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I recently listened to a journalist discuss her work on corruption. She made this point: the prevalence of corruption rises in cultures that view monetary wealt

I recently listened to a journalist discuss her work on corruption. She made this point: the prevalence of corruption rises in cultures that view monetary wealth as the only or primary mark of social status. She called it the Midas Disease as this pursuit is - at a certain point - meaningless (is another hundred million dollars when you already have 100 billion?), and yet - the effects of this pursuit have significant downstream effects on the fair application of justice, sustainable environmental policy, professional administration of governmental functions, etc. Edit: Sarah Chayes

dnissley 5y ago
I thought it was well known that corruption is a bigger problem in developing nations which are likely to be considerably less capitalistic than first world nations?
- tnzm 5y ago
  It may be well known, but is it true? "Corruption" implies there's a previously established social order to corrupt. But in developing nations this social order is not something that existed and is now being undermined; it's something that is still under development. Hence, "developing" countries - phrasing that assumes an "end-of-history" inevitability and self-evident goodness of the current status quo. In that sense, corruption is the process of a society developing towards capitalism, but using its pre-existing societal toolset of ad-hoc interpersonal arrangements, in all their messy complexity, rather than the established processes of societies with centuries-old institutional traditions of having 1 universal metric for everything (capital). As capitalism is based on inter-generational accumulation of wealth, corruption can only be resolved over generations as societies become more trusting of the rationalist paradigm.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  There’s nothing in what I said about developed vs developing nations. The dynamic is the same regardless.

dnissley 5y ago

I thought it was well known that corruption is a bigger problem in developing nations which are likely to be considerably less capitalistic than first world nations?

tnzm 5y ago
It may be well known, but is it true? "Corruption" implies there's a previously established social order to corrupt. But in developing nations this social order is not something that existed and is now being undermined; it's something that is still under development. Hence, "developing" countries - phrasing that assumes an "end-of-history" inevitability and self-evident goodness of the current status quo. In that sense, corruption is the process of a society developing towards capitalism, but using its pre-existing societal toolset of ad-hoc interpersonal arrangements, in all their messy complexity, rather than the established processes of societies with centuries-old institutional traditions of having 1 universal metric for everything (capital). As capitalism is based on inter-generational accumulation of wealth, corruption can only be resolved over generations as societies become more trusting of the rationalist paradigm.
germinalphrase 5y ago
There’s nothing in what I said about developed vs developing nations. The dynamic is the same regardless.