Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

news.gallup.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–569 of 569 posts

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#561

Post by koolba »

vannevar wrote: post #508
koolba wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know, if we'd had an overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated government, we'd have comprehensive bans on government insider trading We had two years under Biden with Democrat control of the House and the Senate. They passed no legislation to ban insider trading. It probably didn’t help that the poster octogenarian for insider trading was Speaker of the House > and we'd correct the bad ruling in Citizens United. C…

>CU was absolutely the correct ruling as it just means I can take money from wherever I’ve earned it and spend it on publicizing my message. Are you literally a corporation? If not, you should perhaps read the decision.

A corporation is just one or more people pooling their resources for legal and accounting purposes. Theres nothing inherently virtuous or evil about the concept.

Going back to my original example, why is it okay for a media company to use their platform and resources to promote whatever speech they want promoted, but I can’t use money I made selling hot dogs to do the same?

The only way to make the playing field fair is to allow everybody to take part. Otherwise you have a handful of media companies with outsized control of indirect messaging.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#562

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

paisawalla wrote: post #535
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you vaguepost, you shouldn't be surprised when you receive follow-up comments asking for clarification, which was what I was doing. The most charitable interpretation, as another commenter noted, was that you were essentially saying "both sides bad". > Even if you're inclined to believe the conclusions, this should recognizably be a silly rant ... If it triggers your defenses to the point where you can't see tha…

I don't know how to say this except by repeating myself: I recommend you ask a thoughtful person, or a capable LLM, to argue against "a big reason that ... [ad hominem patronization presented without evidence]" In the age of LLMs, it's pure negligence to let your perspective be this uninformed and low-resolution. And it's violence against the attentions of others to share it with them, to be hyperbolic. If this is yo…

> If you won't try and understand why people are the way they are, and instead are going with "they're all too stupid to know they're being fooled, unlike me"

Unfortunately, being more aware than - and immune to being fooled than - the majority of a specific voting bloc is not a historical anomaly. Take, for example, the Jews who were privileged and fortunate enough to have the foresight to flee Europe during the rise of Nazism. They saw the writing on the wall, and were wise to the foolishness and depravity that was on the horizon.

Most populist movements are very much the case of “they’re all too stupid to know they’re being fooled, unlike me” - although I wouldn’t necessarily use the word “stupid” and I wouldn’t necessarily limit it to “me”.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#563

Post by hakunin »

DANmode wrote: post #540
hakunin wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we determine that there’s corruption? If we did that by just pointing out that something looks or feels like it, why not treat all crime this way? There is a reason we created a judicial system. Things very often look and feel completely not how they really are. There exists unprosecuted corruption for sure, just like any other crime, but claiming that it’s somehow happening on an outsized scale vs expected no…

> why not treat all crime this way? Because government and law enforcement should be held to a higher standard. Here’s the closest and easiest reach to obvious regulatory capture from the other scumbag party: “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute—if we do bring a crimi…

That's kind of my point.

This was a descriptive, not a prescriptive statement, of a real problem. He literally says that it is concerning that prosecuting large institutions can cause economic harm. He isn't saying they won't prosecute, he says it's difficult because of the downsides. Holder made a mistake of wheeling out a complex nuance to a public that isn't prepared to handle it.

I don't understand where is the evidence of malicious force trying to self-serve? Anything specific that points to corruption here? Is this like "yay, Holder gave us a loophole! We just need to build an incredibly large, successful business, and now it will be difficult for Holder to prosecute us, so we can finally start being corrupt"? Is that what you're saying?

What large successful business would want to squander it all on corruption on an off chance that the economic inconvenience would save them from prosecution? They are the most incentivized to identify and remove that sort of PR and legal cancer from their org.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#564

Post by scott_w »

potamic wrote: post #554
scott_w wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not an answer to the question. How did any of these presidents profit, financially or not, from their actions regarding Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis? What was the quid pro quo they received?

Well, the question primarily seemed to contest the scope of corruption, so I responded in view to that. The big banks were one of the top donors to Obama's 2008 campaign. The fact that none of the banks were prosecuted or even held accountable for the crisis raises big questions how much the campaign funding influenced the way the bailout was structured. It also doesn't help Obama that he was famous for going after p…

Let me get this straight, your contentions are:

- Bush invaded Iraq because an oil company funded his campaign?

- Obama bailed out banks (a thing every government worldwide was doing) because banks funded his campaign?

There’s no evidence of these claims, compared to the evidence of a fucking private jet being bought for Trump in comparison. Also Trump has enriched himself, personally, more than any president in history by quite some margin, using the office of President. I just wanted to show what you’re equivocating about, here.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#565

Post by hakunin »

DANmode wrote: post #545
hakunin wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Observant people pointing out corruption is not corruption. Real prosecuted corruption exists. That's why we have courts. Otherwise, it's conjecture that everyone is too eager to believe. Any behavior that can be explained, among other things, with corruption, is just added to the roster, because being cynical protects you from accidentally coming off foolish or naive. But it isn't serious. This is the first time in…

> you should figure out what a world with zero crime would look like. Not zero, but relative near-zero, is possible through exactly two paths. The one you’re validly warning against (surveillance state), but also: tightly-knit communities with few-enough outside visitors. Note that this can include neighborhoods in rural US or urban Italy.

