> Cash rules everything around me.

Serious question: Are you in the US? Any Western European country?

There's a tendency for people in corrupt areas to assume the whole world works like that.

I’m in a white and homogenous area of the us. Cash does indeed rule every thing around me. There’s not a problem that can’t be solved with cash. Kill a few kids drunk driving or shooting recklessly? Cash in the right pockets and the evidence will be inadmissible and the case goes kaput. Want some more privacy? Your neighbors might suddenly find the neighborhood inhospitable with cash in the right hands. Want your kid to start for a team or graduate? There’s palms out. Very few people are principled enough in this economy to refuse a bribe. If you want to remain principled I suggest you think through your price before you’re asked if $1,000, some blow, and a cheap lap dance is enough and you end doing more for free when you’re extorted.

There’s a tendency for sheltered and privileged people to be aloof to the corruption all around them.

I'm not sure how much the first line really matters, as I grew up in a rather diverse top 25 city, but yeah, experience was about the same.

In high school, everyone knew exactly who to call if you got a DUI. 10k was the going price to get a certain lawyer who gets the case in front of a certain judge and however that worked, the charge was dropped to a moving violation. Kinda sick how the system works.

Justice in America isn't a right, it's a product you buy. Public versions should be non-existent or inferior. This is so that the best people get access to the best version of the product that money can buy. By definition in America, the best people are rich people. God rewarded them with money after all. Therefore they are closer to god and thus superior. Why be rich if you can't spend money buying things like justice, health care, education, and clean water?

Yep, it's kinda sick but also kinda true.

The French have a good response to the contagious mental illness that creates this mindset.

Ooh! Is it a machine? Does it make it effecient to remove the head from many people? claps maniacally

There’s that, but their protests are what I was referring too.

The first line only matters to racist whites that assume only BIPOC are corrupt when data shows white wealthy people commit far more crime and more substantial crimes at that.

Not the parent, not just cash, but capitalism literally means capital is (political) power. Just because you don't bribe police officers with cash that doesn't mean your political system isn't corrupt. In the West we just find it more comfortable to talk about lobbying and public-private partnerships instead of calling it what it is.

That is a great point and I'm not disputing it at all.

We all know monarchy is tyranny, but in that category there is quite a difference between a cult ruler with a bag of shrunken heads who is getting his orders from God vs. a stable, well managed, system in which the institutions basically function, including to some extent for the poor, and yet in which which the ruling class still basically dominate and exploit everything and everyone in order to enrich themselves and maintain their power.

The latter is a social malady, the former is completely chaotic. I think people are concerned that the US is resembling the latter less and less, and resembling the former more and more.

This

> Serious question: Are you in the US? Any Western European country?

The United States of America

> There's a tendency for people in corrupt areas to assume the whole world works like that.

Exactly. I live in a corrupt area and start with the assumption that most of the world is corrupt.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me is a Wu-Tang song (C.R.E.A.M.)