10 ms·

Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

• retep_kram 8mo ago
  It looks like a tautology to me. Like: "Corruption erodes social trust in places where social trust exist and is key for the political system."
  • deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  • lm28469 8mo ago
    I think culture and education play much bigger roles than anything else, all the sources I find show Germany and France having similar level of corruption (on top of being geographically and economically close) but completely different level of "social trust". China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell https://ourworldindata.org/corruption https://ourworldindata.org/corruption https://ourworldindata.org/trust https://ourworldindata.org/trust
    • eru 8mo ago
      > the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell What are you comparing with? I don't think PR China has more social trust than Singapore or Japan or Korea?
    • rob74 8mo ago
      > China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell There are a few reasons for that that I can imagine: - China is one of very few autocracies that has managed to significantly improve the standard of living of most of its population. - The public trials and (sometimes) executions of allegedly corrupt individuals might help improve the perception of corruption. - The same harsh penalties mentioned above might influence people to declare a higher level of social trust than they actually have, even if the poll is supposedly "confidential" and "only for scientific purposes".
      • ses1984 8mo ago
        >The same harsh penalties mentioned above might influence people to declare a higher level of social trust than they actually have. This 100%. Political imprisonment and reeducation camps are antithetical to any definition of a high trust society that I would subscribe to.
        • eru 8mo ago
          Doesn't matter too much what you subscribe to. Eg Nazi Germany still benefited from a high-ish level of social trust, despite numerous atrocities.
          • ses1984 8mo ago
            That’s actually the example I was thinking of. You can’t honestly say that a country where citizens inform on each other and put each other in forced labor camps based on rumor is a society where trust is high. > The Deutscherblick ("German Look") was a tense, habitual glance over the shoulder used by citizens in Nazi-era Germany before speaking about sensitive topics like food rations, Hitler jokes, or the war’s progress
            • inglor_cz 8mo ago
              Not just labor camps. People would regularly get beheaded for anti-regime remarks. Nazi justice was keen on capital punishment for relatively minor crimes. Nazi Germany was full of dedicated informers who would even earn money or other privileges for denouncing someone. It had about as much trust between strangers as Iran under the Revolutionary Guards might have today.
          • triceratops 8mo ago
            What's the benefit of social trust when a society can commit such atrocities? The entire point of a society is to care for its members.
            • miroljub 8mo ago
    • ses1984 8mo ago
      We are probably meant to assume ceteris paribus and only vary the dimension of corruption. I think you’re right that culture plays a key role. For example if small bribes are customary, that doesn’t erode trust, that’s just the way things are.
    • PaulHoule 8mo ago
      The corruption numbers break down into: (1) They didn't ask the question in China, (2) They asked somebody if they paid a bribe or if taking a bribe is every justifiable, and (3) "Expert estimates of the extent to which the executive, legislative, judiciary, and bureaucracy engage in bribery and theft, and the making and implementation of laws are susceptible to corruption" For (2) China doesn't look too different from the U.S., for (3) experts think it has gotten much worse since the time of Mao but I'd say China is on the honest side of the "global South". Note that lay perceptions of corruption are widespread in the US https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/51398-most-americans-see-corruption-as-serious-problem https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/51398-most-americans-see-c... https://news.gallup.com/poll/185759/widespread-government-corruption.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/185759/widespread-government-co... https://www.occrp.org/en/news/survey-reveals-corruption-as-top-concern-for-americans https://www.occrp.org/en/news/survey-reveals-corruption-as-t... though unlike India I think very few Americans have paid a bribe to a cop. See also https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/03/05/in-25-country-survey-americans-especially-likely-to-view-fellow-citizens-as-morally-bad/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/03/05/in-25-countr...
      • AnimalMuppet 8mo ago
        How do you see Xi's anticorruption campaign? Is it just a club to beat political opponents with, or is there a real problem and he's trying to fix it?
        • PaulHoule 8mo ago
          Both
        • jimbokun 8mo ago
          Knowing nothing my guess would be he wants all the benefits of corruption accruing only to himself.
