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Comment by BugBrother | Hacker News Reader

>> [ capitalism's] current income inequality problems

I will assume you talk about the income inequality between nations. That is, in most cases, not solvable by other countries.

To make a country (without military conflicts) better is not rocket science. You get infrastructure and education to work well in addition to limiting corruption. The corruption part is probably enough, since non-corrupt politicians will fix the rest.

After that, a generation or two later you have a South Korea. Estonia is getting there.

For examples of this, see East Europe inside the EU after 1991. The main failures with corruption are Romania and Bulgaria, which also have horrible economic inequality. The politicians even steal the money for roads!

The point is, income inequality is not a problem of economics. The problem is that packs of thieves have stolen a country/government and sucks the lifeblood out of it.

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First you say that this problem can't be helped by other countries and then you discuss the EU's eastward expansion... which is largeely about Western European countries getting together and lifting up ex-Soviet countries.

The terms under which those countries were allowed into the EU were largely about building strong anti-corruption measures and improving transparency in government.

Supernational institutions like the EU and UN can do great things like this.

>>and then you discuss

Starting with "For examples of this".

>>Supernational institutions like the EU and UN can do great things like this.

Well, give me some examples where corruption of a political system was solved by external organisations?

(And NOT in a military way.)

(The main benefit East Europe got was a pressure to conform with EU criteria to get into the trade union. That solved quite a lot, by paying the political leadership to solve their problems... This can only be done once. But Romania and Bulgaria got into EU without fulfilling those criteria, probably by bribing for the EU votes (as I understand it, a few large companies were sold cheap to French, Belgian etc companies). So corruption worked for them... not even here, with a big carrot, was it solved by the EU!)

Edit: I might add that the UN is infamously corrupt and many functions are taken over by dictators, working for their combined interests. (If you're Swedish, you won't read about that in your local media.) Hardly able to help anyone with corruption...

Even Greece and Italy (with all of their history), still turned to corruption to benefit from the EU. Can't solve this problem by throwing more money at it from the outside.

Uhm, are you really claiming those two countries weren't corrupt before the EU?! Afaik, both are classic cases of the Mediterranean client-patron culture? (At least the south of Italy.)

My original point was that to make a country a nice place today is not rocket science, the failures either seems to be an ongoing conflict -- or corruption.

Afaik the methods to stop corruption isn't that hard to design, the hard part is to get a political class to implement them. To do it from outside is impossible without an invasion, you have to get the population to pressure the criminal thieves (a.k.a. politicians).

(I guess 'fulafel' is a naive Swede who grew up believing his own media, like I did. That is why I bother with this.)

Disclaimer: No political science education, just a hobby to read to try to understand the world,

I meant that they were corrupt, they hid everything from the EU, took their money without fixing much of anything, then the truth came out and shit hit the fan.

Ah, yes. It seems this plague might be spread more by EU membership than it is cured. Not a positive future for Europe... :-(

I think it will work out fine if the members stick through for enough time. Kinda like the United States - the states have almost gone to war several times after the Civil War...

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