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The University of Würzburg in Germany developed a democracy index, it rates countries according to certain metrics expressing what they call “Quality of Democracy”.
Do you see a correlation between countries’ Gini coefficents and democratic qualities?
Just do a rough analysis, e.g., by comparing the leading countries in the democracy ranking and their Gini coefficents with China’s or Russia’s (or other countries’) numbers. What does this tell you?
This is just one example, you’d find many similar insights given that you start seriously studying the various forms of communism, capitalism and other theories and their practical implementations.
@0x815 Interesting links. I’m gonna save them. However, the inclusion of some authoritarian states at the top (like Belarus or UAE) - make me warry to say that democracy alone can make societies more equal. I think that rather capitalistic societies with strong social policies have a tendency to be more equal.
Nevertheless, communism itself indeed lowers the social inequality - albeit through rather questionable methods like abolishing people’s private property or persecuting people based on their wealth - but only at first. Over time, the newly formed elite can and will abuse the principles underlying communism to their own benefit, as they are left unchecked - essentially turning itself into a new ruling class (i.e. the very thing they were against). This is why authoritarianism is flawed at its core and can never be a solution to corruption and socio-economical inequality.
On a personal note, I’ve yet to visit The Ceaușescu’s Palace in Primăverii neighborhood whenever I have time. I’ll probably leave a personal opinion on it in a beehaw weekly, but I’m sure I’ll find lots of stuff that was not even remotely available to the general population back then, like AC (which only gained popularity in the 2000s) or underfloor heating (not to mention the pool inside).
I don’t say that democracy alone makes societies more equal. Before we could even make such a statement we needed to define the terms democracy and equality, but this would take more space than we have here in a blog post. I meant that more as a hint for @pancake to seriously study the “accumulation” of capital across countries. Regarding the concentration of power and capital, the so-called “communist state” is not better if not even worse as your remark about Ceaușescu’s Palace suggests.
Your logic is reasonable, but it makes the assumption that there is no way to create governance mechanisms that are not bound to become corrupt. Communism is based on the idea that the following flaws exist in capitalism:
Money can be used to earn more money using the scheme money -> capital -> money, which causes an exponential blowup effect that amplifies random fluctuations into wealth differences of up to several orders of magnitude.
Other such schemes exist, even without capital, but that is the one that most easily leads to an absolute departure from meritocracy and into lottery mechanics.
Additionally, money can be used to gain political power, leading to a money -> power -> money effect that further amplifies this effect. This, in, turn, might involve directly bribing officials, paying for their electoral campaigns or donating to news media.
Finally, the transfer of wealth does not simply occur between people in a country, but also between countries. This explains why (wealthy) capitalist countries do not apparently suffer the supposed horrors of capitalism to the predicted extent.
Communism seeks to eliminate those loopholes so that wealth more or less depends on merit and not on luck. Specifically, the ultimate goal of communism (socialism) is to maximize the amount of utility that an individual can acquire for a certain amount of work time, by applying the following changes:
Capital, i.e. anything that generate wealth, can only be owned by all people, not by specific individuals. This makes sure that the first loophole is closed.
Individuals receive compensation for their labor. This can be thought of as a sum of the theoretical (capitalist) salary and the theoretical profits they would earn as owners of their corresponding portion of the public capital in the form of shares, which in practice is just a higher salary (given the reports from typical US companies, that could be around +80%).
All capital and its activity is publicly managed as a single entity. This increases productivity due to scale effects, yielding even higher buying-power-to-work-time ratio.
Due to the absence of competition, all labor used to that end (all publicity, multiple finance departments, trading, etc.) would instead be used to add even more value to production, increasing the aforementioned ratio even more.
This huge increase in efficiency could mean an increase in the ability to purchase, a reduction in the number of hours worked, earlier retirement, or faster economic growth for the country (by using the additional earnings to buy capital). The specific outcome depends on what the people want to prioritize.
To avoid corruption through paid campaigns and the media, many levels of representation are established, where citizens vote to candidates for local offices, and these in turn vote for the national congress. National representatives do not campaign or depend on media influence, and they are selected among the local representatives.
To the same end, all of the government officials must cooperate: they should debate proposals according to their own ideas, but after a decision has been made, they should all go with it as a single team. Thus, there is a single party with multiple candidates.
Finally, (communist) countries themselves should cooperate.
