[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

Again with the false dichotomies. You should get that checked out.

I am not railing against democracy. I am saying democracy is being undermined by certain unchecked aspects of capitalism, specifically in the US. In many European countries, this is much less of a problem because campaign finance is very strictly regulated. And in general the solution employed in Europe has been more financial regulation, not a small state. And it's been highly effective.

And yes, socialist countries can also be corrupt, and definitely have been. I never said otherwise. Saying X about capitalism is not automatically saying !X about socialism.

Similarly, saying that socialism can also harbour corruption is not equivalent to saying capitalism has nothing to do with corruption in capitalist countries.

It's false dichotomies all the way down.

[bravo22]

You are suggesting that capitalism creates wealth and wealth can be used to bribe political leaders correct? What am I missing?

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

I am saying it concentrates wealth yes, and that this leads to corruption when the relationship between wealth and power isn't sufficiently tamed through various regulations.

[bravo22]

You are assuming there is a magical threshold for "bribing" wealth that capitalism enables.

Second point, wealth is by definition a creature of rarity. The same is true of influence. Everyone has some degree of influence over others but useful influence is what one person has that others don't. So you can't really evenly distribute wealth over any meaningful time period. You can certainly eliminate mechanisms for relating it to other uses but then you've destroyed it.

The problem you are trying to articulate has been studied. It is actually the concentration of power that is the problem. Influence, wealth, coercion are traded by some to those that hold power in order to direct it in a way that they want -- this is called corruption.

Both capitalism and socialism are economic systems. When combined with democracy they can enable corruption because it is the concentration of power in the hands of the leaders that is the critical element -- not what is used to trade for it.

When you're looking at European socialist countries you'll find the successful ones are either low population or the power int the hands of the leaders is fairly restricted because of societal structures. Meaning the instrument isn't there. Ask soon as you scale it up it rots a lot faster than ay capitalist society.