> you can't pollute under an honest government I'd say not "honest" but "answerable", those that can be held accountable by the society. I can't imagine anyth

> you can't pollute under an honest government I'd say not "honest" but "answerable", those that can be held accountable by the society. I can't imagine anything like Watergate or Clinton impeachment attempt in the present-day or Soviet Russia. Chinese people managed to remove one particularly corrupt Party official recently IIRC, but the whole structure is still too opaque and out-of-control. So, free press, independent courts and the ability to remove people that screwed up. If you can suffer as a result of your mistakes, you'd be more careful, and vice versa. Now, on a related note - how was held responsible for the 2008 crisis, the pyramid of subprime mortgages etc? Or for the Iraq War, which was started on the premise that Saddam had WMD, which he in fact hadn't? If the USA keep going like this, the future might be very interesting for them.