        • curio_Pol_curio 8mo ago
          There's an interesting paradox hiding in plain sight here: Xi imported the anticorruption strat from Singapore, so superficially, PH below is correct. Since SG has the opposite problem from China: ((low) gov corruption XOR (low) social trust). The paradox is that the strat will have wildly different failure modes in SG vs CN or JP (all are aware of this!) Note also that SG is consistently ranked in the top 10 together with the Nordics+NZ+IE+CH in spite of this failure mode.. My informed opinion is that LDP+loyalist-bureaucrats have been shipping and failing the same strat for years-- LDP dominance is the tell. Any critique of Xi's policy can be backed with JP data. Prediction: Xi will succeed if and only if CPC fall (or do the ship-of-theseus thing) https://archive.ph/hsTzy https://archive.ph/hsTzy https://www.fairobserver.com/world-news/japans-new-ldp-scandal-is-unlikely-to-change-much/ https://www.fairobserver.com/world-news/japans-new-ldp-scand... Keywords (actual jargon) 天下り (fox->human) 忖度 族議員 行政指導
    • bdauvergne 8mo ago
      It's the institutional part which is lacking in France. Look at the budget of the ministry of justice in France per capita and in Germany. Germany spend twice as much and has twice as much judges per capita than France (and everything which goes with it like clerks). My company took the biggest telecom company in France to court for a violation of our license on a soft, license was GPLv2, we won, but it took 12 years. Justice is a very poor and slow institution in France. For the same countries the budget of police forces per capita are nearly the same for example.
      • joe_mamba 8mo ago
        Also Germany spends more than France on defence while having a lot less to show for, with France having nuclear weapons, nuclear subs, aircraft carriers and a much more capable military overall with less money. Germany is the poster child of government waste. If I were a taxpayer there I'd want my money back and/or bureaucrats going to jail.
  • PunchyHamster 8mo ago
    Kinda; authoritarism runs on bribes and nepotism, of course corruption would have lesser effect here, it's expected
  • scythmic_waves 8mo ago
    It's not a tautology because it's not guaranteed. There are plenty of plausible sounding claims that fail to be true. That's why science is needed: to provide _empirical_ evidence for/against a claim.
    • sigbottle 8mo ago
      Not to be an "uhm actually" guy but this goes into a lot of interesting philosophy in the first half of the 20th century. You would probably agree that "a fish is a fish" is a tautology, but for more complicated things it gets murkier and murkier. Separating out what are the tautologies from not was a big effort. Then Quine came along, and a big portion of people migrated away from the distinction
      • scythmic_waves 8mo ago
        I dabble in "um actually"s myself (especially given that my original comment was one), so no worries :) I don't disagree with your comment exactly. But I primarily wanted to push back on a common response to scientific works. Something to the effect of "Well obviously, everyone knew that!". Except they didn't because they (presumably) didn't actually investigate. And even after the science, they still don't _know it_ know it. But post-scientific inquiry, they have a much stronger claim to the knowledge than they did before. So the type of dismissal in the root comment is seriously missing the point.
• ekjhgkejhgk 8mo ago
  Well obviously.
• gmerc 8mo ago
  What you're saying is that with the shift to autocracy, all these trust problems will become manageable?
  • bryanrasmussen 8mo ago
    once you know the way to solve problems is to pay off the people with power you start to trust people again, because things are working the way you were told they would.
    • mrktf 8mo ago
      or in other words: people in power are corrupt, but they usually are corrupt equally for everybody.
      • GCUMstlyHarmls 8mo ago
        for everybody who can pay.*
      • bryanrasmussen 8mo ago
        well that everybody in power is corrupt, corruption is equally distributed through the system - the future has arrived!
      • flipgimble 8mo ago
        But they are not equal for everybody, that’s the point of corruption. If you are part of some in-group then you may have to pay lower bribes initially, and generally get away with more corruption to your benefit. But over time you will find yourself on outside eventually and enduring higher costs. Authoritarianism is inherently volatile, threatening and unpredictable, with only those in power making profit in the short term.
  • deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
• brookst 8mo ago
  So following this through, does it mean that autocracy is the preferred government for a country that sleepwalked past the tipping point where corruption is entrenched because the institutions that could uproot it are themselves deeply corrupt?
  • someguyiguess 8mo ago
    No. It does not say that. You added that meaning.
  • watwut 8mo ago
    No, it just means that in autocracy everyone assumes institutions are corrupt, so no trust is broken. If you don't have trust, it cant be broken.
    • Sharlin 8mo ago
      Perhaps ironically, there are still institutions that to some extent rely on social trust in autocracies. For example, the black market is an institution. As is the "bribe economy" – the general understanding that getting X done generally costs you around Y, where Y is not arbitrary. Then there's the whole thing about criminal organizations that typically rely on social cohesion and upholding all kinds of rules.
      • eru 8mo ago
        The 'bribe economy' you described is one of the conjectured reasons PR China grew faster than India.
      • watwut 8mo ago
        Black market participants do not trust each other and defraud each other. Then they settle the differences via violence. Likewise, bribe economy has an element of "they took the bribe and did nothing". > Then there's the whole thing about criminal organizations that typically rely on social cohesion and upholding all kinds of rules. Those rules are broken constantly and have to be reinforced via force constantly. The members of actual criminal organizations do not trust each other. They take the risk of betrayal very seriously. Including by pre-emptively killing own friends to protect themselves.
• bryanrasmussen 8mo ago
  This does sort of feel like the kind of thing I might think and wonder about and then do a lot of work doing a study and some research and writing up an article and in the end everyone says "yeah, no duh!"
