How to end govt corruption?

[Narz]

Solution to corruption is to try to create transparency ... which may be hard to achieve though.
And maybe also a bit more cooperation and less constant fighting in society ...

I think those two are linked. Elites realize fighting w each other distracts us from trying to organize and cooperate hence the pushing of identity politics on left & right

Corruptions is first of all a matter of society and culture.
The more you respect the society you live in ... the less likely you want to steal from it.

Yes also good point, in the US anyway respect for public officials and trust in democracy has been declining for some time. Someone like Trump is a symptom of that

 

[raystuttgart]

e.g. In East Germany during the times of DDR (before German reunification in 1989) two of the most corrupt organisations were:
Staatssicherheit aka. Stasi (Inland Secret Service) and Grenzschutz (Border Police controling the German Wall to West Germany).

Were those guys rich? Actually no, there salary was not really good - at least not compared to average salary of people with engineer jobs in industry or well paid academic jobs.
Still they were in positions of almost absolute power and no other organisation could control them ... so they had lots of opportuniy and nothing to fear ... thus easily got corrupted.

Corruption comes with power and lack of control.
It is most of all a topic of opportunity and fear of punishment.

But as I said, it is also a topic of society and culture.
As corruption in Eastern Germany was widely known and tolerated ... as it became more and more "normal" over time ...
There was very little trust anymore in the system and society and everybody was just fighting for himself ... trying to abuse the system wherever possible.

In other words:
Corruption is a symptom of a corroding society where everybody acts more and more selfish.
But the actual disease is the corroding society itself.

A united society might even be able to fight and drive back society ... as it may still have common values.
But everything we have these days shows that society gets divided and polarized more and more every day.

Thus participatiing in dividing and polarizing will just serve those that want to abuse the system and stay corrupt.
All this left vs. right, black vs white, good vs. evil, , ... is not going to solve anything ... it will only make things worse for everybody.

 

[Plains-Cow]

Hmmm....
Have we tried making corruption illegal?

 

[Farm Boy]

We used to gather and talk about how to be nice to each other, but attendance is down. The type of communications that cause polarization are up.

 

[raystuttgart]

Also you may look at the corruption index map:

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

And then tell me again that corruption is mainly a problem of capitalist countries.
Corruption is really first of all a symptom of a corroded society that lacks comon values.

...........

Corruption is definitely a lot more common in countries that are poor or ruled by totalitarian regimes.
Also china just achieved to bring down corruption the last years to a bit more reasonable levels by enforcing truly hard punishments and endless government control.

Also Eastern Europe also just got at least a little bit of hold on corruption after the Soviet Union collapsed and these countries joined the European Union.
Because to do so they had to fight corruption and follow European Laws to be accepted. Also they became wealthier and more stable countries.

...........

 

[Farm Boy]

Somalia looks more erect than usual.

 

[Gorbles]

I did not say it did not happened ... I just questioned that the company then was less corrupt or doing better afterwards ...

Ah, sorry. The implicit point was that nationalising banks after the banks massively failed as private institutions was that the nationalisation was an improvement

Elites realize fighting w each other distracts us from trying to organize and cooperate hence the pushing of identity politics on left & right

There are basically no "elites" invested in "the left". Certainly none pushing "identity politics".

But this is a way away from corruption in government at this point. Let's say this theory was true - it wouldn't be government; it'd be media. Private companies, etc.

 

[raystuttgart]

Let's say this theory was true ...

If you think that western governments (or societies or companies) are corrupt you never seen South America, Eastern Europe, Africa or Asia.

I lived e.g. in Brazil (Manaus, Amazon Forrest) for half a year, and the daily corruption I saw there was shocking for me as westerner.
I witnessed myself how e.g. a professor took a bribe by a student and also twice how police was bribed by a brazilian friend to not give a speeding ticket.

I have been to eastern Europe trips several times both for vacation and business ... and trust me ... you can still get everything there for money.
At e.g. "Golden Sands" in Bulgaria - one of the big tourist regions in Eastern Europe, the police controls most of the illegal business (in the party miles at night).

I have co-workers from Tunesia that try to get allowed to live and work in Europe, because situation after the Arabian Spring got so worse.
They tell me all the time about how much corruption got worse the last years and how little functional the Tunesian government still is.

Also I have been living in the United States for a year (near San Diego) and went to Mexico several times.
What I e.g. witnessed there at night in border towns like Tijuana you most likely know when you live in the States.

...

Seriously, corruption in the west is a joke compared to that ...

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The reason for all of that im my opinion as I already said is very simple:
Society in those places got corroded ...

And luckily situation is still a lot better in the captialist west ... at least until now ...

 

[Gorbles]

If you think that western governments (or societies or companies) are corrupt you never seen South America, Eastern Europe, Africa or Asia.

If you're going to keep making up things I've never said, I'm just going to stop replying, yeah?

 

[raystuttgart]

If you're going to keep making up things I've never said, I'm just going to stop replying, yeah?

Did not want to make anything up, so sorry if I misunderstood something.

My complete point is simply:
You want to fight against corruption (in government, industry, ... wherever), then fight for a wealthy, functioning and united society.
Otherwise you are tackling the problem at the wrong end.

 

[Gorbles]

You want to fight against corruption, then fight for a wealthy, functioning and united society.

Uh-huh, sure.

