This should not come as a surprise to anyone and I think it's fairly easy to show this link, too. Whenever I'm asked what the best part of living in my country is, I unhesitatingly answer "low corruption". It is the source from which all other nice things flow.

But what is the cause of low or high corruption in a society? One method is a free press, which can highlight corruption, along with free elections where corrupt politicians can get kicked out. Is there an alternative?

There is plenty of free-press and free-elections in South Africa, yet the corruption persists. The entire governmental institution is rotten to the core at this point, and no amount of voting will get it out from the national government without numerous arrests + money recovering operations.

So what I would vote as the method would be rule of law and actual no-nonsense follow-through with applying it, no matter the consequence. There have been so many blatant high-profile legal issues all the way up to the president and yet there have been practically no big convictions. The ruling party can't even kick-out a prominent member from their own party after he's been arrested for corruption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_Magashule#Arrest_and_crimi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Zuma#Corruption_charges

I agree the rule of law is very important and voters need to care about corruption more that partisanship.

How free is the press in South Africa? In the US and to a lesser extent in the UK it is owned by billionaires who broadcast an agenda that funnily enough benefits billionaires.

> How free is the press in South Africa?

Freedom of the press has been built into our constitution since the end of Apartheid in 1994.

This freedom has proven to be pretty robust since then, but there have been some issues along the way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_South_Africa#Pre...

I think the only solution for corruption is transparency. And that might mean making all financial information public. Similar to how dashcams are necessary in places with insurance fraud.

Flatter and heterogeneous hierarchies and more equal distribution of power. Corruption requires hierarchy, and may well be that hierarchy requires corruption.

> Corruption requires hierarchy, and may well be that hierarchy requires corruption.

I don't think this is true at all. For example, if a policeman A catches county clerk B speeding, B could bribe A to forget about that ticket. That would be corruption, but A and B are not in any hierarchy relation to each other. True, they're in a temporary power relation, but a day later this power relation could well be reversed when B decides whether or not to approve A's building permit for his new house.

If authority holder A's actions affect authority holder B's decisions on A's that's more or less corruption in my books. And probably something that happens everyday, even literally the in the case that you describe. If A forgets the ticket and B approves the building permit because of it, this is corruption. A and B may benefit, but society at large doesn't.

> If A forgets the ticket and B approves the building permit because of it, this is corruption.

That's not what I meant, there's no quid pro quo in my example. My point was that neither A nor B are above or below each other in a hierarchy, and there's no permanent power imbalance between them, and yet they could both be corrupt. Corruption doesn't require a hierarchy, and a flat hierarchy doesn't prevent corruption.

Both A and B have hierarchy given authorities. That A can fine and B can issue permits both stem from a hierarchical system. Perhaps more exact is to say that corruption requires authority.

Flatter hierarchy does not prevent corruption totally, probably nothing will. But it will make corruption harder and more expensive. Some hierarchies, at least context dependent, are probably inevitable. It's a matter of scale.

> Perhaps more exact is to say that corruption requires authority.

Yes, that would be more correct. Authority != hierarchy, but you can't have a society without authority. You could start out with anarchy, but then authoritative structures would naturally emerge anyway.

Anarchistic views accept hierarchies and some sorts of authority, but these should be based on voluntary association (as far as possible) and only temporary and to serve some concrete purpose.

> For example, if a policeman A catches county clerk B speeding, B could bribe A to forget about that ticket. That would be corruption, but A and B are not in any hierarchy relation to each other.

This example only works if there is a hierarchy:

- Policeman A wouldn't take the bribe, unless it's big enough relative to his wealth

- Clerk B wouldn't offer the bribe, unless it's small enough relative to his wealth

There is an economic hierarchy implicit in the example. The consequences of the ticket are also important, since there's no point spending more on a bribe than would have to be paid in fines.

> Corruption requires hierarchy, and may well be that hierarchy requires corruption.

this is total nonsense. hierarchys are in no way tied to corruption, except that EVERYTHING requires a hierarchy, unless youre a nihilist.

to value is to rank order and create a hierarchy. valuation doesnt generate corruption.

Interesting point. Is there any country that has system tending towards this?

E.g. the increase of parlamentarism at the expense of monarchies or other strong heads of state may be a long trend towards this. But I don't think it's a given that such trend necessarily continues. For example kings used to be voted in many parts of the world until 10th century or so, but there was a strong move towards hereditary or other non-elected monarchy afterwards. Similar ebb and flow were seen in e.g. ancient Greece.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_monarchy

> and may well be that hierarchy requires corruption.

