Why are Russians corrupt?

[loinburger]

Stage 1 of my stealth dickgirling is complete

[Dinner]

Russia isn't even in the top 10 most corrupt countries though along with Belarus and Ukraine it is one of the most corrupt in Europe. I think Russia gets judged to a higher standard because they get compared to the rest of Europe instead of on a world wide scale.

World’s most corrupt and least corrupt nations

January 6, 2009

Corruption watchdog Transparency International has released a list of the world’s most and least corrupt nations.The report comes ahead of a conference in Bali this week where more than 100 countries are expected to gather for a United Nations anti-corruption conference.

Four countries from the region made it to the list of most corrupt countries in the world: Somalia and Myanmar tied in the top spot, followed by Iraq and Sudan.

The least corrupt countries in the world are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, scoring 9.4 on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). The UAE ranked 36 in the list.

The lower the CPI of a country, the higher corruption is, with 0 being the most corrupt and 10 being very clean.

Most corrupt country and CPI score
Somalia: 1.4
Myanmar: 1.4
Iraq: 1.5
Haiti: 1.6
Uzbekistan: 1.7
Tonga: 1.7
Sudan: 1.8
Chad: 1.8
Afghanistan: 1.8
Laos: 1.9
Norway: 8.7

Least corrupt country and CPI score
Denmark: 9.4
Finland: 9.4
New Zealand: 9.4
Singapore: 9.3
Sweden: 9.3
Iceland: 9.2
Netherlands: 9.0
Switzerland: 9.0
Canada: 8.7

http://masalai.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/world%E2%80%99s-most-corrupt-and-least-corrupt-nations/

[loinburger]

What the hell is up with Norway?

[Asher]

Nikolai

I always knew he was shady.

[loinburger]

Isn't that the name of the antichrist in that Left Behind fundie fapfest?

[onodera]

I believe it's relatively simple. After the bolshivik revolution production was meant to be centralized. Socialism was attempted but could never be totally realized likely for obvious reasons like incentive problems and tragedy of the commons, and not so obvious reasons like Von Mises Economic calculation problem or hayeks notion of of the centrality of information.

However there is another critical reason why this culture of corruption exists. When the primary markets where subverted via the state. Individual self interest just directed itself into the political market. This is known as "rent-seeking" or as we call it in USA lobbying.

Firms that sought out market dominance did so by purchasing monopoly privlage from the state. Conversely public institutions generated revenue indirectly by selling monopoly privilege. These private investment costs where then pased to consumers, a not so obvious form of taxation.

Since self interest was funneled into the state and diverted from the market these institutional paradigms are still a normal part of how wealth is sought and will continue to be. Further more in America where you can obtain a 2200% profit on your lobbying investment it's somewhat absurd to try to use the market when you can just funnel your operations into a political market.

The tremendous problem here is costs are past to taxpayers and only those with tremendous wealth are able to take advantage of rent seeking. Thus those that are able to capture regulators often use them to shield themselves from consumers and competitors.

my choice on teh poll is the first option. Rot that spreads from teh top down as regulators comrades bureaucrats must be willing or unwilling to sell monopoly privlage. Democracy cannot serve as a check agaisnt this for reasons that i wont' go into unless its' necessary.

Like my German teacher used to say, "a very good idea, but a wrong one". Bribery and corruption were commonplace even in the Empire. I guess it's the whole principle of the state apparatus' construction. Russian state has always been very centralized. There's a strict hierarchy of public officials. And this also means that at some point in it, there's a person who can solve your problem. There were several well known attempts to build a parallel hierarchy. For example, one was oprichnina, another was CheKa. You can go to Wikipedia and read how they both worked out.

[VetLegion]

Voted second option.

[RGBVideo]

Note that the graph pictured is almost meaningless since "corruption" is measured by interviewing a very small sample and asking them how large they see general corruption in their country, from 1 to 10.

[rah]

Yeah, any results that show the US as not being very corrupt is just silly.
Of course living in Chicago makes me kind of biased.

[Rafe]

Russian state has always been very centralized. There's a strict hierarchy of public officials. There were several well known attempts to build a parallel hierarchy. For example, one was oprichnina, another was CheKa. You can go to Wikipedia and read how they both worked out.

