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.