Hacker News Reader

Comment by clarkmoody | Hacker News Reader

Well if nothing else, your points about corruption are arguments against government in general :-) Decentralize power back to the people themselves. If I have no power over another, then my corruption affects only me.

However, corruption at the local level affects a limited number of people, and since local politics are easy to influence, they can be changed. Local politicians get into criminal trouble all the time, so they are not immune to the law.

Corruption at the national level affects all of us, and it's much harder to change the institutions. Even worse is the bureaucracy, which cannot be changed directly by the people, but meddles incessantly with our economy.

As for escaping corruption, you can leave your city easily, your state with moderate difficulty, but your country with great difficulty.

View on HN

>your points about corruption are arguments against government in general

This is not the case. The first step of "divide and conquer" is "divide."

>If I have no power over another, then my corruption affects only me.

That's how how corruption works. It's not a property of individuals, it's a property of institutions.

>corruption at the local level affects a limited number of people

At first. Then two corrupt local levels team up, and there's nobody to stop them. Corrupt organizations don't require regulatory action to form alliances. Even if you decentralize everything on paper, they will be centralized in practice, because corruption causes some people to have disproportionate means to get what they want.

Agreed. It's easier for me to smell something fishy when my working class neighbor pulls up in the new Benz. Much more difficult when it's the massive amount of luxury homes going up along the Potomac.

Would be interested to how efficient local governments are compared to the federal government.

I think you could argue that people are less involved in local governments, so it is easier to control them or corrupt them.

John Oliver's piece on special districts was really interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3saU5racsGE

> Well if nothing else, your points about corruption are arguments against government in general :-) Decentralize power back to the people themselves. If I have no power over another, then my corruption affects only me.

Tragedy of the Commons is what occurs then as well as an inability to defend oneself against those who use force.

Go move to some country with essentially a nonexistent government and see how this works out for you if you genuinely believe I am wrong.

> However, corruption at the local level affects a limited number of people, and since local politics are easy to influence, they can be changed. Local politicians get into criminal trouble all the time, so they are not immune to the law.

So your argument is to make it cheaper, easier, and dismantle the checks and balances by defunding the enforcement mechanism at the federal level?

Seriously? Do you not understand that logically plays out until the local politicians are unable to be held accountable to a higher authority?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com