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How the US Legalized Corruption
- raincom 6y agoAuthor missed one more method of corruption: writing books. These politicians write books, sometimes using ghost writers. And the publisher pays them millions of dollars, then the said politician goes on book tours and visits their 'patrons' in wealthy towns like Los Altos Hills, Atherton, etc. Some billionaires buy like 50,000 copies, then incinerate them without being found. There are even trustworthy contractors that incinerate such books. That's how it goes.
- indication 6y agoHi chaps, I wrote this. Some of you seem triggered by the white part. Whiteness is shit. No apologies there. If y'all want to be a decent human beings, you need to renounce whiteness. I'm brown but I'm not getting together with Pakistanis to bomb Myanmar based on our 'brownness'. Be American, be Italian, be your football team, I don't care. But whiteness is white supremacy, and it's central to the major problems the world faces. If you have a problem with that, you're a part of the problem As I wrote elsewhere: "Whiteness is white supremacy. There’s actually nothing else to it. There is no white food, there is no white music. Whiteness is just the dehumanization of everyone else, and that shit’s got to go. Renounce your whiteness. Be a decent human being." https://indica.medium.com/renounce-your-whiteness-be-a-decent-human-being-4b0b62417d02 https://indica.medium.com/renounce-your-whiteness-be-a-decen...
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoAuthor makes some excellent points.
- CapmCrackaWaka 6y agoUgh why bring race into this... Even if the author makes good points, he's not going to convince anyone by saying 'white people have funny words for bribes' in the first paragraph. This is coming from someone who 100% agrees with the rest of the article. Still, I won't share this with anyone I respect.
- flashgordon 6y agoExactly there was absolutely no need to invoke "whiteness" for the corruption to apply to anybody. Even simply saying "corporations/groups/etc" would have sufficed and may even have been more potent. Instead the article just ended up polarizing the audience on race lines. Sigh!
- alexfromapex 6y agoYeah same really abruptly made me want to stop reading. Imagine switching out white people with another race and it’s blatant racism.
- astkaasa 6y agoI guess replacing "white" with "Chinese" is a good idea. Another option is "Russian".
- mtrower 6y agoThat would seem to be a category error. One of those is race, two of those are nationality. Whether or not that’s a good idea depends on context. When you’re talking about matters of race, invoking race night make sense. When talking matters of nationality, invoking nation might make sense. When talking matters of nation, invoking race does not make sense. Naturally, invoking nation as a means of stereotyping and discrimination is a terrible thing as well.
- astkaasa 6y agoActually on the daily communication context these two nationality words are used as representation of races. You probably will not call a black/white people with China nationality "Chinese". And I will present you another example if you consider the previous too rare: you will definitely not call people from Tibet or Uighur "Chinese", right?
- mtrower 6y ago
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- k33n 6y ago> White people use funny words for bribes. Really bizarre way to start an article. It's quite remarkable how such statements are mainstream now. Is the author unaware that there are corrupt politicians of all backgrounds?
- jayd16 6y agoSeems like an overly simplistic take. How do you have any form of political donation without it being labeled a bribe under this way thinking? I'm for much harder reforms on political money but this article is surface level at best.
- jpambrun 6y agoIn Quebec company can't contribute at all and citizens can contribute only up to 100$/yr/party. Pretty much everybody is happy with that. In this frame of reference, the US political system does look extremely corrupted.
- grecy 6y ago> How do you have any form of political donation without it being labeled a bribe under this way thinking? You could: - Not have political donations at all (many countries run this way) - Have very strict accounting on political donations so they go the party, not the individual - Force politicians / elected representatives to wear the logos of the companies that are paying them so it's more transparent. > this article is surface level at best. The first step to fixing a problem is to identify there is a problem at all. As the article says, most have become to numb to this because it's seen as normal.
- Babiker 6y agoI'm not sure that this is a function of being white. It's a function of being a corrupt individual.
- elefanten 6y agoHaving read a few pieces from this author's blog, it strikes me that he lacks nuance and writes for sensational rhetorical effect. Debates about access and the role of money in American politics are important. Conflating direct bribery (as in transfer of value for official action) with fuzzy access politics does NOT clarify the discussion. It seems the point is to push back against some strawman argument that corruption only exists in less developed countries. But thankfully, we have a well-developed political science tradition that defines, measures and tracks these things much more carefully than a blogger-agitator. Toss in the petty racial elbow-jabs, this blog post is not particularly worthwhile.
- jtdev 6y ago“White people use funny words for bribery” Has the author never heard of Barack Obama?
- noobermin 6y agoHe mentions Obama in the article. I read "white" as being a generic term for Americans.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoThis is my take as well.
- escapegoat 6y agoPowerful people get rewarded: monetarily, in kind, through social status in every single political system that ever existed. Water is wet. Why is this an important article again?
- bichiliad 6y agoTo the comments that discredit the article for "bringing race into" the discussion, it's worth noting that: 1. the author is not white, nor lives in a place where white people are any sort of majority. 2. politics has largely been dominated by white people for much of America's history, so it's likely fair that these patterns were started and perpetuated by white people. 3. the author doesn't exempt non-white politicians from scrutiny (i.e. Obama doesn't get a pass). 4. it doesn't make his points any less valid, which is where the merit of this post lies.
