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I think you have some valid points however you also have one massive bias running through your statement: That the route of all corruption is wealthy people. I

I think you have some valid points however you also have one massive bias running through your statement: That the route of all corruption is wealthy people. I see you have found your scape goat to the problem. Wealthy people are just people - and there are many people who are not wealthy who are incredibly corrupt and more willing to take on the corruption risk. However it's much more convenient to paint wealthy people as the problem with the system then ascribe the problem to human nature as a whole or systemic problem.

cute_boi 5y ago
Maybe, corruption by peasants doesn't have that much impact compared to corruption en masse via wealthy people in the place where he lives? However, I do acknowledge that corruption is not just caused by wealthy people. The place where I live people have to do corruption if they want to live average quality life because the salary is so low. With the current salary, if they work honestly, they can't even afford a house for 15 years.
- Clubber 5y ago
  You're conflating the people who commit the corrupt acts with the people who pay for the corrupt acts. Corrupt acts typically require some sort of payment, enough payment that it's worth the risk, so it would need to be significant relative to the salary. The poorer you are, the cheaper it is to get you to do a corrupt act. The wealthier you are in comparison, the cheaper it is (relative) to get someone to do a corrupt act. But to your point, it takes two to tango, the person paying for the corruption and the person carrying out the corruption. I think the OP's point is the wealthy are the ones paying for it and asking for the deeds to be done. Having said that, there are other types of corruption like CYA coverups we see in the news from police departments and justice systems. The Breonna Taylor grand jury result comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Breonna_Taylor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Breonna_Taylor
- yetihehe 5y ago
  > Maybe, corruption by peasants doesn't have that much impact compared to corruption en masse via wealthy people in the place where he lives? Exactly yes. "Peasant's" just don't have enough money to meaningfully bribe someone. > With the current salary, if they work honestly, they can't even afford a house for 15 years. Wow, that seems like a nice place to live. I built a house (started in 2019, finished this year) with credit for 30 years, but I earn about twice the average in my country. Building it was the cheaper option, it was projected to be worth 50% more after building, now it's worth twice more.
- ttyprintk 5y ago
  Might I suggest that rigging an economy so that honest people cannot prosper from work does excuse corruption, but that the underlying policy is intended to make everyone complicit in massive corruption at the highest level?
yetihehe 5y ago
Wealthy people are not corrupted, they are doing the corruption. As I said in other comment, not every wealthy man is a source of corruption. But poor people are not a source of corruption, because they don't have resources to corrupt officials. And poor officials are typically easier to corrupt. Again, probably way less than half of officials are corrupt. > However it's much more convenient to paint wealthy people as the problem with the system then ascribe the problem to human nature as a whole or systemic problem. Poor people don't have means to corrupt others, that's why corruption is typically coming from wealthy people.
- rmellow 5y ago
  Poor people can absolutely be corruptors: Lets look at getting a driver's license in Brazil. It's widely known you can pay to pass your test, and driving instructors near ubiquitously act as middlemen. I know many people who have admitted to paying. They are not rich. There are many stories I've heard over the years of minor corruptions like this. Paying off cops to ignore irregular documentation, paying off an official to get ahead in line ... this is absolutely beyond rich vs poor.
  - 21723 5y ago
    It is the rich who make these systems. The poor just live in them.
    - nickpp 5y ago
      It's both rich and poor who corrupt such systems though.
      - 21723 5y ago
        And prisoners in concentration camps are responsible for their own famines. If only they would eat less. How can you hold responsible people who have no economic freedom?
        5y ago
stetrain 5y ago
Is corruption not the undue influence of personal financial gain over political decisions? Wealth is extremely important to the conversation, because corruption comes from individuals and corporations leveraging their wealth to influence politics outside of the democratic process. We can try to design systems that prevent people who want to throw money at politicians from getting their way, but they will still be trying to do so. Yes it’s systemic. Wealthy people aren’t mustache-twirling evil for wanting to leverage their wealth. They are making the most logical decision from their position. But if the system continues concentrating more wealth among a smaller subset of the population, without putting up increasing safeguards against its influence, then corruption over democracy seems to be the natural systemic outcome.
21723 5y ago
Bad take. Although there are decent wealthy people, the proportions are different. The correlation between material success and human decency is negative and this needs to be known; indeed, one of the most important cultural battles in this war with Capital is to correct the biases many people hold that enable them to believe their ruling class is somehow "different". It's not. Saying that there are some non-wealthy people who are also horrible, something we already know, is classic what-aboutism. People who thrive in managerial hierarchies (private sector bureaucracies) tend not to be the best among us. Rather, they tend to be the cancer cells of the human species. They are individually fit at the expense of the organism, and while we might hope for a future in which the matter is different, right now the best tools we have to deal with them (e.g., chemotherapy, radiation) are blunt, destructive, and unfortunately quite brutal.
- nickpp 5y ago
  Incidentally, both chemotherapy machines and radiation machines are made by corporations. Corporations which are built and run by managers and executives which you could say "thrive in managerial hierarchies". The value they add to our society and lives is tremendous and calling them "cancer" only shows your bias and lack of rationality.
  - 21723 5y ago
    Get back to your Jira tickets. You have standup in 10 minutes and you better be able to justify your daily wage. --Your boss
    - boringg 5y ago
      Everyone answers to someone - nobody is immune even if it looks like they are.
      - 21723 5y ago
        Arguably true, also irrelevant. I hope someone is paying you handsomely to post pro-corporate cappie nonsense here, because if you're doing it for free, that's just sad. For a serious response to what you said about modern medicine and the role of corporations in it... technological growth is possible under socialist as well as capitalist systems. It wasn't clear until the 1980s who was ahead and, on that, the reason the US "won" the Cold War (although we really didn't; we just lost less) is not that capitalism is superior--to be clear, the USSR was also deeply flawed, and Stalin was a paranoid butcher for whose actions there is no excuse--but that capitalism was a sea empire and the USSR was a land empire, and modern conflict is unfavorable to land empires. That's it. Land empires have to integrate people. Sea empires can point their cannons and say, "Give me money or die." The USSR had to integrate hundreds of different ethnicities. Capitalism just had to overthrow a few democratically-elected socialists and install dictators (see: Salvador and Allende). Capitalism was playing on easy mode; the USSR was playing on hard mode, and eventually fell after a severe mistake (Afghanistan) led to extreme internal dissent and resurgent nationalism. Had it been the other way around--a capitalist land empire against a socialist sea empire--it would have been the socialists who were wealthy enough to build modern medicine.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
"____ people are just people" is one of those thought-terminating things in this situation. It is true, but the degree to which it is useful depends highly on context. Truly powerfully wealthy people are a small group, globally. They are just people in the sense that they eat and shit and love their moms like everyone else, yes. But in their ability to shape the world around them they have much more capacity than almost everyone else. That is the topic here, and in that sense they are not "just normal people."
drewcoo 5y ago
Saying that rich people are the problem is not saying that all rich people are a problem. They're very different assertions. It's saying that people being rich is the problem. Having a desirable fungible thing means the ability to trade that desirable thing for favors. Being able to accumulate more of that thing means an unfair ability to do that. And that's corruption.
lamontcg 5y ago
While trick down economics probably doesn't work, trickle down corruption probably does. People see that rich people are getting ahead by corruption, so they emulate them and that is their rationale for breaking the rules.

