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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   25760 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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I don't really see any evidence that authoritarianism is the sole variable when it comes to corruption.

It's easily one of the biggest factors, if not the single biggest factor period. Look at the corruptions perception index, and notice how many of the least corrupt countries are democratic, while many of the most corrupt are authoritarian or totalitarian. Look at the differences between Taiwan and China, or between the two Koreas. Same cultures, but different governing styles make a huge amount of difference. Look at Post-Soviet states that escaped Russia's orbit vs those that didn't, like Poland vs Belarus. The entire Ukraine conflict that's been going on since 2014 is in large part because Ukrainians want to be more like Poland than Belarus. DEI, while being a terrible ideology, is worlds apart from actual dictatorships like Russia or Venezuela or North Korea.

Dictators are never entirely secure, and totalitarian dictators can freely devote more of the state's resources towards maintaining their own positions than authoritarian ones can. They accomplish this largely through corruption.

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.

This is just a right-wing version of whig history, and relies just as much on cherrypicking historical datapoints as liberal whig history does.

Link just seems to be to a globalist ngo that ranks globalist countries positively?

These data sources are collected by a variety of reputable institutions, including the World Bank and the World Economic Forum.

WEF and World Bank? really?

Just write your own list of countries you don't like and it'd have as much credibility.

Plenty of researchers use corruption perceptions in their research on country outcomes. Do you have a better metric you'd like to use?

If we can't agree on some underlying data then there's no point in continuing this conversation.

Look at the corruptions perception index, and notice how many of the least corrupt countries are democratic.

They're also geographically and/or culturally clustered together indicating that them all being democracies is a historical coincidence more than anything else. Also Nordics/Protestants being stuck up by-the-book types was a stereotype well before Europe started moving towards democracy.

Also Nordics/Protestants being stuck up by-the-book types was a stereotype well before Europe started moving towards democracy.

Less decisive historical observation than one may think, as the confound of comparatively democratic power structures in the Nordics goes all the way back before the French revolution. Things were meetings of free men since before the middle ages. When the Swedish realm adopted European style Riksdag of estates, they had a fourth estate of free land-owning peasants.

If states with elections can be authoritarian, and various forms of mnarchy, from feudalism to absolutism can be democratic, it's starting to sound like democracy is just the friends we made along the way.

"Comparatively democratic" is intended to be read literally, as in, comparatively more cratos in the hands of demos than in other parts of Europe. Not as, it was democratic as 20th century had democracies. But lack of serfdom since early Middle Ages, continuous presence of institutions for deliberative, representational decisionmaking, and right to participate (in the said institutions) granted to large part of population, all of that, it is the traditional social capital argument.

Well, but if they weren't democratic compared to today, and if they weren't corrupt (emphasis on IF here, since I don't have hard data), then that sounds like there are more important factors than democracy, at least as we understand it today, no? Or do you think Ben would nod approvingly if Mexico went full Carolus Rex?

The line of thought goes, simplified, their society had elements that share commonalities with a modern conception of democracy (mid-lower level social landholding had some minor but existent social and economic power, the freemen had rights recognized by everyone in the "everyone knows that everyone knows" way, the ideas how the decisionmaking institutions are supposed to work). Thus it is a confound: perhaps the democratic commonalities contributed to weird by-the-books behavior. And these democratic elements formed social capital (knowledge and preconceived ideas how to do things, transmitted intergenerationally) making it easier to run democracy!20thcentury in ethos, not only rubberstamping the correct procedures in the books approved by philosophers. The idea that ethos part is important in other democratic societies is not exactly a new idea. ^1

Naturally all this is comparative. From what I gather, they Nordics were corrupt (still are corrupt, just less in comparison than some other countries), the amount of corruption waxed and waned depending on the politics. Also, we know of the corruption because the peasants suffering from its effects mounted numerous legal complaints registered in the legal system, existence of which is somewhat positive sign.

Or do you think Ben would nod approvingly if Mexico went full Carolus Rex

I don't know about Ben. I would grant the possibility that Mexico could be a better place after 200 years the state running the show as the supreme gangboss, not tolerating other bosses that those serving him, applying principles of consistent governance, basing his powerbase on the free small-mid-sized enterprises against the high capital. But 200 year long experiments are difficult to run and the economic situation of the lucrative narcotics trade is difficult to square.

