Nearly 90 percent of Peruvians want members of Congress to step down | Hacker News Reader

Nearly 90 percent of Peruvians want members of Congress to step down

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Wow! "All living former presidents of Peru are either in prison or under investigation for corruption charges."

Take out US and some EU countries* and probably "All living former presidents, parliamentarians, mayors etc should be either in prison or under investigation for corruption charges."

*Even they profit from their office and do favors using the office but it's not a quid pro quo.

"should be" and "are" are two entirely different things.

where they aren't the whole system is corrupt, everyone gets a share and keep each other out of jail. My point was that "everyone" in power steals is most countries.

I would speculate that US and EU countries are more suitable for democracy than the other countries from anti-corruption point of view

The theory I heard was that the high per annum we pay ex presidents is so that We the People have 'bought them' before anyone else can.

From that standpoint there's something to be said about getting [away from] private donations for election campaigns. The odds that the incoming president has already been bought and paid for before the votes are even tallied is quite high.

Of course campaign time is already probably too late. Who is going to be encouraged to run in the first place?

Edit: accidentally inverted a sentence.

You think $200k a year is "high" for someone who ran a country? Also, do you really think they're not corrupt? An awful lot of them rack up a pretty amazing net worth doing speaking engagements (aka taking payola) after they're president. The only living one I ever suspected of being vaguely honest is Carter.

Not quite as impressive, but four of the past 10 Illinois governors went to prison after their governorship.

> Not quite as impressive, but four of the past 10 Illinois governors went to prison after their governorshipt

Well, to maintain the tradition, Illinois voters doubled down, and just did this:

>"... As Chicago's longest serving alderman faces prison time, his spouse will become the state's most powerful judge.

The state's high court justices on Sept. 10 elected Justice Anne Burke to chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, succeeding former Chief Justice Lloyd A. Karmeier. (snip)

Burke's rise to chief justice comes while her husband, 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke, faces a 14-count indictment on federal corruption charges.

In January, federal prosecutors accused the alderman of attempting to extort

the owners of a Burger King franchise in his ward by withholding a remodeling permit

in order to pressure them to hire his private law firm to handle their property tax appeals.

..." [1]

[1]( https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/illinois_suprem...)

It's a funny dynamic that people "from Illinois' outside of Chicago think of Chicago like it's a separate state.

Frequently overheard conversation:

"Oh hey, I'm from Illinois, too!".

"Oh yeah? Where from?"

"I grew up in Naperville."

"... Oh, you're from Chicago," which might be said with or without judgement but is meant as a clarification; I'm from Illinois, you're from the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Area or 'Chicago' for short. Other than the Cubs, the Bears, the Bulls, Budweiser, and WGN on basic cable, we share nothing culturally with you. You don't know how to drive, run an airport, or talk good. What's with the pizza and the green river?

Culturally it is basically a separate state. Everyone not in the Chicago area is basically a rounding error far as state government cares (Chicago has all the money so of course the government panders more to them, that's just how things work, no surprise there) though Chicago will complain right back about "those hicks downstate" (or something like that) preventing them from doing what they want.

If it were up to me we'd have like 100+ states so that people don't have to deal with sharing a state with and potentially get told what to do by some jerks that they have nothing in common with. I usually pick NY as my poster child example but IL works too.

Edit: Down-voting me won't make Chicago and downstate reconcile their differences.

That’d reduce rural voting strength from ridiculously outsized to a bit less outsized making influencing our politicians a lot more expensive.

It’d be great for the vast majority of Americans but is probably unlikely to happen because the people spending the most money will convince the primarily poor and less well educated rural populace that they’ll be giving up their votes and it’ll diminish their power despite an almost universal lack of satisfaction with our Congress among Americans of all shades and stripes.

Honestly, my first thought after reading the title was, "I wonder what the Peruvian immigration patterns are and if they specifically avoid Chicago?"