  • catlifeonmars 8mo ago
    I can’t speak to this area of research, but studies for obvious things are still quite important. Maximal surprise is not a goal of science, nor is it an effective way to advance knowledge in a field.
    • PepperdineG 8mo ago
      I think of the recent study with raccoons how they like to solve puzzles. That was something well-known but not actually scientifically demonstrated and measured until now.
    • lo_zamoyski 8mo ago
      The expectation that science must necessarily "surprise" us is a terrible habit. It creates an unhealthy lust for novelty, a trivialization of what it means to "know" or to "understand" by conflating it with familiarity, and it can impede understanding, because the person in question will deny the straightforward and hunt for the "surprise" which becomes a criterion for truth. It can also feed into an incoherent categorical skepticism of human rational powers and tantalize superstitious, gnostic appetites. Science (broadly understood) looks for explanation and for verification. The point is to understand. Many interesting things may be found by analysis of what is known.
• dotcoma 8mo ago
  Corruption erodes social trust where social trust exists.
  • fer 8mo ago
    Exactly, sounds tautological.
    • yubblegum 8mo ago
      The point isn't to make a logical assertion. It's a fucking heads up.
• victorbjorklund 8mo ago
  Of course. Because in a dictatorship your social trust is based only on other things than the govt while in a democracy your social trust is in the govt as well.
• mothballed 8mo ago
  Corruption makes things more democratic in an autocracy by providing a mechanism of soft power by people not directly in the autocratic office. Corruption makes things less democratic in a pure democracy by granting more soft power to some individuals' 1/N office ( N= population size).
  • bell-cot 8mo ago
    > Corruption makes things more democratic in an autocracy... Technically, maybe yes? But autocrats tend to use "de facto authorized" corruption as a carrot for their loyal supporters, and "arrested for corruption" as the corresponding stick. Which leads to outcomes little different from an absolute dictatorship. Except the autocrat now has a convenient scapegoat for problems affecting the populace - corrupt officials - and a nice narrative for explaining the sudden removals of officials whose loyalties or performance were not to the autocrat's liking.
• dzink 8mo ago
  You have to understand how gears shift from there. Trust is essential for business transactions and specifically for long term investments. You can’t make massive leaps in technology or medicine or many other areas without trust (a lot of money on a leap means if you don’t trust the other side or the government to keep conditions stable, you won’t see a return). Now if you are in a high trust society, you may have a lot of leveraged businesses or governments who have gotten loans or permission to do something based on past trust history. If the trust degrades systematically Investors may want returns faster, or interest rates go up, or partnerships don’t happen. That’s why low trust places don’t grow as fast - trust is the oil for growth engines and lack of it is sand for the same. Corruption also does a lot of small-profit-for-the-corrupt that leads to massive damage to the overall society via second and third order effects. (example: someone stealing copper cables that stop electricity to entire cities for a while).
  • cucumber3732842 8mo ago
    Are we living in the same reality? Look at how business works in the rich west works. Everything is formalized with contracts, risk is portioned out and offloaded to every party under the sun. You bring in people with licenses and accreditation, 3rd party consultants, etc, etc. All of this work and expense is incurred so that if things go wrong then the parties all have precisely defined ways in which they can (expensively) drag the matter through a courtroom and whatever comes of that will be enforced with state violence. Contrast with (certain parts of) the far east and eastern europe. The west is the low trust environment.
    • tw04 8mo ago
      Your response just proves his point. All of that paperwork, all of those contracts- that assumes you can trust the government to fairly enforce the law. In a society where corruption rules, you have no reason to spend time and money on any of that because you know you’re one bribe away from it all being kindling for your next bonfire. So yes, in areas with high corruption they don’t bother. They either just set aside some cash to pay off whatever official they need to if things go sideways, or they hire the local judge’s son to an empty position of power so that they can win anything that goes to “court”. That’s not a sign of high trust, that’s an acknowledgment there’s no point in bothering.
• himata4113 8mo ago
  People generally are saying the same thing, the more trust exists the more you got to lose. However, it's not that simple there's a different kind of trust that comes with these types of social structures and they usually trust that as long as they keep their head down nothing will change. You can obviously draw parallels with conservatives here, but in reality people more often than not just want to live their life. Democracies tend to be a lot more active politically and promote transparency so there is trust that your government is being transparent and that your vote matters. Of course if you find out that your political activism and votes don't accomplish anything due to corruption you check out and start disliking your government. Autocracies don't have political movements to begin with (exceptions apply) so it is way less impactful. There's way more comparisons to be made, but in general they roughly boil down to the same thing.
