Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by jordanb » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

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…

I feel like that's breaking down in the west. I've seen more and more news articles describing someone as a "well-connected lawyer." The idea that the most important things that a lawyer possesses is connections to people in power is becoming normalized.

When I was young I remember people describing Alan Dershowitz as "the greatest legal mind in America." The idea was that he got his clients what they wanted through fiendishly good logic and argument. Of course we now know that he just knew who to send poorly-written emails to.

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

#92

Post by zelphirkalt » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

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 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).

I am not quite sure, how exactly you mean "trust". For example there are countries, that I would consider quite corrupt, but that are able to leap ahead. I would say there can be a lot of trust, even in a corrupt system, if the ones making the leap, are part of the corrupt system, and trust that system to continue to "work". But you could say: "Well, then there is trust!"

Ultimately, I think where there is more trust, there is more to destroy, so any betrayal of this trust, causes more damage, than in a low trust environment, where there was not much trust to begin with.

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

#93

Post by lo_zamoyski » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

boringg wrote: post #51

rob74 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

1. Fear of a capricious state can cause survival-motivated compliance which can appear as "trust" in coarse measurements. Meaning, you simply do fewer of those things that would provide opportunities for distrust in contexts where that could happen.

2. In a relatively severe, but consistent regime, the high penalties for violating trust in everyday cases (crime) act as a deterrent.

3. Fear may cause people to be selective and mindful about their social associations based on stronger proofs of trustworthiness. You might tell a Hitler joke to someone you have used more energy/caution to "vet", but avoid being too casual in environments of undetermined trustworthiness.

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

#94

Post by fer » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

SanjayMehta wrote: post #77

fer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany has sanctioned its own journalists If we're talking about the same case, the EU sanctioned him, the man is at least dual citizen, and received Russian funds via his media company in Turkey, then proceeded to say it was all because it was about his coverage of Gaza. All of that is in the EU sanctions page, but "democratic" media coverage focused and pinned it on the Gaza bit. If you're talking about Thomas R…

One sided sanctions on journalists for publishing is a sign of autocracy, something you'd expect Idi Amin to do, but then it's Germany, I guess the Austrian influence still exists after 90 years.

>everything I don't like is Nazi

Calling autocracy the sanctioning someone for being on the literal payroll of RT, state media of a hostile country where extrajudicial executions of journalists were commonplace before Roscomnadzor was given near absolute powers over media is, again, a very hard sell.

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

#95

Post by speeder » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #82

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…

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 they will be beloved by the public and steal money somehow and line their own pockets, except those are too self-serving or too incompetent to pull that off properly, so they steal in ways that go against the public.

So for example in one city where I lived, one mayor stole the money from the kids lunch, resulting in hungry kids. Another mayor stole ludicrous amounts of money from garbage collection services, the result is that the city ended with debts in the billions while being a tiny city (it has 100k people, yet has debts bigger than cities with millions of people).

Paulo Maluf meanwhile built lots of useful infrastructure that is still in use. (also hilariously he used to brag a lot using the phrase "Maluf that did it!", one time some comedic journalists went to a bridge opening, and asked him who did the bridge, he replied: "Maluf didn't do this bridge. But he did the two roads the bridge are connecting, so there is no bridge without Maluf!")

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

#96

Post by jordanb » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #57

ecshafer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The central government in Bejing doesn't care even a little bit about some property dispute in Henan but there's a local apparatchik who cares or who could be made to care with the right consideration.

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

#97

Post by lokar » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

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…

For business it’s almost a simple as adding another factor to your model: the odds of expropriation by the leader and his cronies.

It does not take a very high number to make most capital investments look really bad.

And you compare that (investing in something new), to instead using the capital to bribe your way into the “system”.

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

#98

Post by InitialLastName » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

SanjayMehta wrote: post #59

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…

> UK number was 12000 per year.

"Arrested for social media posts" including things that aren't protected speech anywhere (harassment, threats, incitement to violence).

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

As critical as I am of the US administration (it wouldn't surprise me if they were investigating their critics, especially those who have large platforms and are openly supportive of adversaries), Tucker Carlson built his career by shilling conspiracies and persecution complexes. There's nobody here whose word you should take.

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

#99

Post by einpoklum » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:34 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #34

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…

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…

If a person or an organization can "trust the government", that means they don't have to trust their business partners that much, and don't even have to bother with a lot of contract language, since the government will force the other party to general legal norms and to act in good faith.

If the government cannot be trusted, or rather, can be trusted to be biased and corrupt, then - a person or an organization needs a lot of trust in their partner, and writing contracts is, like you say, not very interesting.

But actually, I would say it's the middle ground, where trust is partial, is where you see long and detailed contracts with provisions and indemnification clauses and long definitions and long lists of corner cases etc.

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

#100

Post by energy123 » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 2:35 PM UTC

lnsru wrote: post #55

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.

That's not what you voted for. Homeowners, on the other hand, did vote for it. In most countries they're the majority, and they're better at mobilizing politically. Autocracies are probably less likely to have the same issue because the leaders are petrified of a revolt from the lower classes. In a democracy, the majority (homeowners) will vote away your money.