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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 nat

• 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.