Any centralized authority should result in increased corrupt due to the Peltzman effect. That is as the cost of something, in this case being a corrupt politician, decreases we should see more corruption. This is the notion of moral hazard.

Politicians are no different then any human and It's impossible to believe that public-spirited people in government selflessly work to overcome the problems caused by selfish people in the private sector?

Also this idea that the hobbsian artificial god can be policed by an institution you place ontop of it leads to an infinite regress. Who will watch the watchers, who will watch them and on and on.

And this also means that at some point in it, there's a person who can solve your problem.

I'm not sure what this means? The state has a limited means to determine what is correct and what is not without a profit/loss mechanism. They can pursue many policies a market system could not. If they attempt something that is not successful they can still generate revenue to finance it so the signaling mechanism is at best attenuated. A private entity cannot do this however it can still engage in regulatory capture(as long as you have a state) to shield it from competitors who can take advantage of their failure .

Furthermore how could you assume there would be somebody in government that could solve a problem and even if there was how would you extract him? There is no real RATIONAL selection process here. At best you have technocrats or bureaucrats deciding who should be deployed where. This is a fundamental structural problem as a bureaucrat or technocrat do not have the same knowledge as a decentralized market. They have their own gaps in info, and their own biases. They are not gods.

Even if you could employ direct democracy to decide where the geniuses should be deployed you would have a serious problem of "rational ignorance" in a voter system. You would have problems with biases, you'de have retrospective voting that gives false positive ( blames the current administration for shark attacks or other natural disasters). Democracy does not create efficient institutions.

There are other issues regarding bureaucratic self-interest where a few bureaucrats arbitrarily decide what to do and how to do it when they don't necessarily always have to endure the costs of failure as it can be passed to taxpayers or handed off to some other individual lower in the heirachy who can be blamed. Any mechanism that centralizes control is flawed, even the human body functions via many decentralized processes. As a system becomes more complex centrality must yield.

@Asher

Joined Dec 2003, first post now? Impressive, but welcome.

Thanks.

[onodera]

I'm not sure what this means? The state has a limited means to determine what is correct and what is not without a profit/loss mechanism. They can pursue many policies a market system could not. If they attempt something that is not successful they can still generate revenue to finance it so the signaling mechanism is at best attenuated. A private entity cannot do this however it can still engage in regulatory capture(as long as you have a state) to shield it from competitors who can take advantage of their failure .

What I mean is that at some point there's always a person you can bribe to solve your problem, because he's the boss of the problemmakers.

[Zevico]

I have no idea why the state is so corrupt, actually. We are to blame no one but ourselves for letting that happen.

The nomenklatura/ruling class of the SU gets sick of 'communism' so it decides to switch to a more open (and sad to say, improved) form of authoritarianism. The outcome is a corrupt authoritarian state, still working mostly in the interests of its governing and ruling class, though paying more regard than before to the needs of its people as a whole.

[Zevico]

Like my German teacher used to say, "a very good idea, but a wrong one". Bribery and corruption were commonplace even in the Empire. I guess it's the whole principle of the state apparatus' construction. Russian state has always been very centralized. There's a strict hierarchy of public officials. And this also means that at some point in it, there's a person who can solve your problem. There were several well known attempts to build a parallel hierarchy. For example, one was oprichnina, another was CheKa. You can go to Wikipedia and read how they both worked out.

I actually read an excellent book on this topic quite recently. I don't think centralisation quite describes what you are looking for. Look up the book "Nomenklatura" by Michael Voslensky.

[VetLegion]

One need only watch the videos of hazing in the Russian army from a while back to uderstand the problem. Any man who willingly submits to being beaten and humiliated for months just so that he could one day in turn humiliate new recruits is a slave.

It would never fly in Croatia, and we're not a particularly brave people.

Russians want a strong hand fix things but it's not how it happens. It happens when a lot of weak hands keep trying.

[onodera]

One need only watch the videos of hazing in the Russian army from a while back to uderstand the problem. Any man who willingly submits to being beaten and humiliated for months just so that he could one day in turn humiliate new recruits is a slave.

@the word in bold.