4 ms·

> Institutional corruption will not be solved by losing trust in the institutions. When the institution dies because nobody trusts it you don't all of a sudden

> Institutional corruption will not be solved by losing trust in the institutions. When the institution dies because nobody trusts it you don't all of a sudden get good health care. That's a fair point. "Burn it down" is not a good solution. The system, even while corrupted, still results in vastly improved outcomes relative to what people could expect 100-150 years ago. > So if you believe that our medical institutions are corrupted, anger at the institution itself is misdirected. The corruptive force is billionaires and the measurement for the level of corruption is wealth disparity. I'm not going to say greed has nothing to do with it, but this is just such a reductive take that I don't think really even begins to address the multitude of perverse incentives going on with our healthcare system.

hayst4ck 4y ago
I was not being reductive. Money gets to vote on candidates before people do. Before any general election there is a primary, and to win the primary you do fundraising. People with money give politicians money with the implicit understanding that making anti-donor decisions will result in withdrawal of future money or (thanks to citizens united) unlimited contributions to their opponent. Money literally votes on political candidates before any person does. That is why we have a "democracy" more responsive to money than to the will of the average voter. Even if you look at it as a black box, Princeton did a study and asked if the legislation our politicians pass correlate most with the average citizen, interest groups, or the desires of rich people, the correlation was highest with rich people: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi... Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. Here you can watch Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig talk about this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE As wealth concentrates, it is able to purchase and corrupt further institutions. Bezos bought WaPo, Musk bought Twitter, I'm sure there are more examples. Do you think that is a form of power that is able to manipulate public opinion or government policy? Do you think ownership of a media outlet could help a person concentrate their wealth or fight being taxed? Even from a mathematical approach. If Billionaires are able to earn 5% year over year interest at minimal risk, while large swathes of people will never make enough to have a savings, what do you think the long term consequences of that will be? If inequality is increasing and never decreasing, what do you think the long term effects will be? What types of things cause inequality to decrease, are we doing those things? How much wealth has to concentrate before you are comfortable labeling it oligarchy? Here is Yale history professor and expert in European history Timothy Snyder talking about oligarchy, the rule of the wealthy few. "What is oligarchy?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biZVrh821RA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biZVrh821RA In this video he explores what oligarchy is and what effect oligarchy (the state of extreme wealth inequality -- too many billionaires) has on social programs like healthcare, namely that there won't be social programs/investment in institutions.
- lliamander 4y ago
  I agree we live in a relatively oligarchic society - that is an inescapable outcome for democracies. We would probably disagree as to the causes and alternatives to this oligarchic structure, but I don't want to go down that rabbit hole at the moment. What I am saying is that when you look at the problems with the medical profession, there is more at play here than the self-interest of billionaires. You talk at high levels about the impact of inequality on overall government policy, but not everything that goes wrong with an industry is a result of government policy, let alone policies favored by the wealthy. Medical research is fraught with issues of reproducibility. Government regulations artificially restrict the supply of healthcare. Technological advancement means that many people can now live sedentary lives, and it's adversely affecting health outcomes.
  - hayst4ck 4y ago
    Snyder would say you are practicing the politics of inevitability: https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-politics-of-inevitability-2022-03-20 https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-politics-of-inevitabilit... What the politics of inevitability does is that it teaches you to narrate in such a way that the facts which seem to trouble the story of progress are disregarded. So in the politics of inevitability, if there is huge wealth inequality as a result of unbridled capitalism, we teach ourselves to say that that’s kind of a necessary cost of this overall progress. We learn this dialectical way of thinking by which what seems to be bad is actually good. And, of course, that applies to foreign affairs as well. When we look at countries that are not making the quote-unquote “transition” to democracy the way we expect, you know, we find excuses. We imagine that the general trend is going to our direction in some deep way. And then we fail to notice, what has been the case for the last 15 years or so, that the world is actually moving in a very pronounced and easily observable way away from democracy. Here is a relatively quick video of him pretty directly critiquing what you just stated: https://bigthink.com/videos/timothy-snyder-political-outrage-why-all-sides-get-it-wrong-about-the-arc-of-history/ https://bigthink.com/videos/timothy-snyder-political-outrage... But the way that things are breaking now in the U.S. is that our politics of inevitability, which we’ve held to in the last 25 years, basically this idea that “since communism ended in 1989 there are no alternatives,” basically this idea that “technology must lead to enlightenment,” this idea that “the market must lead to democracy.” Those ideas have now come back to clobber us. Neither of them ever had any foundation. Both of them are highly persuasive to a lot of people and that’s lead to some consequences, which are very dangerous for the rule of law and indeed for democracy. Believing that, for example, more market means more democracy means that you don’t regulate things that you really need to regulate, like offshore wealth or anonymous transactions or shell companies. And that creates a world, a gray zone of capitalism where, for example, a Donald Trump can begin close relationships with Russian oligarchs. If you believe that technology automatically leads to progress, then you don’t watch very carefully as certain kinds of social platforms lead people into a politics of “us and them” and destroy a sense of common factuality. The story that you’re telling yourself the whole time about how “the market or tech have to lead toward enlightenment and democracy” dulls your mind to what’s actually happening until you reach the point that we’ve reached now. > but not everything that goes wrong with an industry is a result of government policy, It is not positive government policy that is the problem but government failure to act because the government operates on behalf of money (oligarchy), not on behalf of us (democracy). If not the government, where do you think a solution comes from?

