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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

#231

Post by thighbaugh »

zipy124 wrote: post #147
Telemakhos wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this square with regimes like Singapore, which is one of the least corrupt nations in the world yet also an authoritarian, one-party system?

It doesn't because their premise falls apart in democracies too. Civil servants in democracies are not elected and they have the same 'stopping power'. A planning officer in the UK could just as easily decide to arbritrarily block plans they disagree with as in an authoratian country.

More easily because in a democratic society there is absolutely no risk of having something like that come out and the need for the autocrat to save face and jealously assert the civil servant acted outside of the will of the autocrat thus behead the arbitrary civil servant to cheering crowds according to popular demand.

At worst the person gets fired and is prohibited from public sector jobs at that tier of government afterwards for a period of time while the story is fresh in peoples minds, in the rare case the plutocratic owned media let's such a story come out of its mass media products about the not-paid-for bureaucratic elements of government in hopes of reducing polarization that comes from over-promoting one of the arbitrarily different parties as a means of providing the commoners what Orwell called "Two Minutes Hate" or a means of obtaining cathartic release from the tensions that making them believe they are somehow co-authors of the government to keep them engaged as willing participants.

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

#233

Post by PieTime »

yason wrote: post #130

It's well known that in authoritarian regimes (which autocracies generally are) corruption is, rather than a problem, a necessary element of society to keep things going. Anyone with the slightest amount of official power, like a government officer, has the ability to prevent things going forward on his part. In this kind of society, most people are poor and it would be considered stupid to not demand a small (or lar…

My rich friend drove home drunk from a police ball even though his parents gave him an unlimited taxi card, the police stopped him and recognized his family, and then told him to get home safely.

My other friend forgot his drivers license at home while being non-white and was arrested/charged and forced to explain why he didn’t bring his license to a judge.

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

#235

Post by derangedHorse »

In a good autocracy, and a good democracy, people will trust the system will push out the corruption as the right people become privy to it. In a bad autocracy, the people had no power to make the decision and therefore can't even hold each other liable. In a bad democracy, people view their fellow denizen at fault. It all boils down to who holds the power, because then people know who to blame and give less trust to when things go south.

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

#236

Post by jjkaczor »

mothballed wrote: post #184
andai wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you?

Rural southwest USA

You don't have public roads? in the USA? Even if rural? Ah, maybe those roads are maintained by the state? Even so - those are public, no?

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

#237

Post by wwweston »

wagwang wrote: post #224
oersted wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true, in a democracy you tend to have methods of appeal that actually work, and their threat keeps the wheels of bureaucracy greased. This is because, in principle, everything comes down to the fundamental threat that the people can remove the current government, and the government does have full control over the unelected civil servants. If they keep ignoring appeals, they'll eventually get dethroned. The…

The US elected government has no control over the unelected civil servants as congress over the past 150 years did everything they could to prevent the spoils system.

Elected officials have significant influence they can bring to bear on specific decisions, general operations, and in many cases personnel decisions. That’s true at the level of individual house members and can be more true for other offices.

The rule of law and checks and balances also means these elected officeholders don’t have arbitrary control, which has a lot of upsides (and produced a professional and effective federal workforce) as well as some limits.

I swear we have a problem where we quantize to caricatures rather than recognizing tuned balance, and control theorists would probably anticipate this means things will start to swing a bit wildly.

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

#238

Post by titzer »

deepsun wrote: post #209
pastage wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very sure the west sacrificed a lot of wellbeing because of the vast amount of money spent on war. Peace time was great.

Not true. We spent more taxpayers' money on 2008 banks bailout than on every and any war (+ space race) combined. Also, investing into military tech prevents war on your territory, which is, well, highly disruptive.

According to this [https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/costs-us-nuclear-weapo...], the US has already spent more than five trillion dollars on nuclear weapons.

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

#239

Post by nostrademons »

captainkrtek wrote: post #183

Was talking about this with some colleagues who are from Ukraine, Russia, and other countries. In the US, it seems corruption is only allowed at the top. If you tried to bribe your way out of a traffic ticket as a regular person, you'd get in big trouble, then meanwhile the president pardons wealthy fraudsters [1]. Meanwhile, in countries like Russia, everyone can get in on the action. A colleague of mine told me if…

I've had Indian coworkers remark similarly. The way they put it was "In India, corruption is democratized. Everybody gets in on the act, and everybody can profit a little bit. In the U.S, corruption is reserved for the very top; only they can profit, and everybody else just suffers. Personally, I prefer the Indian system."

Was kinda eye-opening as a native-born U.S. citizen. I'd always just assumed things worked according to the rules here, but then after he said it, I started seeing corruption at the top all the time.

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

#240

Post by t-3 »

peyton wrote: post #215
oersted wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true, in a democracy you tend to have methods of appeal that actually work, and their threat keeps the wheels of bureaucracy greased. This is because, in principle, everything comes down to the fundamental threat that the people can remove the current government, and the government does have full control over the unelected civil servants. If they keep ignoring appeals, they'll eventually get dethroned. The…

I think this is completely wrong. For a democracy to form, substantially everyone must have bought in. That’s the upstream, not the threat of removal. Authoritarian “regimes” are constantly under threat of removal.

This is one thing many forget, mostly due to drinking our own koolaid about the inherent superiority of liberal democracy. Authoritarian regimes almost by definition have high public support, because they couldn't function at all if even a relatively small proportion of society went against them. The people who want to overthrow them are either out of the country or insignificant. Dictatorship is impossible without populism.
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