• SanjayMehta 8mo ago
  BS data is BS. On what basis have they classified each country as a democracy or an autocracy? Edit: this article is an example of a circular research. Create a narrative branding target entities - in this case countries - with a positive or negative characteristic. For some reason the Scandinavians revel in this. Another example of compromised organisations are the various US govt funded "think tanks" which publish annual reports which are then used to classify whoever they want with whatever they want. Which then the US regime uses as a pretext for unprovoked attacks. The West is an example of systemic corruption at the highest levels, surpassed only their citizens collective ignorance and hypocrisy.
  • iammjm 8mo ago
    Speaking of "the West" is dumb, ignorant, and worst of all, not really helpful or insightful. Just as speaking of "the East" or "Asia". It just doesn't make sense to make these broad generalized statements about various multiple self-governing countries spanning hundreds of millions of people and thousands of square kilometers.
    • lyu07282 8mo ago
      What a perfect example to demonstrate the "collective ignorance and hypocrisy of western people" they were mentioning. There is a dichotomy in "Corruption", it is weaponized as a tool of neocolonialism in the continued subjugation of the global south and systematically downplayed and re-framed in the west. The west is just a shorthand for countries within the global north that are part of the international liberal order. This is all well established terminology, including "western imperialism" and "western hegemony". Its not our fault you are hearing these words for the very first time.
• the__alchemist 8mo ago
  I have been thinking about this more and more the past few points, to the point where I feel like I have to run for office as a social duty. (USA) There are so few politicians who give more than lip service to stopping corruption. Our districts are embarrassing. People tolerating the blatant corruption by the Trump administration is something I don't understand. They will get upset about Epstein, but don't care about the corruption. (See for example the recent Jared Kushner contracts for one of many examples) Congress campaigns funded by PACs. Phrases of interest: "Conflict of interest". "Shame". It is wild how people still vote for corrupted politicians, which is almost all of them. My parents are the prototype. If you take money from corporate-funded interests, you still have a conflict of interest, even if you aren't caught acting in the favor of those corporations.
  • Forgeties79 8mo ago
    Problem is a lot of people engage in textbook expressive responding when it comes to corruption. Everybody doesn’t like it allegedly, but a lot of people are willing to look the other way if they agree with the policy being carried out and, more importantly, politically aligned with the person engaging in the corruption. The bar they set is incredibly high unless it involves a politician they don’t support, then a rumor is enough for them to go “yeah I knew it.”
  • Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago
    It's the idea that I heard somewhere or watched but the idea's basically "slowly at first, then all of a sudden" My understanding of US/America/even-other-parts-of-world is that they weren't always like this but slowly turned into something where instead of voting for the better candidate, you are voting for a slightly less worse candidate and that opens up a can of worms because you just have to be or you have to somehow present yourself as a slightly lesser bad option to the masses (well the masses who vote anyway) Another tactic I have seen is just proposing that we will do something that no-one thinks is possible or should be possible because they don't make sense and its a "joke" but you plant the seeds in terms of jokes which they later capitalize upon on. Things happen slowly then all of a sudden and then they become norm. It's the silence that we have during it happening slowly that speaks the loudest.
• useftmly 8mo ago
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• throawayonthe 8mo ago
  > From V-Dem, we use two measures of democratic quality: the Regimes of the World (RoW) classification and the Liberal Democracy Index. The RoW (Lührmann et al., 2018) is a categorical measure distinguishing closed autocracies (no multiparty elections), electoral autocracies (multiparty elections that are not free and fair), electoral democracies (free elections but limited liberal protections), and liberal democracies (free elections with strong liberal protections). by "democracy" they of course mean liberalism
  • cess11 8mo ago
    Yes. In this sense the cold war never ended. The country I live in consistently ranks as rather non-corrupt but I would disagree with this assessment since I know that our biggest party (where I was a member for some years) is slavishly loyal to one of our main 'stock market owner families', and would consider a lot of legal practices and regulations highly corrupt. Clearly this is also outside of the scope of this study.
  • SanjayMehta 8mo ago
    They classify Germany and the UK as democracies. That's precious. Germany has sanctioned its own journalists as has the UK. I don't remember the number of ordinary citizens arrested in Germany for social media posts but I know the UK number was 12000 per year. Now let's look at the US: Tucker Carlson is under the gun for allegedly being a Russian or is it Iranian agent. But the US is a democracy. https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-foreign-agent-charges-cia-doj-11679723 https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-foreign-agent-charge...
    • fer 8mo ago
      > Germany has sanctioned its own journalists If we're talking about the same case, the EU sanctioned him, the man is at least dual citizen, and received Russian funds via his media company in Turkey, then proceeded to say it was all because it was about his coverage of Gaza. All of that is in the EU sanctions page, but "democratic" media coverage focused and pinned it on the Gaza bit. If you're talking about Thomas Röper (of Anti-Spiegel) and Alina Lipp, well, it's even more clear cut, not sure how are you trying to sell legal action against those as lack of democracy. It's disingenuous in the best case. Regarding UK, the 12k figure is real but related to all forms of communication, and by large involving threats, domestic violence and the like. Not for "social media posts". >Tucker Carlson is under the gun for allegedly being a Russian or is it Iranian agent. But the US is a democracy. Tucker Carlson took the grifter turn and makes money off it, not unlike Alex Jones. He'll behave like anything that can bring him manageable and profitable attention.