hayst4ck 4y ago

I was not being reductive. Money gets to vote on candidates before people do. Before any general election there is a primary, and to win the primary you do fundraising. People with money give politicians money with the implicit understanding that making anti-donor decisions will result in withdrawal of future money or (thanks to citizens united) unlimited contributions to their opponent. Money literally votes on political candidates before any person does. That is why we have a "democracy" more responsive to money than to the will of the average voter. Even if you look at it as a black box, Princeton did a study and asked if the legislation our politicians pass correlate most with the average citizen, interest groups, or the desires of rich people, the correlation was highest with rich people: https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi... Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. Here you can watch Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig talk about this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE As wealth concentrates, it is able to purchase and corrupt further institutions. Bezos bought WaPo, Musk bought Twitter, I'm sure there are more examples. Do you think that is a form of power that is able to manipulate public opinion or government policy? Do you think ownership of a media outlet could help a person concentrate their wealth or fight being taxed? Even from a mathematical approach. If Billionaires are able to earn 5% year over year interest at minimal risk, while large swathes of people will never make enough to have a savings, what do you think the long term consequences of that will be? If inequality is increasing and never decreasing, what do you think the long term effects will be? What types of things cause inequality to decrease, are we doing those things? How much wealth has to concentrate before you are comfortable labeling it oligarchy? Here is Yale history professor and expert in European history Timothy Snyder talking about oligarchy, the rule of the wealthy few. "What is oligarchy?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biZVrh821RA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biZVrh821RA In this video he explores what oligarchy is and what effect oligarchy (the state of extreme wealth inequality -- too many billionaires) has on social programs like healthcare, namely that there won't be social programs/investment in institutions.

lliamander 4y ago
I agree we live in a relatively oligarchic society - that is an inescapable outcome for democracies. We would probably disagree as to the causes and alternatives to this oligarchic structure, but I don't want to go down that rabbit hole at the moment. What I am saying is that when you look at the problems with the medical profession, there is more at play here than the self-interest of billionaires. You talk at high levels about the impact of inequality on overall government policy, but not everything that goes wrong with an industry is a result of government policy, let alone policies favored by the wealthy. Medical research is fraught with issues of reproducibility. Government regulations artificially restrict the supply of healthcare. Technological advancement means that many people can now live sedentary lives, and it's adversely affecting health outcomes.
- hayst4ck 4y ago
  Snyder would say you are practicing the politics of inevitability: https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-politics-of-inevitability-2022-03-20 https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-politics-of-inevitabilit... What the politics of inevitability does is that it teaches you to narrate in such a way that the facts which seem to trouble the story of progress are disregarded. So in the politics of inevitability, if there is huge wealth inequality as a result of unbridled capitalism, we teach ourselves to say that that’s kind of a necessary cost of this overall progress. We learn this dialectical way of thinking by which what seems to be bad is actually good. And, of course, that applies to foreign affairs as well. When we look at countries that are not making the quote-unquote “transition” to democracy the way we expect, you know, we find excuses. We imagine that the general trend is going to our direction in some deep way. And then we fail to notice, what has been the case for the last 15 years or so, that the world is actually moving in a very pronounced and easily observable way away from democracy. Here is a relatively quick video of him pretty directly critiquing what you just stated: https://bigthink.com/videos/timothy-snyder-political-outrage-why-all-sides-get-it-wrong-about-the-arc-of-history/ https://bigthink.com/videos/timothy-snyder-political-outrage... But the way that things are breaking now in the U.S. is that our politics of inevitability, which we’ve held to in the last 25 years, basically this idea that “since communism ended in 1989 there are no alternatives,” basically this idea that “technology must lead to enlightenment,” this idea that “the market must lead to democracy.” Those ideas have now come back to clobber us. Neither of them ever had any foundation. Both of them are highly persuasive to a lot of people and that’s lead to some consequences, which are very dangerous for the rule of law and indeed for democracy. Believing that, for example, more market means more democracy means that you don’t regulate things that you really need to regulate, like offshore wealth or anonymous transactions or shell companies. And that creates a world, a gray zone of capitalism where, for example, a Donald Trump can begin close relationships with Russian oligarchs. If you believe that technology automatically leads to progress, then you don’t watch very carefully as certain kinds of social platforms lead people into a politics of “us and them” and destroy a sense of common factuality. The story that you’re telling yourself the whole time about how “the market or tech have to lead toward enlightenment and democracy” dulls your mind to what’s actually happening until you reach the point that we’ve reached now. > but not everything that goes wrong with an industry is a result of government policy, It is not positive government policy that is the problem but government failure to act because the government operates on behalf of money (oligarchy), not on behalf of us (democracy). If not the government, where do you think a solution comes from?