cute_boi 5y ago

Maybe, corruption by peasants doesn't have that much impact compared to corruption en masse via wealthy people in the place where he lives? However, I do acknowledge that corruption is not just caused by wealthy people. The place where I live people have to do corruption if they want to live average quality life because the salary is so low. With the current salary, if they work honestly, they can't even afford a house for 15 years.

Clubber 5y ago
You're conflating the people who commit the corrupt acts with the people who pay for the corrupt acts. Corrupt acts typically require some sort of payment, enough payment that it's worth the risk, so it would need to be significant relative to the salary. The poorer you are, the cheaper it is to get you to do a corrupt act. The wealthier you are in comparison, the cheaper it is (relative) to get someone to do a corrupt act. But to your point, it takes two to tango, the person paying for the corruption and the person carrying out the corruption. I think the OP's point is the wealthy are the ones paying for it and asking for the deeds to be done. Having said that, there are other types of corruption like CYA coverups we see in the news from police departments and justice systems. The Breonna Taylor grand jury result comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Breonna_Taylor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Breonna_Taylor
yetihehe 5y ago
> Maybe, corruption by peasants doesn't have that much impact compared to corruption en masse via wealthy people in the place where he lives? Exactly yes. "Peasant's" just don't have enough money to meaningfully bribe someone. > With the current salary, if they work honestly, they can't even afford a house for 15 years. Wow, that seems like a nice place to live. I built a house (started in 2019, finished this year) with credit for 30 years, but I earn about twice the average in my country. Building it was the cheaper option, it was projected to be worth 50% more after building, now it's worth twice more.
ttyprintk 5y ago
Might I suggest that rigging an economy so that honest people cannot prosper from work does excuse corruption, but that the underlying policy is intended to make everyone complicit in massive corruption at the highest level?

yetihehe 5y ago

Wealthy people are not corrupted, they are doing the corruption. As I said in other comment, not every wealthy man is a source of corruption. But poor people are not a source of corruption, because they don't have resources to corrupt officials. And poor officials are typically easier to corrupt. Again, probably way less than half of officials are corrupt. > However it's much more convenient to paint wealthy people as the problem with the system then ascribe the problem to human nature as a whole or systemic problem. Poor people don't have means to corrupt others, that's why corruption is typically coming from wealthy people.