• butILoveLife 8mo ago
  Id be curious if people in a democracy would answer No to the question "Is it normal to look through your SO phone?" more than in autocracies. Western idealism has taught us perfection and that corruption/cheating/lying/fraud/etc... is not the standard.
• Sparkyte 8mo ago
  Coffee is a roasted bean with hot water taking its essence.
• varispeed 8mo ago
  Corruption is rife in the West. Wealth managers wine and dine with governments and essentially order policies that nobody voted for that continue to be developed regardless of which party won the elections. Same faces meet with new cohorts of politicians and continue to get their way whilst security services supposed to protect democracy hide their heads in the sand. See things like Digital ID, censorship, surveillance - nobody voted for this, but certain wealth managers want this to happen and so it takes priority over issues that actually people would want to be resolved (housing, healthcare to name a few).
  • lnsru 8mo ago
    I am in Germany. Apparently very democratic place. However nothing happens what people voted for. There is always few groups advertising affordable living in Munich. Never happened. Every year the rent climbs to new never seen high. The system very obviously does not work as advertised. The conspiracist in me however thinks, that the system works as intended.
    • 1718627440 8mo ago
      > There is always few groups advertising affordable living in Munich. Never happened. Every year the rent climbs to new never seen high. The system very obviously does not work as advertised. Or the problem is harder then to be solved with just wanting to solve it?
    • marcosdumay 8mo ago
      The purpose of a system is what it does. "As intended" is something that doesn't exist at all.
    • energy123 8mo ago
      That's not what you voted for. Homeowners, on the other hand, did vote for it. In most countries they're the majority, and they're better at mobilizing politically. Autocracies are probably less likely to have the same issue because the leaders are petrified of a revolt from the lower classes. In a democracy, the majority (homeowners) will vote away your money.
• theultdev 8mo ago
  Well yeah. In a democracy you have a constitution with the government on what to trust them on. Inalienable rights that are agreed upon that they will not violate. With an autocracy there was no agreement and therefore no trust to begin with. So yes, you'll be more pissed if someone violates the contract with you vs never having one in the first place.
• fedeb95 8mo ago
  and this is a good thing.
• anovikov 8mo ago
  Perhaps because in autocracies there is no 'society' by definition? That's why they are called autocracies. Social trust is a way horizontal relationships between people are framed and organised - that is, relationship that does not go through the state. In autocracies, these just don't exist. Everything bigger than a a family (in some countries, extended family or a clan), goes through the State. There is no 'social trust' because there is no society to begin with - and state enforcement makes trust unnecessary and even dangerous.
  • PaulHoule 8mo ago
    See this notorious anti-fascist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nisbet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nisbet
• deleted 8mo ago
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• tmilard 8mo ago
  I wonder more : in wich side is considered today USA ?
• t0bia_s 8mo ago
  What corruption does to communism and democracy in Russia in years 1985 to 1999 is well documented in latest Adam Curtis documentary series Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_1985%E2%80%931999:_TraumaZone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_1985%E2%80%931999:_Trau...
• pikachu0625 8mo ago
  Everyone works for their community, and rewarding those who contribute the most by consensus is trust, regardless of gender, race, skill, or inheritance. The opposite is corruption.
