Ed,
The big difference between corruption of senior politicians and
officials in China and that in the West is that the former speak
about it openly as being a (continuing) problem while the latter
pretend that it only happens rarely. It takes slightly different
forms in the two countries. In China, bribes (usually in the form of
shares) are given to close relatives. In the West it's more of a nod
to the recipient that if he "helps" someone he'll be well looked
after once he's retired. There's nothing truer than the old saying:
"Every man has his price". Even if the price is reputational rather
than financial, it is never the case (IMO) that an attempt at bribery
is met with indifference.
In the present Tory government in the UK it would be my opinion that
most of present senior cabinet, including Cameron, plus several
Permanent Secretaries (the top officials in civil service
departments) have been bribed with the promise of good jobs later
(e.g. directorships, consultancies, top jobs with the European Union,
etc). In the previous government under Labour, it was more of a case
of the politicians 'consolidating' hundreds of key supporters with
high salaries and perks in new 'quasi non-governmental organizations'
(quangos) which carry out newly-invented civil service type
functions. In the case of the previous prime minister, Tony Blair,
he's been living off several different streams of income ever since he retired.
Psychologists tell us that children tell fibs and devise strategies
designed to hoodwink others from only three years of age. This
suggests that deviousness is built into us genetically. This ability
to deceive is particularly necessary in any ambitiousness male not
wishing to upset males of higher social ranking (until the right
moment to strike comes along!). Sensible governmental constitutions
in the future will not appeal to idealistic abstractions but how to
make its financial operations as open as possible.
Keith
At 15:52 28/11/2012, you wrote:
Keith Hudson and I had a brief exchange on the merits of Chrystia
Freeland's "Plutocrats". Both of us were bored after the first
forty pages or so. He suggested that I read the concluding chapter
and give up on the rest of the book. I almost did that but then
decided I'd look at the book here and there and, lo and behold, I've
found some interesting things. Thus far I've read some of the
material on "rent-seekers", plutocrats who capture an increasing
portion of existing wealth rather than producing "value-added"
wealth themselves. The American and European financial sectors are
outstanding examples. Working in an environment of decreasing
regulation, many people in the field have become very rich via the
invention and refinement of a large variety of securities and by
shifting much of the risk of doing so onto the public sector,
knowing full well that government would see them as too big to fail
and bail them out if things went wrong. Things did indeed go wrong
in 2008, and with some exceptions like Lehman Brothers, government
did bail them out, imposing enormous costs on the public sector.
I guess those of us who've paid any attention to the economy in the
past few years already knew much of that, but Freeland includes a
lot of extra information and detail that we couldn't have known
unless we were journalists in the middle of it all, as she
was. However, there was one thing that was new to me in what I read
this morning. That was the role played by "rent-seekers" in China's
conversion from what was supposed to have been a workers' paradise
into plutocrat run state capitalism. According to Freeland, China
is as corrupt at the top as America, Europe and oligarchic
Russia. I found that rather painful because it wasn't supposed to
be like that. When I was young and highly idealistic, I followed
the Chinese Revolution very closely and greatly admired Mao
Zedong. Mao was going to show us all what the world could really be
like. Well, what seems to have transpired in reality is another
road to hell paved with good intentions.
I'll quit here, but may post more as I read more bits and pieces of
Freeland's book.
Ed
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