So, that is what communism is about. That’s what a socialist country “by the book” should do. Of course, not every country does this, especially since there are just 5 (?) of them, just like most capitalist countries in the world are pretty bad for capitalist standards.
it makes the assumption that there is no way to create governance mechanisms that are not bound to become corrupt
It’s not exactly the governance mechanisms becoming corrupt. It’s about power mechanisms that are bound to corrupt people. When too little people hold onto power for too long, the risk of corruption grows exponentially. You need to have some checks and balances in place - i.e. some other people with certain powers - that ensure these people perform their duties properly. If you’ve had any previous experience in sysadmin, it’s like making sure some users have the proper permissions and none unneeded extra. The sysadmin, in this case, would be the people - they would be the one needing the leadership and the power of those able to decide for them, and they would really be able to make proper decisions in this regard. It may sound complicated, although I tried to explain it in simple terms, but the idea is to have less trust that things go right, but more securities that thing will do go right. That’s how democracy works. And because none of these securities exist under communism…
Communism is based on the idea that the following flaws exist in capitalism:
As you said, money can be used to gain power. This means that money is pretty much worthless without influence in corrupting people. Again, how can you reject someone’s influence if there are literally no consequences against you? As flawed as democracies are, healthy democracies always manage to recover in situations of crisis - again, by having these checks and balances in place, and involving the society in the decision process.
And this can mostly be seen when money are mostly needed by everyone, when economy goes down the drain.
You mentioned in your comment corruption through media and lobby groups. That’s likely a valid point in a society with wild and unchecked capitalism like the United States. However, in former communist countries like mine, corruption boils down to a three word phrase: I know someone. By knowing someone you don’t need large amounts of money. You just offer that person a gift, and they’ll open the doors for you wherever you need. Abortion is forbidden? I know someone who does this, trust me.
I also know someone who brings Pepsi and Jeans from outside our country. I also know someone who will help your kid go to a good school. You only have to bring him/her one bag of coffee and maybe some expensive chocolate or flowers and he/she will bring your kid on the list, regardless his/her performance. Are you sick? You need a surgery? I know someone who is sure to perform it well, all you need to do is, again, bring a bag of coffee and maybe some good brandy, and you’re set. You need to do this and that, but you need authorization? I know someone from the party who will help you with this.
All the things I mentioned here were things that were happening in this place, and they helped, in time, create an environment where corruption was the norm. Where corruption was ingrained into the raison d’être of the society at large. A large scale normalization of corruption. And no one to keep that in check. You couldn’t arrest members of the Communist Party, because they too knew someone. And those who knew someone, knew someone themselves as well, all the way up to the person having the absolute authority - all in the name of creating true socialism. And who was to say that that person could for a split second not be focused into bringing true socialism upon us, the mortals, right?
Who does lose from all this I know someone network? It is us, the people that strive to be correct, that play by the rules, that are afraid of breaking them. And people see when something’s not right. They see the hypocrisy, they see the contrasts, they see when someone moves ahead of the queue and try to find a compelling reason why that person moved ahead without having one. And if they do not see one, they get angry about it. At first, they report this, they seek a resolution to it. If that resolution does not come, they try harder and harder and harder. If they are not only unsatisfied about the results, but the system is turning against them for reporting things, for “speaking against the system” and shedding an allegedly bad light on it, these people will then become one with the system.
That might sound dystopic to you. But think for a second: the Romanian Communist Party or PCR (Partidul Comunist Român) also had its acronym mocked as coming from Pile, Cunoștințe și Relații or Influence (my poor translation of the first word imo, but having a similar meaning) Acquaintances and Relations.
Communism seeks to eliminate those loopholes so that wealth more or less depends on merit and not on luck.
Then this means that the said loopholes are not eliminated, and wealth is less dependent on merit in this regard, correct?
And because none of these securities exist under communism…
Not necessarily. To provide a silly example by contradiction, you could ensure that the country is governed by an automated system that doesn’t involve people at all. A more reasonable example would be implementing the exact same procedures as any democratic country, but constitutionally constraining the economy to a socialist system, which would give strictly less power to officials and thus be at least as resistant to corruption.
Separation of power into parts that will not cooperate is important in any system. Offloading power into a constitution is also necessary. Your points are valid and highlight the need to constrain power in a way that corruption is as unlikely as possible.
