Perhaps the only way to be a completely incorruptible person in today's world
is to sit on a mountaintop or to isolate oneself in a little stone cell in the
depths of a monastery, but even that may not work. There really isn't much
room for purists and idealists.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Keith Hudson
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION ; Ed Weick
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 12:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] There's more there than I thought
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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