Cory Doctorow has recently written an interesting piece on corruption:
https://boingboing.net/2018/07/02/low-yield-crude.html
It talks about how socializing risk and privatizing profits is actually the definition of corruption.
It talks about how socializing risk and privatizing profits is actually the definition of corruption.
Not just "sometimes", it takes the threat of violent people in uniforms ALL of the time when dealing with people bent on illegally benefiting themselves at the expense of others.
The issue is that the violent people in uniforms, (and even the people controlling them for that matter), can ALSO be bent on benefiting themselves at the expense of others.
It's not only grassroots organizations that can be corrupt, the government itself is actually even more likely to be corrupt. So you almost have to solve corruption before you try to solve the other structural issues. And corruption is just a very hard problem to solve.