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+--- Thread: Is corruption inescapable? (/showthread.php?tid=7119)
Is corruption inescapable? - Dark Jaguar - 5th April 2018
I've been a little depressed lately, what with what appears to be almost every single organization I ever respected revealed, one after another, to be a nest of baby birds being eaten by vipers. Is this just how humanity is? Do ALL attempts to form any sort of organization just end in utter corruption and psychopathy? Is there any way to prevent the psychopaths from rising to the top and ruining everything anyone with good intentions set out to do?
Is corruption inescapable? - A Black Falcon - 7th April 2018
Is there something specific you're thinking of here? Because I'd say that while there is some truth to what you say, you are being a bit overly cynical here... because there are plenty of organizations that last a long time in good, strong shape. Most things fade eventually, but how quickly that happens varies widely.
Is corruption inescapable? - Dark Jaguar - 9th April 2018
There is a difference between "fading" (Blockbuster) and corruption (definitely the republican party, a lot of the democratic party, Google (they ditched their "don't be evil" slogan for a reason), Wallstreet, frickin' Channel Awesome). I just wish I knew of some way to keep psychopaths out of positions of leadership. If only we could spot them in advance.
Is corruption inescapable? - A Black Falcon - 9th April 2018
Quote: If only we could spot them in advance.Yes, because Minority Report worked so well...
But really, you're talking about a lot of different things here -- traditional corruption, exploiting people, harassment/ sexual assault, supporting hateful and discriminatory political policies, pushing anti-consumer business policies in the name of corporate profits, and more. They're all bad things, but they're mostly unrelated. Keeping every person who might do any kind of bad thing away is impossible. There definitely are things that can be done, though, such as having much better investigations of sexual harassment claims, not just crushing bad stories about a person just because they are popular or powerful, and such. It does seem that society is headed in that direction at least in part.
As for solutions, what should be done depends on the type of thing. For harassment, gender discrimination, incompetence, and corruption, public airing of claims, hopefully followed by prosecutions, works well. Trying to change corporate behavior is much harder, though. Trying to shame or protest companies like Facebook and Google until they change can work once in a while, but big companies want to make money and will keep looking for ways to do that, regardless of what the impact on regular people is. It can be very hard to change corporate behavior, but it is possible, either through new laws or enough public pressure... until they look for a way around the restrictions, but that's a never-ending problem.
Really, the world today is the most peaceful it has probably ever been. We learn every detail of every war halfway around the world in a way that was impossible until the last couple of decades, and there are a lot of huge problems the world faces now such as global warming, limited resources, fighting how culture devalues and discriminates against women and minorities, and more, and this causes people to not realize just how good things are right now... but, despite Trump, for the most part they are good. People always have and always will do bad things, but it's harder to get away with things now thanks to the global nature of the internet, and society is changing in some good ways.
So, I may be a natural pessimist, but things aren't all bad.
Is corruption inescapable? - Dark Jaguar - 13th April 2018
The problem with the Minority Report approach (other than not really being a good movie) is, they could have just prevented the crime! Why arrest them before they do it, when they can literally just change a few things and prevent it that way? Why time travel murder Hitler, when you can time travel adopt and raise him as a good boy?
In all seriousness though, we ALREADY pick people for jobs based on their personality. If someone acts rude, they don't get that customer relations job. What I'm suggesting is, if someone acts selfish and talks as though only they matter, they don't get to be in a position of leadership. Ever. We should instantly be suspicious of the charismatic.
Is corruption inescapable? - A Black Falcon - 13th April 2018
For that issue, I'd say that the problem is that people like leaders to take charge and lead. That seems to often lead to a dislike of opposition, to wanting to consolidate power and take over, etc. America in the past did a good job of keeping the worse of that kind of person away from the Presidency, in part because the Founders knew of that danger and tried to create a system which wouldn't fall to that, but with Trump that barrier cracked open for a bunch of reasons, but because of racism and sexism for the most part. So yeah, why did our system fail this time? Racism and sexism is why.
So then the question is, can our political system survive this? Will the nation survive as a democracy, or not? And so far, it's surviving. The Republican Party is doing a lot to undermine that, but between the Democrats (as incompetent as they are), the court system (Trump has done badly in court, despite trying to appoint a lot of far-right judges...), the bureaucracy (such as the Trump-appointed District Attorney of New York who had donated over $5000 to Trump's campaign, but when faced with the Cohen raid authorization recused himself instead of trying to block it, because he apparently believes in doing the right thing in such a case), the voters (who are crushing the Republicans at the polls in special elections), and such, so far the system is barely holding up. I'm getting a little bit more optimistic about America's chances of getting through the Trump era with democracy intact. Still, however, that he won at all is an incredibly negative sign for the future, and if we see someone like Trump but competent it'll be really bad. But for now, his and his peoples' corruption and incompetence is keeping them from acheiving more of their goals, and may take them down.
As for other things you're talking about here, revelations about how bad some people are apart from the issue of Trump, there isn't always a way to know for sure what people are like in private; some people are very good at pretending to be nice and good in public, but do awful things in private -- see the latest awful revelations about Channel Awesome there. I never watched much of their stuff so that growing debacle isn't something I care too deeply about myself on a 'I watched those people' level, but still it's sad stuff, particularly the sexual assault allegations of course. How could people have known about that? Well, apparently a few people did try to warn Channel Awesome leadership, but they ignored it. That's obviously something which should not happen. Perhaps in this new, post-Harvey Weinstein world that kind of behavior, simply not caring enough about harassment and worse to follow up on it, is changing. I sure hope so.
Quote: What I'm suggesting is, if someone acts selfish and talks as though only they matter, they don't get to be in a position of leadership. Ever. We should instantly be suspicious of the charismatic.Isn't it human nature to be both attracted towards, as well as repulsed from, people like that though? People shouldn't listen to that kind of person, but some will. And anyway, you need at least some amount of charisma to be popular enough to win an election. There's a fine line here that makes what you're saying hard, though it is correct. As the (probably made up) saying goes, democracy is the worst form of government ever... except for all the others.
Quote:The problem with the Minority Report approach (other than not really being a good movie) is, they could have just prevented the crime! Why arrest them before they do it, when they can literally just change a few things and prevent it that way? Why time travel murder Hitler, when you can time travel adopt and raise him as a good boy?That's true, that probably would be a more effective approach... but it wouldn't tell the story the movie ( / short story) is trying to tell, so it doesn't. Time travel is a whole different field of science fiction, and what you're describing here is much more of a time-travel-book plot. There are a lot of ways those efforts can go wrong too, of course, depending on what someone is trying to change and their motivations...
On that note, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland, is a great book that centers around a conflict based on exactly that question -- what is the kind of thing in history that should be changed? Should you change a thing that makes things better for one group, at the expense of most? And such.