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?
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!"
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.
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).
Excellent insight. Trust is key for capitalism. And for functioning democracy. When trust is lost, whether in the system or in your fellow citizens, everything begins to suffer.
I think of society as an extended family. If you do not trust your spouse, many things in your home simply will not work.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 72.1 ms ] threadCorruption makes things less democratic in a pure democracy by granting more soft power to some individuals' 1/N office ( N= population size).
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).
I think of society as an extended family. If you do not trust your spouse, many things in your home simply will not work.
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.
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.
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.
by "democracy" they of course mean liberalism
Western idealism has taught us perfection and that corruption/cheating/lying/fraud/etc... is not the standard.
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).
So yes, you'll be more pissed if someone violates the contract with you vs never having one in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_1985%E2%80%931999:_Trau...
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