But what is the cause of low or high corruption in a society? One method is a free press, which can highlight corruption, along with free elections where corrupt politicians can get kicked out. Is there an alternative?
So what I would vote as the method would be rule of law and actual no-nonsense follow-through with applying it, no matter the consequence. There have been so many blatant high-profile legal issues all the way up to the president and yet there have been practically no big convictions. The ruling party can't even kick-out a prominent member from their own party after he's been arrested for corruption.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Magashule#Arrest_and_crimi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Zuma#Corruption_charges
How free is the press in South Africa? In the US and to a lesser extent in the UK it is owned by billionaires who broadcast an agenda that funnily enough benefits billionaires.
Freedom of the press has been built into our constitution since the end of Apartheid in 1994.
This freedom has proven to be pretty robust since then, but there have been some issues along the way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_South_Africa#Pre...
Literally 20 seconds of reflection is enough to see how wrong that is...
I don't think this is true at all. For example, if a policeman A catches county clerk B speeding, B could bribe A to forget about that ticket. That would be corruption, but A and B are not in any hierarchy relation to each other. True, they're in a temporary power relation, but a day later this power relation could well be reversed when B decides whether or not to approve A's building permit for his new house.
That's not what I meant, there's no quid pro quo in my example. My point was that neither A nor B are above or below each other in a hierarchy, and there's no permanent power imbalance between them, and yet they could both be corrupt. Corruption doesn't require a hierarchy, and a flat hierarchy doesn't prevent corruption.
Flatter hierarchy does not prevent corruption totally, probably nothing will. But it will make corruption harder and more expensive. Some hierarchies, at least context dependent, are probably inevitable. It's a matter of scale.
Yes, that would be more correct. Authority != hierarchy, but you can't have a society without authority. You could start out with anarchy, but then authoritative structures would naturally emerge anyway.
This example only works if there is a hierarchy:
- Policeman A wouldn't take the bribe, unless it's big enough relative to his wealth
- Clerk B wouldn't offer the bribe, unless it's small enough relative to his wealth
There is an economic hierarchy implicit in the example. The consequences of the ticket are also important, since there's no point spending more on a bribe than would have to be paid in fines.
this is total nonsense. hierarchys are in no way tied to corruption, except that EVERYTHING requires a hierarchy, unless youre a nihilist.
to value is to rank order and create a hierarchy. valuation doesnt generate corruption.
- to remove the corrupt
- to not have to deal with the corrupt ones
I've noticed in the UK there's been a number of corruption stories, starting around Brexit but hugely accelerated by pandemic procurement, that have been raised in the press and then just forgotten about.
In the US you can see how much energy has been put into fake scandals while distracting from real ones, e.g. Pizzagate vs Matt Gaetz.