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It's a symptom of complex systems. There's really no need for the financial system to be this complicated beyond serving the needs and wants of insiders. If yo
by rapind 6y ago
It's a symptom of complex systems. There's really no need for the financial system to be this complicated beyond serving the needs and wants of insiders.
If you have complexity you will have corruption. The more complexity, the more corruption. Some complexity is necessary, but most is not.
So instead of simplifying the system, you have to hire people that understand it to police it. Unfortunately the competent financial police are paid a small fraction of what they'd be worth in private industry, so now you have a mix of altruistic, incompetent, and opportunistic people. The latter pretending to be the former.
- lovecg 6y agoI don’t believe that complexity means something nefarious is going on. Everything has been getting more complex, just compare the cost of building a mile of subway or a power line today vs. a hundred years ago. Heck, just any active codebase. Complexity is the default and is very very hard to fight.
- rapind 6y agoIt's not that complexity is a direct cause of corruption, but that it gives corruption a place to hide. A complex system with incentives to abuse it will be far more corrupt than a simple system with incentives to abuse it. You can a) reduce the incentives for abuse, b) reduce the complexity needed to hide abuses, c) both. Since government is basically power, the incentives to abuse that power always exist. So look for complex government systems and you will inevitable find abuse (if you can navigate the system's complexity).