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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20137 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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Corruption in the military is particularly hard to deal with since much of it is secret, and it's not like a society can just totally disband its military if things go too wrong. Perun has a good video on this, with his bit at the end being particularly pertinent. Even though corruption will always exist to some degree, it's much better to live in a society where it's at least not blatant and generally seen as a bad thing that should be dealt with, as opposed to a country like Russia where it broadly runs rampant.

Exploding or minimizing the definition of "corruption" largely seem like post-hoc justifications for bad behavior rather than genuine attempts to understand the issue. If the valences were reversed, e.g. if Hunter Biden received a $200M jet and gave it to Joe, do you think Republicans would make a stink about it? I certainly do.

Even though corruption will always exist to some degree, it's much better to live in a society where it's at least not blatant and generally seen as a bad thing that should be dealt with, as opposed to a country like Russia where it broadly runs rampant.

It depends. In the UK, I would vastly prefer the blatant corruption of money under the table to get construction contracts done over the stealth corruption of planning permission restrictions in favour of incumbent property-owning rentseekers.

What you mean is that you prefer the implementation of a very bad policy (the build-nothing UK planning framework) to be undermined by corruption. The current policy is not "stealth corrupt" - it is working as advertised for the NIMBY voters who voted for it.

This is a special case of "competent and evil is more dangerous than incompetent and evil", with corruption being an effective competence-reducer.

Exploding or minimizing the definition of "corruption" largely seem like post-hoc justifications for bad behavior rather than genuine attempts to understand the issue.

Yes. As I said, it's a motte-and-bailey issue, and it is to the advantage of both sides to accuse the other side of corruption while suggesting that their side is blameless under the more narrow definition. But after decades of this, it is not surprising that "populists" think that there is a massive corruption problem. Populists read the mainstream media too.

If the valences were reversed, e.g. if Hunter Biden received a $200M jet and gave it to Joe, do you think Republicans would make a stink about it? I certainly do.

Yes. We don't have to ask this question hypothetically.

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