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Comment by timthorn | Hacker News Reader

> Once in "the real world", we discover that corporations and governments routinely lie, cheat and steal.

Really? I'm not sure I've experience of this. Might be a geographic/cultural thing, I guess, but business and governance in the UK doesn't seem to be particularly corrupt.

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You live in a high trust society with an impartial and competent state, where the rule of law is a real thing and opportunities for real, lucrative corruption are relatively limited. Given the demographics of this website there is an above average chance you work in an industry or sector that is dominated by literal minded men that tend more autistic than the general population, and associate mainly with people who are basically bourgeois in their values. All of these characteristics make the level of rat bastard weaselness in your environment lower than it would otherwise be.

Nonetheless the upper echelons of the corporate world in the UK probably resemble those in the UK in that sociopaths are ten to twenty times more common in the executive class than the general population. I can't see any reason politics would not favour the same group in the same way.

For further reading see gwern's notes on psychopaths and the psychology of power.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/fzy/notes_on_psychopathy/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power...

I have also heard good things about Ashok Rao's Psychopaths, Losers, Clueless series.

> I have also heard good things about Ashok Rao's Psychopaths, Losers, Clueless series.

That would be Venkat Rao's Sociopaths, Losers, Clueless series.

"business and governance in the UK doesn't seem to be particularly corrupt"

You should read up on the City of London Corporation.[1][2][3][4]

[1] - http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2013/04/mysterious-residen...

[2] - http://streebgreebling.blogspot.com/2011/04/state-within-sta...

[3] - http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporati...

[4] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation

Sorry, what does that have to do with anything? I'm well aware of it, I work within the City - it's just local government. It, in common with many ancient bodies in the UK, has quirks, but none that are corrupt.

I wouldn't use the term "corrupt". For example, a mafia's members can be quite upright in following the institution's rules. Likewise, at the height of when the UK sent legions of killers outside its island, to terminate and replace the rules other people must live under, it's not important if anyone was particularly corrupt.

When an institution is at its core about lying, cheating and stealing, then it redefines the rules to make these actions just and moral... part of its own natural functioning. This filters down into all its sub-institutions, like its economic and educational systems.

(Then "lying, cheating and stealing" becomes anything which goes against its functioning. For instance, "terrorism" is redefined to include defending your country against the terrorists some foreign power sent to control you.)

You may need to get out more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC

See "Money Laundering".

> business and governance in the UK doesn't seem to be particularly corrupt.

Read any issue of Private Eye and you might form a different opinion.

Go read Le Carré. Or examine the record of News Corp phone hacking, and the politicians with whom they are entwined.

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