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-Land of the Free
Corruption Is Now Our Way of Life
2020-10-14
[CharlesHughSmith] Social and economic decay is so glacial that only those few who remember an earlier set-point are equipped to even notice the decline. That's the position we find ourselves in today.
There has always been corruption here, but exactly how much waxes and wanes depending on all sorts of things including what part of the country you’re in at the moment. New York City, Chicago, New Orleans, and Las Vegas, for instance, carry their reputation for corruption with pride, thinking it gives them an aura of edginess and sophistication that sets them apart from more straightforward communities.
Many Americans will discount the systemic corruption that characterizes the American way of life because they've known nothing but systemic corruption. They've habituated to it because they have no memory of a time when looting wasn't legalized and maximizing self-enrichment by any means available wasn't the unwritten law of the land.

If you don't yet see America as little more than an intertwined collection of skims, scams, frauds, embezzlements, lies, gaming-the-system, obfuscation of risk and exploitation of the masses by insiders, please read How Corruption is Becoming America's Operating System. (nakedcapitalism.com, via Cheryl A.)
Posted by:746

#7  The current egregious level of corruption is a carryover from embedded Obama administration personnel, who spent his eight years in it up to their necks, many rehired from the Clinton administration or connected to them. Not that Republicans are all angels in white, but clearing out the holdovers will go far to reducing cause for complaint.
Posted by: trailing wife   2020-10-14 17:31  

#6  Rent-seeking is the name given to income that offers less in return to the purchaser, but has to be spent because it's legally coerced., or say a government product is under-charged for or setup in a way to discourage less established players from even attempting to compete.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles   2020-10-14 10:03  

#5  That's the price the people pay for corruption.

Yes, it's a tax.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-10-14 09:41  

#4  Oligarchs and corruption ?

Wiki - Russian oligarchs are business oligarchs of the former Soviet republics who rapidly accumulated wealth during the era of Russian privatization in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

American oligarchs are oligarchs who accumulated wealth following WWII, the Cold War and........
Posted by: Besoeker   2020-10-14 07:56  

#3  It's why socialism can't work in most of the world. The founders understood man was a corrupt fallen creature and that power had to be disbursed, even with its inefficiencies, rather than consolidated, and centralization for the bare minimum necessary functions that government has a reason to exist.

The husks chant about Scandinavian socialism never closely look at the environment it exists within. While they don't practice it as they once did, Lutheranism is still prevalent in the culture, particularly when it comes to corruption. There is no forgiveness of sins. There is no one standing between you and judgement. Notice as they move further away from this tenet, the more the problems start popping up and biting them in the rear these days.

I did a tour in Korea. The place was leveled by 1953 with the war. It's small, about the size of Kansas. It has no real major natural resources and very limited land for agriculture. Yet Mexico which hadn't suffered the devastation that Korea had, with an abundance of natural resources, vast agricultural lands and four times the population can't seem to get its act together. On GDP listings, South Korea ranks 10 and Mexico 16. That's the price the people pay for corruption. It's cultural. They both have corruption, but one far less so overall than the other.

If there is one major overhaul that a society can do to improve itself and truly progress, it has to become far more intolerant of corruption than most anything else. Corruption, the more you tolerate, the more you get.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2020-10-14 07:47  

#2   because most of it is legal.

Let's try defining corruption then, that might be a good place to start.
Posted by: AlanC   2020-10-14 07:37  

#1  I'll wait for P2K's reply.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2020-10-14 03:57  

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