How Corruption Got This Bad
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
This is a problem not just in America but every democracy in the world. Some countries are just fortunate to be blessed with abundance that there's plenty left for everyone even after skimming off the top. But it's a ticking time bomb nonetheless ready to set off when the circumstances align.
I think people need to think about the fundamental structure of government. The three branch system as it functions today in many countries is clearly compromisable. The system needs to change, there must be a better mechanism to guarantee independence and integrity within the branches without the honor system.
Also when a Supreme Court Justice occasionally decides against the president in favor of the Constitution, they get attacked by the Trump administration and the right-wing media. It's even worse for lower court judges, whose lives get threatened.
Well, you haven't traveled much to other countries, I suppose.
Trump would look like an angel compared to other leaders in developing countries.
To the point where every American in this thread can't even imagine a place that isn't full of scams and lying and thinks everyone is the same.
The most bizarre behavioral thing is seeing all the incredible mental gymnastics to somehow explain away the corruption ("I'm sure they had good reason, they had to earn money!!!") when US people get scammed. No accountability, ever.
Citizens United, Biasing election outcomes through modifying the rules (such as jerrymandering, changing electoral requirements, making moves aimed at reducing voter turnout)
But I would include things like: the government buying data to avoid warrants, "asdf qwerty" as the required reason field for a warrantless data search, the Peloski index, Judges being invested in private prisons where they send those they sentence, dynamic pricing schemes that charge you more the more desperate you are etc.
But Americans and westerners visit these countries and they love it. They would be like wow the countries are paradise, so convenient, and etc.
However, the author admits "Congress can undo much of what the Supreme Court has done" and neglects to mention that Supreme Court justices are nominated and confirmed by politicians.
The author does touch on a broader point: "This isn’t partisan politics; it’s political elites protecting political elites." So the real question to me is, how did this phenomenon, which I would assume had always existed, get this bad?
My own view is that modern technology has allowed the wealthy to consolidate power on a national and even international scale, in a way not possible in the past, forming one big elite social club. You can see this with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal; that dude was friends with everyone, business, academia, art, politics, left, right, even royalty!
Society and politics adapted to that, with like finding like, and reinforcing like.
So many effects, but one is local politics, which could be quite diverse across states, all converged into national politics.
Both a convergence of political views, and a convergence of cross-state, all-levels candidate and campaign coordination.
And the more coordinated a group, the greater incentives and opportunity for those at the center to further centralize and consolidate power.
The result can be a single person holding sway across all levels of politics for the nation, and a dilemma where most everyone in his party is either their because they are just as corrupt, or willing to hold their nose and concede some of their own power, as the price they pay to get anything done.
The Constitution has checks and balances within government to hold back centralization of power.
But no provisions to stop coordinated power blocks by unofficial organizations, even across all three branches, like parties can.
When coordination got cheap, fighting coordination becomes challenging and expensive. Centralization of power becomes a very powerful default.
But the increased ease of centralization in modern democracies that the Internet made possible is incontrovertible.
Which isn’t any special insight on my part.
Centralization has increased and decreased in many forms throughout history. There are many forces working in either direction.
I would also suggest that seeing more corruption in the open, is more likely to indicate more corruption out of sight as well, rather than the opposite.
An anonymous organization has collected and released the collected knowledge of humanity. Included among this, they also collected and released the entire music catalog of a major tech company. They got sued for $322M, with a default judgment levied against them, but nobody can collect because nobody knows who this organization is.
The output of this organization has then been hoovered up by not one, not two, but by roughly a dozen different AI companies. Which they used to train models so effective that the U.S. government forbid the release of them under national security concerns. And then backed down after some token concessions because these models are too important to the U.S. military to go without.
There's a rule of thumb I use, which is that organizations that loudly chest-thump about how powerful they are and make a big show about exercising that power are anything but powerful. The reason they need to broadcast it loudly is because they are insecure that it will shortly be undermined otherwise. True power whispers; it's Eisenhower saying he needs an interstate highway system for national defense purposes (oh, and civilian transit would be nice too), and it happening before the end of his presidency because he had 80%+ approval ratings.
The nation state has never been weaker. I suspect the only reason it hasn't been replaced yet is that any of the organizations that could challenge it are enjoying unprecedented wealth, and there's no sense risking that for conflict.
Economics has always played a massive role in our politics.
How did we escape kings and feudalism? International markets opening through technological innovation enabled capital to generate enormous sums of wealth that challenged the old older.
What enabled postwar democracy? The ruling empire, the American, was "democratic", coupled with the destruction of all the wealth of Europe, meaning all the old oligarchs lost a substantial amount of power. Turns out royalists have less power when they don't have the finances to enforce their views.
Political power has also always depended on economic power. And later on, post 1970s, financial power (the private bank's ability to print money for free, something that used to belong solely to the state).
Financial and economic power has totally taken over government power, in many cases in an unholy marriage (as in America). The DMCA, the US forcing its laws down other nation's throats through treaties, etc, were the economic ruling class using the American government to enact their policy decisions for their own benefit.
And now with the internet we are regressing towards feudalism. Apple and Google extract 30% rents from every single mobile software purchase. The lords of old can only dream of such wealth generation through no productive effort of their own. Amazon likewise extracts insane rents from its sellers. Sure, in small pockets, there is resistance, but on a societal scale the commons, the average person, has absolutely been beaten back.
In general, bad corruption is no surprise in an authoritarian country, as opposed to a democracy, and of course an authoritarian country has concentrated power by design.
> There was a point not that long ago when all the rulers of Europe were cousins.
This somewhat misleading. The King of England, for instance, has not been the "ruler" of England for hundreds of years.
When will the people of the world stand up and demand justice? A global reform of governance is necessary, sooner or later. Seeing how the public defends the status quo, don't hold your breath - maybe better luck next century, if we still exist.
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." [1]
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/27042-as-democracy-is-perfe...