What’s up with Chicago and dirty politics anyway?

They’re forever in popular culture and music seen as being the heart of the political machine.

I know. They make Washington politics look practically straight laced and we all know what a den thieves and cut throats it is.

And Obama was an Illinois senator, if I remember correctly.

Yes, you may recall the scandal around Obama's Senate successor Rob Blagojevich who was later impeached and removed as governor.

Obama's involvement in the matter was hotly debated at the time.

And there's also Peru's former president Alan García who killed himself right before going to prison a few months ago. What a bizarre day that was.

This occurred during the first government of Alan García https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accomarca_massacre

Isn’t that a good thing? Doesn’t that imply the existence of a functioning criminal justice system that does not apply special treatment to someone just because they hold high office?

Maybe it _also_ means they did things beyond the pale, so there was little choice but to prosecute.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about Peruvian politics. But it could just mean each new administration jails and prosecutes the former administration.

When you always feel the need to lock up the last guy it doesn't exactly scream "peaceful transition of power".

It doesn't encourage the peaceful transition of power, either. If I'm the sitting president, and I know that the next one will lock me up, why should I hand over power to him peacefully?

I mean at some point you would hope that someone that is not a criminal would hold the office.

With that level of corruption I'm not sure I'd be so trusting their is a "functioning justice system" just because it's locking important people away - it could be a sign of the exact opposite.

A lot of it is due to ramifications of Brazil’s Operation Car Wash:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Car_Wash#Peru

Hmm. I wonder what the percentage would be if you ran the same poll in the US?

This is actually a semi-common problem in the Western world. See also: Spain and Britain. We've seem to hit a point where populations in some countries are split evenly and there is no unifying political will.

The Athenian solution to this, if I recall, is ostracization. Every year citizens vote by writing the name of a single citizen. The citizen with the most votes, provided a minimum bar of 6,000 had been met, was banished for ten years.

I think this would have the effect of preventing polarizing figures. If you were so polarizing a large portion of the population hated you...

I could imagine adapting the practice for modern sensibilities. Create a resort run by federal money out on the beach of some tropical island. Free food, drinks, games. It could double as a tourist attraction so there would be people to hang out with. If you win the ostracization vote you get a five year vacation on the state and all of your previous positions or titles are withdrawn.

100%

Probably similar percentage that would be in the EU and everywhere else in the developed world. The disconnect between the politicians and the voters has never been higher since the end of WW2.

This is to be attributed to the rise in inequality. The rich get richer, the poor get austerity.

Is this an example that human collectively are very likely to repeat the same process that historically generated mostly the same results again and again, expecting a different result?

An individule person might do it differently by checking the history data, get some insight of the process, change the process that might have a better odds, expreiment again.

A lot of people together seems to be a quite different animal from each individuals.

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

--Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), Men in Black

I'm almost certain the writers were quoting someone else but I'll be damned if I can remember who. When I originally saw that movie the concept was not new to me.

Nearly 90 percent of Peruvians surveyed want members to step down. How do we know this is actually representative?

Not that it assures a representative sample, but the poll was done by Ipsos, one of the larger global market and public opinion research firms.

Also at 90% you have a fairly high assurance of what the general consensus is.

What's the consensus in the US about Trump? What if you sample just the Democratic debate audience? What if you sample just a Trump rally?

Even at 90% you know very little without something close enough to a representative sample. It's true that it's a strong enough signal that it's not accounted for by small biases.

Only assuming that the sample is actually representative. If I just polled 10 people in San Francisco on something, a result of 90% doesn't mean you have anything resembling a general consensus

There might be sections of Peruvian society IPSOS can't reach, but I don't think their methodology is that flawed

It might not be flawed, it might just be deliberately biased. But who knows, I certainly don't.

Critique the survey methodology if you think it is inadequate. If you are just questioning the whole concept of polling then it seems sort of willful ignorance.

https://iep.org.pe/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Informe-OP-Ago...

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