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

Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

frontiersin.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 414 posts

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

#331

Post by suzzer99 »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #242
btilly wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I commented elsewhere, the Russian name for this is blat. It isn't just corruption. It is a personal trust network for getting things done, that you can't get done if you follow the official rules. You get what you need through corruption, and your ability to do so strengthens your trust in your personal network. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn86C4ZwBSg for an excellent explanation of it. And also an explan…

Right. And oh my do I hate blat. It's a difficult concept to translate to English because it's not synonymous with corruption or bribes. A one-time bribe transaction isn't blat. You want a school to accept your kid so you "gift" the school some supplies, that's not blat, it's a one-time thing and the school principal doesn't owe you any additional favors. Blat is more like a social network of people trading favors, a…

This basically describes how boards of directors and other power structures at that level work. Just with much more expensive assets and favors.

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

#332

Post by hunterpayne »

greedo wrote: post #313
t-3 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any government that lacks public support collapses. Democratic governments can operate without a plurality of support for the current government, because the population generally supports and is invested in the system of government. When democratic governments fail, there is usually very little danger of violence or economic and societal instability, because there is trust in those systems. Corruption and malfeasance…

I think that you're underestimating the power of authoritarianism. For Iran, I don't think the government was in any danger prior to the war. It was capable of exerting control through the state apparatus quite easily. And look at North Korea, you think that the people under that government are supportive? That's nonsense on stilts. Also, that collapse you refer to can take an awful long time under authoritarian cont…

I feel like this discussion is more about westerners who don't understand the actual effects of political repression. A reminder, Nicolae Ceaușescu had a 90+% approval rating just a week before he was put on trial and deleted in less than a day. Measuring approval ratings in authoritarian regimes is an almost impossible task if you care at all about accuracy.

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

#333

Post by hunterpayne »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #258
Gravityloss wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a historian but the difference is between a society with a "rule of law" and "law of the jungle". Probably high democracy correlates with rule of law, but they are not the same thing.

I don’t think this is true. 20th century authoritarians made great effort to leverage the law and use legal systems. Rule of law doesn’t address the problem of bad laws (from bad governance).

Don't confuse having courts with rule of law. Read up in the thread, someone mentioned how important separation of powers is. I can't stress how true this idea is. In authoritarian regimes, courts are under the control of the dictator, not a separate branch who will overrule even their own political party (as just happened in the US and regularly happens all over the west).

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

#334

Post by miroljub »

ses1984 wrote: post #310
miroljub wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only claim was that things were far from perfect (profoundly broken) before Nazis came to power. They made many terrible things, but they also fixed some of the issues they promised to fix. That's why they were able to grab power. You can read more about the Weimar Republic. If it weren't so fundamentally broken, Nazis would never come to power. Stating this is not Nazi apologia but a warning of what happens if go…

The original context of this thread is the validity of china’s data in this trust survey. Interjecting with positive example of nazi germany is not even correct. There’s no way anyone can argue in good faith that nazi germany was high trust. The nazis don’t need you to come to their defense. Nazism is basically ignoring the will of their own people and actively working against them.

Can you please point out where I said Nazi regime was high trust? Its trust level was even lower than of its predecessor.

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

#335

Post by hunterpayne »

thighbaugh wrote: post #231
zipy124 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 governme…

"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."

This explains the current state of US mass media so well...

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

#337

Post by scj »

btilly wrote: post #297
fwipsy wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that was specified. As I said earlier, the problem is not with quid pro quo; it's in the stealing which you've now specified as additional context. I could just as easily specify another context where each of these actions are legitimate. (Perhaps free tickets are part of the theater worker's perks.) If I said "I baked a cake for my mother," then you could say "BUT YOU STOLE THE FLOUR!" It doesn't prove anyth…

My guess as to why it was not specified, is that the corruption is so obvious to anyone who has lived it, that it is easy to forget that others might not get the context. It's like someone trying to describe how fish live, but not remembering to remind people that water is wet. That said, there were contextual clues. If you go back, I said, "You get what you need through corruption..." The next reply was agreeing and…

Could you elaborate (hopefully with real examples) of what it's like to be in the out group with few connections (or perhaps no connections) in regards to a particular good / service?

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

#338

Post by hunterpayne »

titzer wrote: post #238
deepsun wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Over 85 years and that's an inflation adjusted number. We give away more money each year (USAID/soft power efforts) than we spent on average on nuclear weapons. And neither of those items are of much significance on the US federal budget. Currently, social safety net programs are half of the federal budget and the total military budget is about 1/6th of the budget for reference (that's 2/3rd total between those two parts of the budget).

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

#339

Post by LtWorf »

ACS_Solver wrote: post #204
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…

Very well said. I live in Sweden, one of the world's highest-trust societies, but I have experience from a more corrupt environment and my whole family lived most of their lives in a corrupt autocracy. This means that in a corrupt society, it's extremely difficult as an individual not to participate. The corruption isn't something that happens at some level, it's a core part of the economy. If you try to do things by…

I'd say sweden is quite corrupt but the population is very blind to it.

See for example how an horrible pink "sculpture" could cost over 8 million euros.

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

#340

Post by pixl97 »

tines wrote: post #325
gmd63 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Access to corruption is never widely understood and accessible to every person, otherwise it would be written into law and stated plainly for everyone to see. Corruption is a form of economic eugenics that breeds fraudsters and cheaters who can buy into the in-group via know-how, money or aesthetics while slowing the growth of a law abiding populace that competes honestly on merit but doesn't fit the unwritten rules…

> Access to corruption is never widely understood and accessible to every person, otherwise it would be written into law and stated plainly for everyone to see. This is an uninformed non-sequitur. In China or Mexico for example, it's well known that to get certain things done you have to bribe local officials. The central government is against corruption by policy, but nevertheless corruption is endemic. It's only "i…

Just because you understand the government is corrupt doesn't mean you understand the corruption
Post reply on HN