Anyhow, my point was that I wasn't even talking about corruption. I was replying to Narz about something I felt was a tangent.

I replied to you about nationalisation, and positive examples of it. As I predicted, it didn't change anything

 

[raystuttgart]

As I predicted, it didn't change anything

Admitted, nationalising some banks in western countries after the banking crisis was a good move ... it prevented total collapse of the banking system.
However this also meant that the tax payers covered for all the losses of otherwise bankrupt companies so the private sector did not have to do it.

What however actually changed something was actually all the new laws and regulaions that were introduced to prevent high risk speculations.
So it was mostly an issue of creating transparency and regulating the market that had the biggest effect ... not the deprivatisation.

-------

The de-privatisaton was done to prevent the collapse of the banking system and it happened with tax payer money.
Still it did not really change corruption that the companies were now public ... the new laws and regulations did that.

Also after the banking crisis society got aware of the problems and "the rules" changed.
And also all people did agree and were united ... as there was a common problem to be solved.

-------

In other words:
The problem was not that those companies were private (or public).
The banking culture and also society had a systematic issue that had to be fixed ...

Also please remember:
The government that did buy up banks after the crisis did not buy successful enterprises to simply make them private.
They bought bankrupt and insolvent wrecks with tax payers money ... to prevent more damage to private economy.

 

[Gorbles]

So it was mostly an issue of creating transparency and regulating the market that had the biggest effect ... not the deprivatisation.

"it wasn't the nationalisation, it was the effects of the nationalisation" sure isn't the hair you meant to split, I think

 

[Narz]

We used to gather and talk about how to be nice to each other, but attendance is down. The type of communications that cause polarization are up.

And then God said unto them "yo I'm gonna be slaughting some Egyptian infants tonight but I'm kinda busy so put an X on your door so I'll know you're the good race not the wicked race who I'm trying to genocide".

"Also love thy neighbor and stuff (if your neighbor is a Jew and hasn't had sex before marriage otherwise you can kill em w my blessing)"

 

[raystuttgart]

"it wasn't the nationalisation, it was the effects of the nationalisation" sure isn't the hair you meant to split, I think

It is a fact that the rules for speculations for saving banks dramatically changed to prevent something like this "speculation bubble" to happen again.
So there truly was a systematic change ... because otherwise those now goverment controled bank would simply have tried to speculate the same way again.

People will not suddenly become wiser and act more morally because they have a different boss ... that is actually a bit naive.
Those were / are still mostly the same people in charge. They just had to change because society itself changed and the rules also changed.

And again, what the governments "bought" was not really companies ... it "bought" many many billions of debt (with tax payer money) ... to save the economy.
As it took over all that dept it did of course also control those (shells of) banks ... until at one point they might be stable enough again to be sold back to the private economy.

And as I said, I actually fully agree with that move ... as it prevented a lot worse scenario.

It is however also pretty unrelated to corruption ... as it was a topic of massive over-speculation.
There was (in most cases) no crime involved ... just "normal" human greed and stupidity ... even if it did cost many billions of money and many thousands of jobs.

 

[Farm Boy]

And then God said unto them "yo I'm gonna be slaughting some Egyptian infants tonight but I'm kinda busy so put an X on your door so I'll know you're the good race not the wicked race who I'm trying to genocide".

"Also love thy neighbor and stuff (if your neighbor is a Jew and hasn't had sex before marriage otherwise you can kill em w my blessing)"

I remember what we talked about, your being a dick about it aside.

 

[Gorbles]

People will not suddenly become wiser and act more morally because they have a different boss ... that is actually a bit naive.

Think of it as a company restructuring. Which, most definitely, has an impact on how people work and what they do in their job.

It isn't about morals, or wisdom, or even knowledge. It's about accountability. I have many problems with my government, but it's still more accountable through democracy than any private company is. Which is why nationalisation makes sense for things that can be considered public services. It makes less sense for, say, luxury products, or specific niche things that require some kind of a transactional relationship.

 

[raystuttgart]

Which is why nationalisation makes sense for things that can be considered public services.

Nationalisation makes sense where private industry can not do it better.
(As e.g. it would not be profitable to do it but still necessary for society and economy to work.)

But in most cases private economy allows competition while nationalisation often creates subventions and monopolies and costs for the tax payers.
Competition in private industry usually leads to innovation and thus improvements of services and goods and also tax income ... which is a good thing.

So yeah, if private industry fails to deliver the goods and services necessary for society ... ok act as government.
That is exactly what happened in the banking crisis and it was in the best interest of the people.

Your example of government buying up bankrupt banks and their depts is a prime example of that point. Basically it was just another way of subventions.
Those bankrupt banks would have taken down the complete system otherwise ... but it left all the functioning and profitable banks untouched.

So why waste tax payer money for something if the private industry will do it and also creates more jobs and better products and services?
Thus it makes absolutely no sense for governments to buy companies that are profitable ... as they then get tax money from those profitable companies anyways.

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Small addition:
Most of these banks asked to be bought, so the owners / shareholders could limit their losses and their employees could keep their job.
The banking industry in these days was really happy for the government intervention ... it was definitely not enforced on them.

 

[Narz]

I remember what we talked about, your being a dick about it aside.

I'm not sure to what you're referring

My point was that idea that going back towards a more religious world will in no way make the world a more peaceful place (nor is it really possible)

 

[Farm Boy]

Behavior is truly unalterable.