Narcotics is bit like the resource curse: You get lots of profit that don't require investments to rest of the local economy which would result in long-term benefit to rest of the society. Not only that, the resource curse profits are much higher and more concentrated than what others can made from rest of economy. The outsized profit, concentrated, makes it possible to hire armed enforcers to enforce control and continuation of profitable business in the hands of its current owner, and make any problems to go away.

^1: Tocqueville writes about the mores of American democracy:

The manners of the Americans of the United States are, then, the real cause which renders that people the only one of the American nations that is able to support a democratic government; and it is the influence of manners which produces the different degrees of order and of prosperity that may be distinguished in the several Anglo-American democracies. Thus the effect which the geographical position of a country may have upon the duration of democratic institutions is exaggerated in Europe. Too much importance is attributed to legislation, too little to manners. These three great causes serve, no doubt, to regulate and direct the American democracy; but if they were to be classed in their proper order, I should say that the physical circumstances are less efficient than the laws, and the laws very subordinate to the manners of the people. I am convinced that the most advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of the manners of a country; whilst the latter may turn the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws to some advantage. The importance of manners is a common truth to which study and experience incessantly direct our attention. It may be regarded as a central point in the range of human observation, and the common termination of all inquiry. So seriously do I insist upon this head, that if I have hitherto failed in making the reader feel the important influence which I attribute to the practical experience, the habits, the opinions, in short, to the manners of the Americans, upon the maintenance of their institutions, I have failed in the principal object of my work.

The east Asian democracies are quite far from the Western democracies, and many have similar cultures to eastern autocracies, yet the corruption of the autocracies is far, far worse. Again, look at South Korea vs North Korea, or Taiwan vs China.

That's communism vs. Non-communism, if anything (a system that pretends to be democratic, I might add), you even see it's echoes in the democratic Europe. There's also no shortage of corrupt democracies you're ignoring, and like I said, the lack of historical comparisons to when the non-corrupt countries weren't democratic makes this very low quality evidence.

Left wing authoritarianism is still authoritarianism. Further, modern China isn't particularly communist, and hasn't been since at least the 80s. It's more like Fascism With Chinese Characteristics. Openly fascist countries like Nazi Germany also pretended to be nominally democratic by carrying around the corpse of the Reichstag, but the illusion fooled nobody.

The corrupt democracies are mostly the ones that have shaky democratic fundamentals, i.e. ones that are either hybrid regimes, or the ones that wobble in and out of coups.

It's more like Fascism With Chinese Characteristics.

Or in other words, it's national socialism. Germany used to be national socialist in the '30s, then all their men got killed in the war they started, now they're just socialist.

I think that National Socialism is one of the systems of government that can emerge when you have a relative balance of male and female interests in a nation, and that nation is significantly overpopulated relative to its economic opportunity at the time. Places that have no need of men are socialist to the point of complete paralysis (the West), places that have no use for women are extremely militaristic (Afghanistan is the best example, but the middle and near east are all like this) or busy fighting civil wars (Africa).

Left wing authoritarianism is still authoritarianism

I'll grant that, but either way communism seems to be unique in the amount of scars it leaves on a country, and should be treated uniquely, rather than to make a general point about authoritarianism.

The corrupt democracies are mostly the ones that have shaky democratic fundamentals, i.e. ones that are either hybrid regimes,

That's starting to sound like any democracy that's not performing well is not a true democracy.

I'll grant that, but either way communism seems to be unique in the amount of scars it leaves on a country, and should be treated uniquely, rather than to make a general point about authoritarianism.

Communism is a uniquely bad economic system, but it also has the authoritarianism or totalitarianism which is part of what makes it terrible. The economic systems aren't close, but the political control of the leaders are, and thus a comparison can be made.

That's starting to sound like any democracy that's not performing well is not a true democracy.

Well yes, a democracy that gets couped into a dictatorship is... no longer a true democracy. Corruption isn't solved overnight, so if a country oscillates between democracy and dictatorship every decade then it's probably going to be more corrupt than a nation that's been democratic for multiple decades or centuries.

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