How Corruption Got This Bad

63 pointsposted a day ago
by Kapura
(theatlantic.com)

23 Comments

potamic

a day ago

The elephant in the room is that the concept of separation of powers has been shown to be a farce. Checks and balances can only work when there is independence between the branches. When a single ruling party is able to influence all three branches, there is concentration of power. And we know very well from history, power corrupts.

This is a problem not just in America but every democracy in the world. Some countries are just fortunate to be blessed with abundance that there's plenty left for everyone even after skimming off the top. But it's a ticking time bomb nonetheless ready to set off when the circumstances align.

I think people need to think about the fundamental structure of government. The three branch system as it functions today in many countries is clearly compromisable. The system needs to change, there must be a better mechanism to guarantee independence and integrity within the branches without the honor system.

Shitty-kitty

20 hours ago

This is the reason why Congressional terms are only 2 years and why Senate elections are staggered. Of course nothing helps if the majority decides "f checks and balances"

goatlover

a day ago

Even when one party is in power, there should still be some independence across the branches. But the unitary executive theory combined with Trump's complete takeover of the Republican party fueled by MAGA has almost completely eroded any independence. And when someone like Thomas Massie or Marjorie Taylor Green buck the president, they get primaried, even when it's something Trump ran on and his base supported!

Also when a Supreme Court Justice occasionally decides against the president in favor of the Constitution, they get attacked by the Trump administration and the right-wing media. It's even worse for lower court judges, whose lives get threatened.

maerF0x0

a day ago

i've said it for a decade. The united states is the most corrupt country i've witnessed (first hand), the difference is they've legalized their corruption. I think it goes down to the core of the culture which ultimately decided that money was the primary value of all choices, (as opposed to say, ethics, justice, religion, collective health metrics etc)

ergocoder

a day ago

> The united states is the most corrupt country i've witnessed (first hand),

Well, you haven't traveled much to other countries, I suppose.

Trump would look like an angel compared to other leaders in developing countries.

izacus

13 hours ago

I've travelled plenty and US is still one of the scammiest, most corrupt places I've seen.

To the point where every American in this thread can't even imagine a place that isn't full of scams and lying and thinks everyone is the same.

The most bizarre behavioral thing is seeing all the incredible mental gymnastics to somehow explain away the corruption ("I'm sure they had good reason, they had to earn money!!!") when US people get scammed. No accountability, ever.

tim333

8 hours ago

The 2025 corruption perceptions index scores it 64/100, well worse than Denmark (89/100) but better than Italy (53/100) and Venezuela (10/100)

izacus

7 hours ago

Cool, but that's basically asking americans "do you think your country is corrupt?", which is useless, because most of them think that their corruption is just normal behavior.

Zigurd

6 hours ago

We also don't bother with the minor league corruption so it's less visible. Bribing a cop on the spot is rare in the US, but Axon and Flock buying off town officials is just educational trips for potential customers.

maerF0x0

2 hours ago

This is almost exactly what I meant by my comment.

Citizens United, Biasing election outcomes through modifying the rules (such as jerrymandering, changing electoral requirements, making moves aimed at reducing voter turnout)

But I would include things like: the government buying data to avoid warrants, "asdf qwerty" as the required reason field for a warrantless data search, the Peloski index, Judges being invested in private prisons where they send those they sentence, dynamic pricing schemes that charge you more the more desperate you are etc.

tim333

7 hours ago

It's more based on polling international business guys asking how corrupt do you it find dealing with country X.

floro

4 hours ago

You are lying. What you are describing is what I call "third-worldism" a mindset and way of living that's been imported over the last few decades. If you think the US is more corrupt than any rhird world country you're naive

lioeters

a day ago

It's always been utterly and disgustingly corrupt. The current clown is a symptom of generations of mismanagement and a thoroughly compromised government on both sides of the oligarchy. Their wealth is built on the suffering of hundreds of millions around the world, a tragedy perpetrated by war criminals, traitors, liars and thieves.

When will the people of the world stand up and demand justice? A global reform of governance is necessary, sooner or later. Seeing how the public defends the status quo, don't hold your breath - maybe better luck next century, if we still exist.

asphodele

a day ago

Obligatory H.L. Mencken quote, from 1956:

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." [1]

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/27042-as-democracy-is-perfe...

user

a day ago

[deleted]

lapcat

a day ago

The author is a former DoJ prosecutor and blames the Supreme Court for legalizing corruption.

However, the author admits "Congress can undo much of what the Supreme Court has done" and neglects to mention that Supreme Court justices are nominated and confirmed by politicians.

