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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

#51

Post by boringg »

rob74 wrote: post #30
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…

> China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell There are a few reasons for that that I can imagine: - China is one of very few autocracies that has managed to significantly improve the standard of living of most of its population. - The public trials and (sometimes) executions of allegedly corrupt individuals might help improve the…

Social trust is high because there are pretty heavy handed control measures over the population with havy costs. Thats more of a fear based society than trust. Government can giveth and government can taketh.

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

#53

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

the__alchemist wrote: post #26

I have been thinking about this more and more the past few points, to the point where I feel like I have to run for office as a social duty. (USA) There are so few politicians who give more than lip service to stopping corruption. Our districts are embarrassing. People tolerating the blatant corruption by the Trump administration is something I don't understand. They will get upset about Epstein, but don't care about…

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 somehow present yourself as a slightly lesser bad option to the masses (well the masses who vote anyway)

Another tactic I have seen is just proposing that we will do something that no-one thinks is possible or should be possible because they don't make sense and its a "joke" but you plant the seeds in terms of jokes which they later capitalize upon on.

Things happen slowly then all of a sudden and then they become norm. It's the silence that we have during it happening slowly that speaks the loudest.

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

#54

Post by zeroCalories »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #22
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…

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…

These are for high stakes business, and even those are based on a lot of trust. If you commit a minor crime, where the cost of settling things is lower than what you'll get, it's easy to get away with it. It requires a great deal of trust on the individual level that many perpetually developing countries lack.

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

#55

Post by lnsru »

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.

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

#56

Post by arcticfox »

eru wrote: post #38
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…

Western Europe is a low trust environment compared to the beacons in (cultural) East Asia, like Singapore. I can leave my kid with an iPad in her hand here without fear of it being nicked, like in London. But business wise, western Europe is still relatively high trust. I suggest you read more about this.

Singapore is also an island that is ~twice as wealthy as the UK per capita. I believe you in general but I'd love a lower-income country that could be true for.

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

#57

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

ecshafer wrote: post #46
tw04 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lawyers in the west are a high status career, because we trust the rule of law. In China, its considered a joke career. What is the point of being a lawyer, when relative position, influence and power within the CCP is the lone factor in winning a case? Big companies all end up with shadow positions that are there just to pay money out to CCP honchos and their kids. Board positions and executive positions go to the C…

That's nonsense. No matter how corrupt the CCP is, it cannot have a stake in all court cases in China. Maybe politically sensitive trials are a farce (arguably that's the case in much of the West too, but that's a different story) but that doesn't make the profession as a whole a joke.

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

#59

Post by SanjayMehta »

throawayonthe wrote: post #31

> From V-Dem, we use two measures of democratic quality: the Regimes of the World (RoW) classification and the Liberal Democracy Index. The RoW (Lührmann et al., 2018) is a categorical measure distinguishing closed autocracies (no multiparty elections), electoral autocracies (multiparty elections that are not free and fair), electoral democracies (free elections but limited liberal protections), and liberal democraci…

They classify Germany and the UK as democracies. That's precious. Germany has sanctioned its own journalists as has the UK. I don't remember the number of ordinary citizens arrested in Germany for social media posts but I know the UK number was 12000 per year.

Now let's look at the US:

Tucker Carlson is under the gun for allegedly being a Russian or is it Iranian agent. But the US is a democracy.

https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-foreign-agent-charge...

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

#60

Post by anovikov »

Perhaps because in autocracies there is no 'society' by definition? That's why they are called autocracies. Social trust is a way horizontal relationships between people are framed and organised - that is, relationship that does not go through the state. In autocracies, these just don't exist. Everything bigger than a a family (in some countries, extended family or a clan), goes through the State. There is no 'social trust' because there is no society to begin with - and state enforcement makes trust unnecessary and even dangerous.
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