- CapmCrackaWaka 6y ago1) Why does any of this matter? Perspective? 2) Sure, but are these patterns unique to white people? In America, sure, but what about corruption in Africa, China, Brazil, pick one. 3) Then why bring race into it? Surely saying something along the lines of 'white people are corrupt... But other races don't get a pass' is only inflammatory and does not help the discussion. 4) Sure, but you can have valid points and discuss them civilly. This article doesn't really attempt to do that, so why would I want to share the word? If the author wants people to take him seriously, he needs take optics into accounts.
- bichiliad 6y agoI think the point I'm trying to get at is that from his perspective, America is white and is run largely by white people. Corruption exists everywhere, but Americans are in the practice of being complacent with it. I feel like a conversation about how we've normalized corruption needs to die on the altar of civility. The people benefiting from corruption certainly don't care.
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- fit2rule 6y ago>1) Why does any of this matter? Perspective? Because the world is not white, and its not American.
- tyingq 6y agoThis article seems to use a lot of misleading language. Like: "The US Treasury Secretary, for example, has taken $7.2 million in ‘speaking fees’ from the people she’s supposed to be regulating." Not mentioned is that the speaking fees were prior to her being the US Treasury Secretary. They were all after she left her post at the Federal Reserve, and before becoming the Treasury Secretary.
- jimbob45 6y ago>America and the UK are the most corrupt places on Earth That’s a bold statement when NK and China both exist. I’m thinking this guy really hates America and won’t let reality stand in the way of his hatred.
- blabitty 6y agoCountries in Europe that are much whiter then the USA at this point have some of the lowest corruption on Earth. Countries in Europe that are much whiter then the USA at this point also have some very high levels. Maybe some variables besides white ethnicity are in play. Not that it matters in 2021 where saying "white people bad" can become a career.
- cambalache 6y agoI wonder what word people in Sri-Lanka use for corruption.
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- jaybrendansmith 6y agoSome interesting points. My first thought is that he is incorrect about the dinners and fundraisers ... these are political contributions, and the money here has restrictions on it and can only be spent for the campaign. I would love to see publicly-funded elections, but until the supreme court is changed we must live in this world of fundraisers. However, the speaking fees are an interesting point to say the least. They do seem crazy high, and I had no idea Janet Yellen had made so much money from them. Generally they all do it, but typically not until they are out of office ... raking in millions from the Finance industry seems completely corrupt.
- ropeladder 6y agoCalls for nuance are missing the point. Nuance is exactly what we need less of, nuance is the trees that hide the forest. Does Yellen have some professional ethics that guard against her acting in a way that overly favors businesses that have her millions of dollars? I think she does. Are those ethics effective as a guard against corruption in the same way that, well, not taking millions of dollars would be? I doubt it. Money talks. Maybe even more importantly, it severely hurts the legitimacy of government. How are you supposed to convince people you're on their side if you're making millions from the other side? If your lawyer was getting paid more than you could ever pay to share his wisdom with the other side over a fancy lunch, and then you lost the case, you would have every right to doubt their integrity--even if they had done nothing wrong. The US would have would have a lot less problems with conservative populism if the centrist technocratic impulse wasn't so often so tone deaf.
- JoeyBananas 6y agoIf someone offered me 1 million dollars just to tell me about their religion or politics or something, I personally wouldn't have any ethical problems with that. That's really all the author is accusing Yellen of. There is nothing in this article that says "Here is exactly how Yellen is abusing her power," all the article says is "she accepted money from banks!"
- LordDragonfang 6y ago>If someone offered me 1 million dollars just to tell me about their religion or politics or something But why would they do that without the implicit expectation of quid pro quo? Or more to the point, the past experience of quid pro quo, as it's obviously a one-of instance. You're attributing irrational behavior to billion-dollar CEOs. If Lyft regularly paid the chief software engineer for Uber a million dollars for having lunch with their CEO, the commenters here wouldn't be doing this wishy-washy "it's just a completely ethical lunch" crap.
- JoeyBananas 6y ago> Americans have this thing called a fundraiser where you put a pile of bribes on a table, wave a wand of asparagus over it, and it just disappears. Access is still bought, but somehow because people ate food, it’s not corruption anymore. The press will literally report on the food. I don't care if a politician gets paid 100,000 dollars for eating a meal because there's no obligation to do anything in return. Imagine if there was a car dealership where everything was full price but the salesman didn't have to give you a car after they take your money unless they felt like it. The author of this article is saying that business model should be illegal, but only if you're a politician.
- taylorfinley 6y agoIn this setup, would you pay for another car after not getting a return on your first spend? The problem is the incentives. Humans do what they are incentivized to do, largely. What about an $1800-a-night escort that decides she isn't interested in having sex with her customer? She isn't a prostitute, she can choose... but certainly if she exercises that choice she won't have many repeat customers, and if word gets around she won't find many clients at all.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y agoCan we please unflag this?