[episode0x01]

Not a shocker that corruption ruins things. I guess then the question is how you can design a broadly distributed system that removes the incentives for corruption and minimizes its impact. My guess is that such a system won't be found in capitalism

[woile]

IIRC "the dictators handbook" mentions that the more people in a power position, the harder to corrupt, because it becomes more expensive. Of course this brings a slower process, so it's like a trade-off.

Link: https://www.mr-sustainability.com/stories/2020/dictators-han....

[dwallin]

A great book, but I would love to see additional studies really breaking it down. My gut feeling is that this effect curves. At a certain size of selectorate you switch from direct influence, with linear costs, to indirect methods of influence, with much better scaling properties (eg. Uber and California Proposition 22).

While it becomes expensive to outright buy people, it also becomes prohibitively expensive to educate, and an ability to outspend with emotional appeals becomes more important than having a cogent argument.

[wrnr]

Government and NGO can also be corrupted too, just look at the recent doctors without borders sex for food scandals.

[episode0x01]

Right, it's not something unique to corporations. It's a consequence of concentrated power

[seventytwo]

Corruption can’t be decoupled from any human organizational system, though. The system needs to be designed in a way to take corruption into account and minimize it.

In unregulated capitalism, corruption provides a huge competitive advantage, so controls must be put in place to counteract that. Typically that’s done with government intervention.

The idea that we can “blame cronyism, not capitalism”, is a red herring. Cronyism and corruption is something capitalism, as a system, must be able to deal with, or else capitalism is a poor system.

It’s like saying “don’t blame the engine, blame friction forces” for why an engine has poor qualities. Friction is a given and will always exist, it’s the poor engineering design of the engine that’s the problem. The design didn’t mitigate the friction appropriately.

[pibechorro]

Unregulated free trade doesnt reward corruption, it's the opposite. It rewards value to the consumer. Goverment intervention is what rewards corruption when it eventually becomes captured and now insiders control the levers of the economy forcing themselves on the end user. You need to invert your thinking, we need more freedom and less interventions by middle management. Market feedback needs to be emergent from the bottom up.

[seventytwo]

I’d argue that absent any regulations, there’s no such thing as corruption, just like without laws, nothing is criminal!

But is that the world we want?

The fact of the matter is that corruption, like crime, will always exist, so the system within which the corruption exists better be able to handle it, or it’s a poor system.

The author’s argument is basically the opposite - “the system is fine, it’s the pesky non-idealities that are the problem!”

My point is that this is a totally useless take. It’s like trying to build a rocket and wondering why it collapses on the launchpad because you hand waved away all the non-idealities: “oh, the rocket design was fine, it was those pesky non-idealities that we’re the problem!”

[CryptoPunk]

It will be found in open source networks, and possibly will come into being through government funding.

[Aunche]

Since proof of work is inefficient in general and impossible for humans, society can only function with leaders. The problem with anti-capitalist ideology is that it without a healthy private sector, people who are uninterested in public service seek leadership positions there because those are the positions with most "profit." This is why every attempt at socialism has been a complete failure.

[commandlinefan]

> such a system won't be found in capitalism

It won't be found even harder in communism, where the cronyism is baked into the system of governance.

[jimbokun]

> My guess is that such a system won't be found in capitalism

It won't be found in communism or socialism, either.

[adlorger]

capitalism seems like a more likely home for broadly distributed systems than government systems which are, by their nature, centralized

[mcv]

Capitalism quite clearly requires strong regulation. At least, any sort of positive capitalism that doesn't immediately succumb to monopolies, cartels and corruption.

The problem is that the loudest voices arguing for capitalism, also tend to argue against regulation, accountability, and that sort of thing.

[csee]

They argue against regulations because:

- Regulations are often used as a tool of corruption and cronyism, e.g. regulation of housing construction entrenching landowner power.

- Regulations can block legitimate progress, e.g. the private antigen tests that were blocked throughout 2020.