• axegon_ 8mo ago
  I't s bit more subtle than that. You need to look at it from a different perspective: corruption is fuel for dictators that are openly your enemy way more than you think. It's almost like a cheat code. Dictators are not concerned about corruption in their own countries because they hold the entire supply chain. No one in an authoritarian regime would dare to call out the authorities/dictators on their corruption. If anything, they will outright deny it or reject it even if you shove it in their face: some for fear of their own well being, probably more because they are a product of not just single oppressed generation and propaganda, but multiple centuries and dozens of generations. To them, this is the only reality that exists. Ronald Reagan's joke[1] might sound like a joke but this is in fact very much the mentality we are dealing with. And the current US administration's actions are playing beautifully for russia, china, etc. Same for dictator wannabes here in Europe. And even if they get caught lying(which they do on daily basis), all they have to tell their citizens is: "look at {insert_anything} that {democratic_country_where_criticism_is_not_prohibited} is doing". They are basically hijacking legitimate opposition: they criticize the US government for instance, portraying them as bad, regardless of who is behind the wheel and are benefiting the most from the least competent ones in charge: the least competent ones do a terrible job, but because they get criticized in the same way by local opposition and foreign enemies, the local opposition gets automatically associated with the foreign enemy and invalidating anything they say,. And thus, ensuring that blind and delusional supporters will stick with the current status quo no matter what. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qh-1_tXeuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qh-1_tXeuQ
• Stranger43 8mo ago
  And completely understandable once you understand the narratives of both system. An autocrat is supposed to be "Powerful" beyond all else and typically aren't required to be accountable to anyone so as long as the narrative of "Powerfully competent" holds corruption is merely an part of the narrative. In democracies the leadership is very much meant to be by and off the people and held accountable under the same legal standard they enforce on everyone else, and when that leadership start to act with the impunity of an "entrenched" aristocracy and stop following the rules the narrative breaks. And lets not forget that the original feudal aristocracy held their position almost entirely by the mechanism of unchallengeable property rights in an zero sum economy* and we begin to understand why the accumulation of property/wealth into fewer and fewer hands is a almost unmanageable threat to the narratives of western democracy. *We are returning to an zero sum economy as the planet have essentially run out of unowned/unused resources and that means that modern western economic solutions(grow grow grow) is simply not available anymore.
• otikik 8mo ago
  Of course. If there's no trust, you can't erode it (pointing finger to his temple meme jpg).
• bparsons 8mo ago
  Something a lot of people don't understand about operating within a corrupt system -- the person paying the bribe is usually the one being controlled. Yes, those who pay receive special benefits, but it is against the background threat of reprisal if you cease paying. Hey, that's a nice software company, it would be a shame if something happened to it. By the way, my son is raising money for his new crypto venture. You should think about investing.
• yason 8mo ago
  It's well known that in authoritarian regimes (which autocracies generally are) corruption is, rather than a problem, a necessary element of society to keep things going. Anyone with the slightest amount of official power, like a government officer, has the ability to prevent things going forward on his part. In this kind of society, most people are poor and it would be considered stupid to not demand a small (or large) bribe from the citizen in order to unlock the process. Everyone does it, more with outsiders and to a lesser extent with one's circle of acquaintances (because the social fabric between known parties is the other way to unlock things). Corruption surely is one thing that really trickles down from the top. So, things like like obediently waiting in the queue for your turn or complaining about the officer won't help unlike in high-trust societies. If you try that in a low-trust society there will be additional documents, stamps, acknowledges, or signatures you need, and keep needing, in order to complete your request until you get the drift and bring a little something. Corruption gets things going and in a society that has no trust it is a positive trait. In Western democracies this sounds unimaginable because there's a stronger sense that right things will work out right just because of the rules. Western corruption happens on a different level: a regular western citizen has no benefit from giving bribes and he would object to the police or government officials from demanding one. Western corruption mostly concerns about the powerful and rich making friendly mutual agreements to bend the governing bodies and law to enable themselves become more powerful and richer.
  • mentalgear 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    • mike_ivanov 8mo ago
      Bullshit. We have more words for flavors of bribery than for types of snow.
      • drysine 8mo ago
        Do we?
    • 8mo ago
• alexfromapex 8mo ago
  The word democracy is so overused, the US is a plutocracy for instance.
  • tmountain 8mo ago
    Plutocracy or oligarchy with the amount of nepotism recently.
• rgupta1833 8mo ago
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• mwigdahl 8mo ago
  I think this research really suffers by not acknowledging that there are different types and scopes of corruption, and these different types impact societies in considerably different ways. The "four types of corruption" breakdown by Yuen Yuen Ang I think is really informative here, with its two-axis breakdown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption#:~:text=Petty%20theft%2C%20grand%20theft%2C%20speed%20money%2C%20access,economists%20found%20burdensome%20to%20businesses%20in%20practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption#:~:text=Petty%20the...). Amalgamating all corruption into a single corruption index doesn't distinguish between these types, and it seems reasonable that different "flavors" of corruption impact social trust in different ways.
• deleted 8mo ago
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• phendrenad2 8mo ago
  The good news is, we found a clever workaround for the corruption problems in government. The bad news...
• DrScientist 8mo ago
  >accompanied by efforts to rebuild and maintain social trust: swift, visible accountability when corruption is discovered This is essential - too often what we see is persecution of whistle-blowers instead ( with the wrong-headed logic that it's the revealing of wrong doing that's somehow the problem, rather than the wrong doing itself ).
• givemeethekeys 8mo ago
  The top is always corrupt. When the bottom realizes this, then the poison has spread.