Not sure how we can just go ahead and slice up the world into "tightly-knit communities", but even if we could, there's domestic violence, feuding, and mafia that arises just fine in those environments.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#566

Post by hakunin »

autoexec wrote: post #543
hakunin wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You listed a bunch of things only some of which are bad, and none of which are clearly corrupt. Did you know that things can be bad, and still not corrupt? When you delete a customer database at work, it doesn't have to be because you're corrupt. You're believing conjecture, because it makes you feel smarter, like you can see through the facade. The reality is that you're probably afraid to come off naive. We have to…

> You listed a bunch of things only some of which are bad, and none of which are clearly corrupt. Charitably, you might be using a different definition of corruption than most of the world uses. Even if we limit ourselves to only a narrow definition of only political corruption, the abuse of government power for private gain, most of what I listed would still be (sometimes literally) textbook examples of it. The revo…

I'll be more specific.

Let's take revolving door. Who would you want to be in charge of regulating an industry, a person who knows it inside out or a newcomer who has no idea how anything works? How would the latter have any hope at being an effective regulator? You would never accept this kind of lack of experience anywhere else in life. But for some reason we're all used to pointing out revolving doors as some kind of gotcha, without giving it the basic level of thought.

Dark money sounds bad, but anonymity doesn't imply corruption. Money also isn't enough. Look at billionaires trying to run for president, and where they got. You'll also be hard pressed to find any example where a politician picks a stance that goes against their constituents' opinion, in favor of money. Usually money piggybacks on a public opinion that already supports them, or is largely indifferent. History has shown that pumping money can rarely reverse public opinion to a significant extent, but sometimes can dissuade a positive opinion into indifference. Even that, unclear if it’s still possible in today’s world.

Kids for cash — I didn't know what it was at first. Sure, that's straight corruption. A couple of judges committed crimes, got caught, and received prison sentences.

I could go down every example you made, but I hope the sample above illustrates what I mean. "Documented history" is conjecture until it's adjudicated. You're making a mistake of putting "documented history" (insinuations of corruption in dark money, revolving doors, voter suppression) in the same bucket as clear and adjudicated corruption (like kids for cash), and based on this mixed bucket of good and bad examples, make a conclusion that there's always been outsized corruption in US, compared to normal baseline. Your basis for that conclusion is flawed.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#567

Post by ipython »

mc32 wrote: post #75
autoexec wrote: post #8

Corruption in the US isn't new, but it's never been done as openly as it has been recently. I don't think it's a good thing. It shows that the government isn't concerned about what the public thinks, which suggests that they believe they no longer have to be. That's not a healthy sign for what's supposed to be a democracy.

When Congress people enrich themselves while serving in office[1] and there's a revolving door from public service into private and we have billions in unaccounted spending, fraud everywhere you look (especially since Covid), it's no surprise people feel upset by corruption. My hope is we will, one day, have an administration that roots it out using modern fraud detection, gets rid of waste, shuts down non-profits th…

It will be difficult to do so in the current administration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_allegations_during_...

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#568

Post by potamic »

scott_w wrote: post #564
potamic wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the question primarily seemed to contest the scope of corruption, so I responded in view to that. The big banks were one of the top donors to Obama's 2008 campaign. The fact that none of the banks were prosecuted or even held accountable for the crisis raises big questions how much the campaign funding influenced the way the bailout was structured. It also doesn't help Obama that he was famous for going after p…

Let me get this straight, your contentions are: - Bush invaded Iraq because an oil company funded his campaign? - Obama bailed out banks (a thing every government worldwide was doing) because banks funded his campaign? There’s no evidence of these claims, compared to the evidence of a fucking private jet being bought for Trump in comparison. Also Trump has enriched himself, personally, more than any president in hist…

If you follow the way the private jet thing is done, it is structured as a gift to the government and not the president. It is perfectly legal and you won't be able to find any "proof" of corruption over it. This is how most corruption is done, in an underhanded manner, but everything by the book, with enough plausible deniability.

In many cases corruption is only known to the perpetrator, because it is a matter of intent. One can always proffer a different reason for what they are doing than what they actually intended and when those reasons later turn out to be false, you may never really know whether they acted in good faith in the first place.

So corruption largely comes down to perception end of the day. It is ultimately a matter of trust and when that trust is eroded, the perception of corruption grows. There's no smoke without fire. When we see smoke in a building, we do not go searching for proof of fire, we just gtfo because the risk is too much. We should do the same when we see red flags in people in powerful positions.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#569

Post by stinkbeetle »

lovich wrote: post #549
stinkbeetle wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the comments I have written in this thread have been addressing the comment they replied to.

You were not clear at all, I am asking for clarification. I thought that `atmavatar's question was clearly in response to your statement and you are saying it is not. Assume I am ignorant to the context of this conversation if need be. What were you referencing when you made your claim to needing evidence?

I was referencing the claims made in the post I replied to. I can't imagine what it is you're having so much difficulty with about that.
Post reply on HN