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Corruption [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-31

The other night, Rachel Maddow took a deep dive into the brain of JD Vance. It turns out that its name is Curtis Yarvin, and he has some interesting ideas, in the sense of the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Which we currently are.

Mr. Yarvin’s basic contention is that we are governed by a corrupt government which needs to be destroyed and replaced by a CEO, and as he puts it, the CEO of a nation is called a dictator and we just need to get over our aversion to that.

So I thought it would be interesting to look at just how we rank on the scale of national corruption.

I went to https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-corrupt-countries

And found this definition:

“Not all governments operate with the best interests of their citizens as the top priority. People in power can have a hard time resisting the temptation to use that power for their own gain, and many public servants in many countries have been caught up in political scandals and corruption. In some countries, histories of deeply entrenched corruption have spurred political unrest between the governments and their citizens.”

Fair enough. Corruption bad. So how do we rate?

As it turns out, there are organizations devoted to studying this.

“In an effort to shine a light on corruption and initiate changes for the better, the organization Transparency.org has created the Corruption Perceptions Index, which uses expert assessments and surveys to rank countries based upon their perceived levels of corruption. Initially launched in 1995, the CPI defines corruption as “the misuse of public power for private benefit.”

The 2022 CPI (released January 2023) ranked 180 countries on a scale from 0 to 100. The lower the score, the more corrupt a country is considered to be.

We scored 69. Better than the average ranking of 42, but well behind the top scorers:

Denmark 90

Finland 87

New Zealand 85

Norway 84

Singapore 83

Sweden 82

Switzerland 82

Now all of these, other than Singapore, tend toward strong, democratically elected governments. They all—including Singapore—share strong social safety nets, something Mr. Yarvin abhors with a passion.

So let’s take a look at the nations whose governments Mr. Yarvin and his CEO-Phillic buddies admire.

Hungary 42 (tied with China and Cuba)

Russia 26 (tied with a number of alleged “shithole” nations)

India 39

Looking at the bottom of the rankings, there are a few characteristics that lean a nation toward corruption:

Weak to non-existent governments (Somalia, 11 and Syria, 13 sit at the bottom)

Chaos, whether caused by war, environmental factors such as drought or flooding, or ethno-religious factors (Syria, again, Ukraine at 36)

Lengthy histories of public corruption and bribery.

Rule by dictators or faux-democracies, where the fix is in, opposition candidates are imprisoned or assassinated, but Hey! We had an election and our boy won.

Kingdoms are a mixed bag, presumably based upon the preferences of the winner of the lucky sperm lottery. The United Arab Emirates rank just below us with a score of 68, but the Saudis and Qataris freight in at 52 and 42, respectively.

Based upon my quick and not in depth survey of the data, it would seem that the strongest bulwark against corruption is a strong central government that puts the needs of its people before personal aggrandizement. I’d be glad if a Kossak would be interested in digging deeper.

It’s not surprising that the tech bro CEOs have adopted Curtis as their pet philosopher, just as it’s not surprising that a guy who talks like a high school dropout has captured the affections of the non-college educated. “If I, or somebody just like me, ran the country, everything would be great!” the logic goes.

So it will be interesting to see if rule by a CEO hand-picked by gentlemen who have spent their lives in the endless quest for wealth will interact with this:

“Corruption will continue to thrive until justice systems can punish wrongdoing and keep governments in check. When justice is bought or politically interfered with, it is the people that suffer. Leaders should fully invest in and guarantee the independence of institutions that uphold the law and tackle corruption. It is time to end impunity for corruption.”

—François Valérian, Chair of Transparency International

Gee, that almost sounds like a Yarvin quote, from the mirror world of Trump, in which prosecution should not be aimed at those who break the law, but at those who fail to bend the knee to the dictator. So the next question is “How does Curtis define corruption?”

I pulled an explanation from an article in The Guardian, describing the system that Curtis would like to destroy, “real power is exercised oligarchically in a small number of prestigious academic and media institutions he calls the Cathedral[.]” I’d love to ask him how, exactly, replacing mainstream media with media operated by a different set of oligarchs (not that Bezos and Murdoch aren’t already in place) is an improvement. Ditto for academic freedom being crushed in the name of…what, exactly?

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