• jjk166 8mo ago
  I think modern democracies and autocracies are really just proxies for societies where wealth begets power and where power begets wealth, respectively. A rich person buying their way into power (either through gaining a formal position or influence) robs the people of that society of their power, which is a limited resource. There is no upside to it, if it were good for the people at large there would be no need for the corruption. Conversely, a powerful person enriching themself can be a good thing. A crony being put in charge of a state owned corporation, for example, doesn't really take anything away from the common person. It's not like you were in line to be the CEO of a random oil company. So long as your material condition is improving, the rising tide is lifting your boat, who cares if the tide is also lifting someone else's bigger boat. This sort of corruption aligns the interests of the powerful with the economic well being of the nation - the better things are run, the more comfortable the leaders will be - and it's certainly preferable to other ways they could potentially abuse their power. Who wants to be lead by someone so incompetent that they can't find a way to skim a little off the top? We in democratic society also don't really mind too much if a person achieves tremendous wealth so long as they don't dilute our power. Whether they be startup founders, business moguls, movie stars, rock stars, reality tv stars, socialites spending daddy's money, so long as they stay out of politics and avoid accusations of heinous crimes we not only put up with them, we idolize them. That's not to say that the Kardashians are morally equivalent to the current CEO of Gazprom in terms of how they gained their fortune, but none of us are under the illusion that their wealth is the consequence of hard work providing a much needed good or service to society at large, and if they leverage their status to make even more money that's not going to erode our social trust in any meaningful way.
  • imadierich 8mo ago
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  • eszed 8mo ago
    That's a really interesting point of view, which puts things in terms I hadn't thought of before. Where it breaks down is the stage where the cronies being put in charge aren't competent, and their only qualification is their proximity to power. Then (too much of?) the tide gets diverted, and most of the boats stop rising. I can think of no examples where a society that permits leadership-by-crony did not reach that end-state.
• cindyllm 8mo ago
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• captainkrtek 8mo ago
  Was talking about this with some colleagues who are from Ukraine, Russia, and other countries. In the US, it seems corruption is only allowed at the top. If you tried to bribe your way out of a traffic ticket as a regular person, you'd get in big trouble, then meanwhile the president pardons wealthy fraudsters [1]. Meanwhile, in countries like Russia, everyone can get in on the action. A colleague of mine told me if he were to get drafted to the war, he knew exactly how much to pay and who to pay off locally to get his name off the list. It's equal opportunity corruption. [1] - https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/28/nikola-founder-trevor-milton-pardoned-by-trump/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/28/nikola-founder-trevor-milt...
  • wraptile 8mo ago
    I'm Lithuanian familiar with soviet type of corruption and post soviet Lithuania which did a lot to remove corruption (also live in asia rn) and your assessment is somewhat correct but it's a terrible system. The availability of corruption is a huge grease for economic activity and weirdly - order - but soviet type of corruption has a massive flaw that bad corruption bets (big impact, high publicity) would be mostly unpunished. In asia however it's quite interesting how the face saving and family culture corrects for that a bit as bad corruption bets will backfire despite lack of legal framework for cleanup. Unfortunately it's _not_ equal opportunity corruption as low economic classes are left out and suffer the most, the cruelty of these systems are really hard to put in the words of a single comment. This also creates a massive overhead for corruption beaurocracy where entire positions are found not on actual product or activity but corruption "middle managers". So despite your friends take this is not a good system on it's own and merely a relief for terrible autocratic rule. Autocrats actually actively allow corruption as this relief is what keeps them in power precisely because people with some power get a relief and poor class bears the slave worker burden.
  • nostrademons 8mo ago
    I've had Indian coworkers remark similarly. The way they put it was "In India, corruption is democratized. Everybody gets in on the act, and everybody can profit a little bit. In the U.S, corruption is reserved for the very top; only they can profit, and everybody else just suffers. Personally, I prefer the Indian system." Was kinda eye-opening as a native-born U.S. citizen. I'd always just assumed things worked according to the rules here, but then after he said it, I started seeing corruption at the top all the time.
• JackYoustra 8mo ago
  Well yeah social trust is worse in autocracies, you'd imagine that corruption would be lower on the list of problems you perceive having when 1) you don't have a good press to report on them 2) you can be sent to jail basically wherever like people in democracies do not know how good they have it!
• nephihaha 8mo ago
  Corruption in democracies is misinformation and a conspiracy theory nowadays.
• markus_zhang 8mo ago
  IMO corruption is just a symptom. Everything goes back to one source point: lack of well-educated citizens who can push back without hesitation. Note that the two conditions: well-educated and can push back without hesitation. Missing any of them and the foundation cracks. Also I wouldn't bother comparing corruption between democracies and authoritarians. I have lived under both and the only thing I see is the common human nature represented in different ways. And I see "lack of well-educated citizens who can push back without hesitation" everywhere. I guess that's why we are in a world that keeps competing for incompetence.
  • bethekidyouwant 8mo ago
    In Mexico, you either pay the bribe or go to jail on trumped up charges. I don’t see what education level has to do with it.