Literally 20 seconds of reflection is enough to see how wrong that is...

not an alternative, but necessary addition to your list - tradition of noncorruptness. (i.e. parents teaching their kids that corruption is bad)

Culture seems a big part of it. Especially at the top.

Justice? Checks and balances? Maybe non-corrupt people to go to

- to remove the corrupt

- to not have to deal with the corrupt ones

well, you clearly have not enough knowledge on how the press and the politicians' vote works. Hint: both depend on money, so who has the money has them both.

The public have to care about corruption more than culture war.

I've noticed in the UK there's been a number of corruption stories, starting around Brexit but hugely accelerated by pandemic procurement, that have been raised in the press and then just forgotten about.

In the US you can see how much energy has been put into fake scandals while distracting from real ones, e.g. Pizzagate vs Matt Gaetz.

I don't know why you're being downvoted, you hit the nail on the head. There are so many minor scandals that get inflated to epic proportions by the players of the opposite team, that truly outrageous scandals stay without consequence because they'll be replaced by the next one three days later.

Indeed if you look at the happiest countries list that seems to be true. Finland and Switzerland are near the top and kind of lefty and conservative respectively but both very low corruption.

Yeah, the debate between the left and right in the US [1] is basically irrelevant to the well-being of the average person. Though, I think the distinction between authoritarian and libertarian definitely does matter. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Finland and Switzerland are both rigorously democratic: Nordic countries have strong labour unions and worker co-determination [2] to keep big businesses honest, while Switzerland has direct democracy [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination

[3] https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik/ue...

I think you're on to something here.

There's this sliding scale ranging from "lower taxes, fewer public services" to "higher taxes, more public services". Really, anything on that spectrum is going to be workable.

Corruption is where sliding that scale towards "higher taxes" results in most of the additional money finding its way to the pockets of various bureaucrats and their friends, as opposed to being used to deliver services-as-promised.

"Lower taxes, fewer public services" means more scope for corruption from the private sector though, so I don't see there being any simple relationship between taxation and corruption. World corruption rankings seem to imply the opposite to what you're saying in fact.

https://www.transparency.org/en/news/cpi-2020-global-highlig...

None of the top six there are countries you would describe as having "lower taxes, fewer public services".

Lower taxes = less mandatory diversion of people's money to corrupt activities. With corrupt private companies you are more likely able to just "withdraw" or stay away from them. That is not at all the case with state-level corruption which requires you to actually flee the country, emigrate or vote in new non-corrupt politicians, some of which are next to impossible for a good chunk of people.

That's a lot of assumptions taken as an article of faith i.e. higher taxation = higher corruption and the ability to "avoid" private sector corruption as if you were perfectly aware of its existence and had non-corrupt alternatives to switch to. I'm not a libertarian and don't buy those premises, certainly not without any evidence.

I didn't say that higher taxation implies higher corruption. You said: ""Lower taxes, fewer public services" means more scope for corruption from the private sector though.

I.e. implying that lowering taxes and public services simply shifts the corruption to the "private sector" as if it's just shifting the problem around and is inescapable. Or that it leaves a gap to which "private sector corruption" can slide into.

To which I responded by saying that at least the [increase] in corruption can be avoided more easily if said corruption is in the private sector as opposed to in the government. So even if we're just shifting the corruption to the private sector, it's still better overall because we can more easily address/avoid it than we would be able to with a government. The point stands whether I am aware of the private-sector corruption or not, and also stands whether there are alternatives within the private sector to switch to because one can just choose to not participate (barring certain necessary industries, I guess)

Switzerland and Singapore are both on that list, and fit the bill for "lower taxes, fewer public services".

A country having good economics is definitely vital to its success as well. The introduction of a market economy did wonders for China's productivity, whereas I believe that corruption has been relatively constant.

China has two economic spheres in that respect, the market economy and the state economy. Woe betide any private company that tries to compete directly with a state enterprise. They can work with them but not against them.

This is probably why Jack Ma got in trouble over ANT. Banking, or at least a large swathe of the official finance sector, is largely a state monopoly. Private companies largely rely on informal or private financing.

Corruption is good for society, especially to keep the fire burning under the ass of the "great and the good".

Gandhi had to get kicked of a train to wake up. Otherwise he was perfectly satisfied wandering about being a mediocre lawyer.

That sounds like the broken window argument in economics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window