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2020-10-14 -Land of the Free

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Posted by 746 2020-10-14 02:55|| || Front Page|| [10 views ] Top

#1 I'll wait for P2K's reply.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2020-10-14 03:57|| 2020-10-14 03:57|| Front Page Top

#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|| 2020-10-14 07:37|| Front Page Top

#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|| 2020-10-14 07:47|| Front Page Top

#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|| 2020-10-14 07:56|| Front Page Top

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

Yes, it's a tax.

Posted by M. Murcek 2020-10-14 09:41|| 2020-10-14 09:41|| Front Page Top

#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|| 2020-10-14 10:03|| Front Page Top

#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|| 2020-10-14 17:31|| Front Page Top

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