    • markus_zhang 8mo ago
      That's why there are two pieces. You also need to push back. Collectively pushing back, not just individually. That's the only way.
    • amatecha 8mo ago
      [dead]
    • AngryData 8mo ago
      In the US you just go to jail on trumped up charges unless you appear wealthy enough to afford a full time lawyer.
• Fredy_Ke 8mo ago
  This resonates strongly from an African perspective. In countries like Kenya, corruption is almost an open secret.people expect it, budget for it, and navigate around it. Paradoxically that "normalized" corruption causes less acute trust erosion because nobody trusted the system deeply to begin with. In democracies the social contract is explicit The real question isn't which system suffers more, but it's which system has better recovery mechanisms when trust breaks down.
• Fredy_Ke 8mo ago
  This resonates strongly from an African perspective. In countries like Kenya, corruption is almost an open secret — people expect it, budget for it, and navigate around it. Paradoxically that "normalized" corruption causes less acute trust erosion because nobody trusted the system deeply to begin with. In democracies the social contract is explicit — you voted, you participated, you expected accountability. Betraying that feels personal. The delta between expectation and reality is where trust dies. The real question isn't which system suffers more — it's which system has better recovery mechanisms when trust breaks down.
• ossianericson 8mo ago
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• poontunia 8mo ago
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  • cute_boi 8mo ago
    and full of garbage ai related post.
• gcanyon 8mo ago
  Is there a reason not to simplify this to: corruption erodes social trust more in high-trust societies than in societies where trust is already degraded? Meaning: is the type of government actually the controlling factor, or just code for high vs. low trust societies?
• jnpnj 8mo ago
  In a democracy, corruption is seen as the moral exception (if not impossibility), when it happens it's a bigger wound than in autocracy where the baseline is lower.
• derangedHorse 8mo ago
  In a good autocracy, and a good democracy, people will trust the system will push out the corruption as the right people become privy to it. In a bad autocracy, the people had no power to make the decision and therefore can't even hold each other liable. In a bad democracy, people view their fellow denizen at fault. It all boils down to who holds the power, because then people know who to blame and give less trust to when things go south.
• sleepybrett 8mo ago
  yeah, no shit.
• myylogic 8mo ago
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• 627467 8mo ago
  The erosion of trust in democracies isn't about the act of corruption, but the nature of the promise. Democracies operate on high-resolution, precise contracts that attempt to surgically separate the Office from the Person. Ironically, democracies try to build machines out of people, while autocracies simply accept that the machine is a person. Autocracies are low-resolution systems trading on vague promises of 'order' and the explicit assumption of prerogative. In that framework, an official favoring their own isn't 'breaking' the machine; they are exercising it. You can't lose trust in a promise of impartiality that was never made. For the democratic actor, corruption is a breach of contract; for everyone else, it’s just the weather.
• ray023 8mo ago
  Of course, it does, because democracy is FAKE, and the corruption exposes this very fact. It's never the people (Demos) who actually control its fake freedoms that are getting taken away that gives the elites to control nations. Zionists and others control so-called democracies.
• leemelone 8mo ago
  In other news water is wet.
• bentt 8mo ago
  I've often thought that in the USA we could use a type of crime that's called "Betrayal of the Public Trust". It is reserved specifically for public servants and elected officials. The idea is that if you choose to do that job, it is contingent on the public's trust. If you betray that trust it is important to recognize that specifically. This should include harsher sentencing. This should be a deterrent to those who would pursue power for its opportunities in unethical behavior. It would also be a way for society to recognize the seriousness of this breach.
  • sneak 8mo ago
    Why would those who benefit from this crime ever outlaw it for themselves and their buddies? It makes no sense at all. Laws are only ever passed for a reason.
    • bentt 8mo ago
      Occasionally in the USA, power comes to those who would rebel by doing what's right.
• deleted 8mo ago
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• shmerl 8mo ago
  Autocracies are corrupt by design and and corruption there is business as usual, so it's not surprising.
• jongjong 8mo ago
  This makes sense because in an autocracy, there is no expectation of fairness. You know the rules.
• Alan_Writer 8mo ago
  What a topic! I think corruption not only happens as a consequence of authority abuse, regimes, or anything like it, but it's in human nature. It doesn't matter how compliant a society is in terms of order, trust, good manners, etc., there will always be someone unhappy with it, even if it's part of a 0,0001%. Most of the time, corruption is not seen as a bad practice but instead as a regular one. Sometimes even small "favors" are perceived just like that, a regular practice that everyone is aware of, but so unavoidable and unfavored to denounce it. Sadly, corruption runs through our veins (generically speaking) and won't go away just because a clearer system is imposed. Its all about power, control, and superiority. =(
• greenhearth 8mo ago
  That's because in authoritarianism it's all already eroded.
• kulikalov 8mo ago
  “Social trust in autocracies”