rmellow 5y ago
Poor people can absolutely be corruptors: Lets look at getting a driver's license in Brazil. It's widely known you can pay to pass your test, and driving instructors near ubiquitously act as middlemen. I know many people who have admitted to paying. They are not rich. There are many stories I've heard over the years of minor corruptions like this. Paying off cops to ignore irregular documentation, paying off an official to get ahead in line ... this is absolutely beyond rich vs poor.
- 21723 5y ago
  It is the rich who make these systems. The poor just live in them.
  - nickpp 5y ago
    It's both rich and poor who corrupt such systems though.
    - 21723 5y ago
      And prisoners in concentration camps are responsible for their own famines. If only they would eat less. How can you hold responsible people who have no economic freedom?
      - 5y ago

stetrain 5y ago

Is corruption not the undue influence of personal financial gain over political decisions? Wealth is extremely important to the conversation, because corruption comes from individuals and corporations leveraging their wealth to influence politics outside of the democratic process. We can try to design systems that prevent people who want to throw money at politicians from getting their way, but they will still be trying to do so. Yes it’s systemic. Wealthy people aren’t mustache-twirling evil for wanting to leverage their wealth. They are making the most logical decision from their position. But if the system continues concentrating more wealth among a smaller subset of the population, without putting up increasing safeguards against its influence, then corruption over democracy seems to be the natural systemic outcome.

21723 5y ago

Bad take. Although there are decent wealthy people, the proportions are different. The correlation between material success and human decency is negative and this needs to be known; indeed, one of the most important cultural battles in this war with Capital is to correct the biases many people hold that enable them to believe their ruling class is somehow "different". It's not. Saying that there are some non-wealthy people who are also horrible, something we already know, is classic what-aboutism. People who thrive in managerial hierarchies (private sector bureaucracies) tend not to be the best among us. Rather, they tend to be the cancer cells of the human species. They are individually fit at the expense of the organism, and while we might hope for a future in which the matter is different, right now the best tools we have to deal with them (e.g., chemotherapy, radiation) are blunt, destructive, and unfortunately quite brutal.

nickpp 5y ago
Incidentally, both chemotherapy machines and radiation machines are made by corporations. Corporations which are built and run by managers and executives which you could say "thrive in managerial hierarchies". The value they add to our society and lives is tremendous and calling them "cancer" only shows your bias and lack of rationality.
- 21723 5y ago
  Get back to your Jira tickets. You have standup in 10 minutes and you better be able to justify your daily wage. --Your boss
  - boringg 5y ago
    Everyone answers to someone - nobody is immune even if it looks like they are.
    - 21723 5y ago
      Arguably true, also irrelevant. I hope someone is paying you handsomely to post pro-corporate cappie nonsense here, because if you're doing it for free, that's just sad. For a serious response to what you said about modern medicine and the role of corporations in it... technological growth is possible under socialist as well as capitalist systems. It wasn't clear until the 1980s who was ahead and, on that, the reason the US "won" the Cold War (although we really didn't; we just lost less) is not that capitalism is superior--to be clear, the USSR was also deeply flawed, and Stalin was a paranoid butcher for whose actions there is no excuse--but that capitalism was a sea empire and the USSR was a land empire, and modern conflict is unfavorable to land empires. That's it. Land empires have to integrate people. Sea empires can point their cannons and say, "Give me money or die." The USSR had to integrate hundreds of different ethnicities. Capitalism just had to overthrow a few democratically-elected socialists and install dictators (see: Salvador and Allende). Capitalism was playing on easy mode; the USSR was playing on hard mode, and eventually fell after a severe mistake (Afghanistan) led to extreme internal dissent and resurgent nationalism. Had it been the other way around--a capitalist land empire against a socialist sea empire--it would have been the socialists who were wealthy enough to build modern medicine.

giraffe_lady 5y ago

"____ people are just people" is one of those thought-terminating things in this situation. It is true, but the degree to which it is useful depends highly on context. Truly powerfully wealthy people are a small group, globally. They are just people in the sense that they eat and shit and love their moms like everyone else, yes. But in their ability to shape the world around them they have much more capacity than almost everyone else. That is the topic here, and in that sense they are not "just normal people."

drewcoo 5y ago

Saying that rich people are the problem is not saying that all rich people are a problem. They're very different assertions. It's saying that people being rich is the problem. Having a desirable fungible thing means the ability to trade that desirable thing for favors. Being able to accumulate more of that thing means an unfair ability to do that. And that's corruption.

lamontcg 5y ago

While trick down economics probably doesn't work, trickle down corruption probably does. People see that rich people are getting ahead by corruption, so they emulate them and that is their rationale for breaking the rules.