The author does touch on a broader point: "This isn’t partisan politics; it’s political elites protecting political elites." So the real question to me is, how did this phenomenon, which I would assume had always existed, get this bad?

My own view is that modern technology has allowed the wealthy to consolidate power on a national and even international scale, in a way not possible in the past, forming one big elite social club. You can see this with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal; that dude was friends with everyone, business, academia, art, politics, left, right, even royalty!

Nevermark

a day ago

The internet made coordination orders of magnitude easier than it could ever have been before.

Society and politics adapted to that, with like finding like, and reinforcing like.

So many effects, but one is local politics, which could be quite diverse across states, all converged into national politics.

Both a convergence of political views, and a convergence of cross-state, all-levels candidate and campaign coordination.

And the more coordinated a group, the greater incentives and opportunity for those at the center to further centralize and consolidate power.

The result can be a single person holding sway across all levels of politics for the nation, and a dilemma where most everyone in his party is either their because they are just as corrupt, or willing to hold their nose and concede some of their own power, as the price they pay to get anything done.

The Constitution has checks and balances within government to hold back centralization of power.

But no provisions to stop coordinated power blocks by unofficial organizations, even across all three branches, like parties can.

When coordination got cheap, fighting coordination becomes challenging and expensive. Centralization of power becomes a very powerful default.

treis

a day ago

There was a point not that long ago when all the rulers of Europe were cousins. Maybe it's easier now but power has always been very concentrated. Think the impact the internet has is that we all know about it now.

Nevermark

a day ago

Your point about past centralization is dead right.

But the increased ease of centralization in modern democracies that the Internet made possible is incontrovertible.

Which isn’t any special insight on my part.

Centralization has increased and decreased in many forms throughout history. There are many forces working in either direction.

I would also suggest that seeing more corruption in the open, is more likely to indicate more corruption out of sight as well, rather than the opposite.

nostrademons

a day ago

I actually don't think the Internet has increased centralization, and if anything, has actually decreased it. Consider this:

An anonymous organization has collected and released the collected knowledge of humanity. Included among this, they also collected and released the entire music catalog of a major tech company. They got sued for $322M, with a default judgment levied against them, but nobody can collect because nobody knows who this organization is.

The output of this organization has then been hoovered up by not one, not two, but by roughly a dozen different AI companies. Which they used to train models so effective that the U.S. government forbid the release of them under national security concerns. And then backed down after some token concessions because these models are too important to the U.S. military to go without.

There's a rule of thumb I use, which is that organizations that loudly chest-thump about how powerful they are and make a big show about exercising that power are anything but powerful. The reason they need to broadcast it loudly is because they are insecure that it will shortly be undermined otherwise. True power whispers; it's Eisenhower saying he needs an interstate highway system for national defense purposes (oh, and civilian transit would be nice too), and it happening before the end of his presidency because he had 80%+ approval ratings.

The nation state has never been weaker. I suspect the only reason it hasn't been replaced yet is that any of the organizations that could challenge it are enjoying unprecedented wealth, and there's no sense risking that for conflict.

upboundspiral

a day ago

The nation state has never been weaker because it has been defeated by financialization (except in China).

Economics has always played a massive role in our politics.

How did we escape kings and feudalism? International markets opening through technological innovation enabled capital to generate enormous sums of wealth that challenged the old older.

What enabled postwar democracy? The ruling empire, the American, was "democratic", coupled with the destruction of all the wealth of Europe, meaning all the old oligarchs lost a substantial amount of power. Turns out royalists have less power when they don't have the finances to enforce their views.

Political power has also always depended on economic power. And later on, post 1970s, financial power (the private bank's ability to print money for free, something that used to belong solely to the state).

Financial and economic power has totally taken over government power, in many cases in an unholy marriage (as in America). The DMCA, the US forcing its laws down other nation's throats through treaties, etc, were the economic ruling class using the American government to enact their policy decisions for their own benefit.

And now with the internet we are regressing towards feudalism. Apple and Google extract 30% rents from every single mobile software purchase. The lords of old can only dream of such wealth generation through no productive effort of their own. Amazon likewise extracts insane rents from its sellers. Sure, in small pockets, there is resistance, but on a societal scale the commons, the average person, has absolutely been beaten back.

lapcat

a day ago

The topic is obviously corruption in the US, which has been a democracy for 250 years.

In general, bad corruption is no surprise in an authoritarian country, as opposed to a democracy, and of course an authoritarian country has concentrated power by design.

> There was a point not that long ago when all the rulers of Europe were cousins.

This somewhat misleading. The King of England, for instance, has not been the "ruler" of England for hundreds of years.