isn’t crime? I know white collar crime was controversial 100 years ago, but are we back to arguing whether corruption is crime or not?

Corruption is crime but not all crime is corruption. Stealing copper isn't corruption.
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