- Regulations create complexity which acts as both a barrier to entry which creates monopolies, and as a hidden tax.

- Regulations are often theatre.

- Bad regulations are sticky; they don't sunset.

That's why I favor less regulations overall. But I don't favor no regulations. I still want regulations (or just "laws") that stop pollution, deceptive marketing, and so on.

[nybble41]

> I still want regulations (or just "laws") that stop pollution, deceptive marketing, and so on.

Not allowing pollution isn't regulation, it's enforcing property rights.

Not allowing deceptive marketing (fraudulent contracts) isn't regulation, it's enforcing property rights.

If you can't see the difference between regulations and property rights then yeah, opposition to regulations will seem a bit bizarre.

[mcv]

Deciding that these are property rights issues and enforcing them as such is itself a form of regulation. Property rights themselves are a basic form of regulation. Expanding property rights to more areas is regulation. Everything that regulate things in a way that protects and enforces people's rights, ensures people aren't being exploited, robbed, misled, etc, is a form of regulation.

[nybble41]

> Property rights themselves are a basic form of regulation.

In a general sense, perhaps, but not in the sense that people mean when they say that they're opposed to regulation. Context matters. In this conversation, "regulation" means a deviation from natural property rights, whether that involves directly infringing them, e.g. by attaching extra rules or penalties beyond simply respecting the equal rights of others, or granting artificial "property rights" which will necessarily infringe on others' natural ones.

> Expanding property rights to more areas is regulation.

"Expanding" the concept of property rights to areas where they don't naturally apply (like copyrights and patents) is definitely regulation, in the negative sense. But at that point you're not really talking about property rights any more.

[mcv]

Exactly. You don't want regulations merely for regulations' sake. Regulations need to be governed by a simple, transparent set of values, and enforce only those, but enforce them well and consistently, and keep the regulator accountable for how those values and regulations are enforced.

Blindly trusting regulators to know what's best is just as bad as blindly trusting corporations to know what's best.

[justinmchase]

Regulation implies regulators, and regulators can become a bottleneck for power. They can demand bribes and favors in exchange for being allowed to operate and they can use their power to selectively eliminate political opponents sources of power.

Read "The Path to Power", LBJ biography. They describe this process plainly and how he continuously used his across his entire career in this way. Its very enlightening.

[mcv]

Of course the regulators themselves also need to be regulated and held accountable. It's either that or prevent all concentrations of power, including corporations.

[olalonde]

Regulations is what largely enables cronyism.

[thereddaikon]

The world isn't black and white. There is good and bad regulation. Effective and ineffective regulation. For example car safety regulations are pretty effective. Cars are more safe now than they ever have been and its rare for there to be a problem with the safety systems in cars. Financial market regulation has been mostly a disaster and is in large part due to capture by the industry and serious conflict of interests at all levels of government.

[thewarrior]

Who regulates the regulator ?

If it is the government then it goes back to the people being aware of their interests and not allowing themselves to be manipulated. Which is never going to be the case.

[blululu]

The answer to this question has always been ideology. Establishing a deep an sincere belief in the purpose of an undertaking on the part of its functionaries is the most durable way to run a community of any sort. Successful anarchist programs require some degree of ideological commitment to a greater cause. Switzerland is probably the most decentralized society on earth and you will notice the incredibly tight sense of right/wrong throughout Swiss society.

[thewarrior]

The people at the top are deeply cynical of ideology. They fill the ranks of middle management with true believers and play their own games.

[uabstraction]

In theory the regulators, as part of the government, serve the will of the people. But the state under capitalism serves no one but the massive corporations which these regulators are meant to govern. So we end up with fossil fuel guys running the EPA and Verizon lawyers running the FCC.

There is no one to regulate the regulators because the state in its entirety is isolated from accountability to the public.

[refurb]

Capitalism requires strong regulation but communism requires top down control.