The goal of socialism is to create a society that is governed by the people, for the people, so ensuring the above is a task for any socialist state. A socialist state where this does not hold is not just a flawed democracy, but also a flawed socialist state. The ideal state is one where all the flaws (exploits, if you wish) of traditional states cease to exist, which implies that corruption should be out of the picture. Communism only states that capitalism and traditional democracies are intrinsically exploitable due to the issues I mentioned, so in order to create the ideal state, they should also be abolished. What you describe is a situation where some issues were corrected while others were created, so little or no progress was made.
It’s nice that we can talk about statistics, I really like the subject. Please note that what I wanted to imply is that China is, in the short term, sacrificing economic equality and other goals typically sought by socialism, in favor of maximizing the chance of success against a world that wants to destroy communism.
Now, that set aside, I like to be skeptical of such analyses, for a few reasons that I will outline.
Low statistical power
Accompanying these correlation analyses with an adequate error analysis usually reveals that the sample is too small to yield any significant results. Countries’ different population further complicates this.
Confounding factors
Unfortunately, many statistical analyses in the field, even done by professionals, fail to take this into account. E.g., the “economic freedom index” publishes a report where the value of the indicator is shown to be positively correlated to higher standards of living (presumably to influence the reader’s opinions). Upon closer inspection, one realizes that some of the values used to compute the index depend themselves on economic stability, and recalculating the index without them removes the correlation entirely.
Arbitrary definitions
Not only are these indices based on non-linear scores or arbitrarily weighted operations between incompatible magnitudes, but sometimes they are even defined in vague or subjective terms. E.g., “are deputies elected by fair elections”, rather than being answer as some quantitative measure of transfer of entropy, is simply left to opinion. Furthermore, for the question of whether all citizens have equal voting rights, the US gets 0.81 out of 1, while China gets 0.00, despite the laws of both countries setting basically the same restrictions on voting.
Your comments on “such analyses” are not only (intentionally?) false and misleading, they have in part nothing to do with what I said. You have either really no idea about the subject or you are acting in bad faith by applying the same hypocritical double standards as in many other of your posts. Such a conversation doesn’t make sense.
Fair. It’d be helpful if you’d point out the falsehood in my comment. Or the reason why these don’t apply to the specific analysis you suggested. Or the double standards in my comments.
The Gini coefficient is a often used measures for economic equality within a society - the lower the Gini coefficient, the higher economic equality.
The University of Würzburg in Germany developed a democracy index, it rates countries according to certain metrics expressing what they call “Quality of Democracy”.
Do you see a correlation between countries’ Gini coefficents and democratic qualities?
Just do a rough analysis, e.g., by comparing the leading countries in the democracy ranking and their Gini coefficents with China’s or Russia’s (or other countries’) numbers. What does this tell you?
This is just one example, you’d find many similar insights given that you start seriously studying the various forms of communism, capitalism and other theories and their practical implementations.
@0x815 Interesting links. I’m gonna save them. However, the inclusion of some authoritarian states at the top (like Belarus or UAE) - make me warry to say that democracy alone can make societies more equal. I think that rather capitalistic societies with strong social policies have a tendency to be more equal.
Nevertheless, communism itself indeed lowers the social inequality - albeit through rather questionable methods like abolishing people’s private property or persecuting people based on their wealth - but only at first. Over time, the newly formed elite can and will abuse the principles underlying communism to their own benefit, as they are left unchecked - essentially turning itself into a new ruling class (i.e. the very thing they were against). This is why authoritarianism is flawed at its core and can never be a solution to corruption and socio-economical inequality.
On a personal note, I’ve yet to visit The Ceaușescu’s Palace in Primăverii neighborhood whenever I have time. I’ll probably leave a personal opinion on it in a beehaw weekly, but I’m sure I’ll find lots of stuff that was not even remotely available to the general population back then, like AC (which only gained popularity in the 2000s) or underfloor heating (not to mention the pool inside).
@pancake
I don’t say that democracy alone makes societies more equal. Before we could even make such a statement we needed to define the terms democracy and equality, but this would take more space than we have here in a blog post. I meant that more as a hint for @pancake to seriously study the “accumulation” of capital across countries. Regarding the concentration of power and capital, the so-called “communist state” is not better if not even worse as your remark about Ceaușescu’s Palace suggests.
@0x815 oh, I get it now 😁
Your logic is reasonable, but it makes the assumption that there is no way to create governance mechanisms that are not bound to become corrupt. Communism is based on the idea that the following flaws exist in capitalism:
Communism seeks to eliminate those loopholes so that wealth more or less depends on merit and not on luck. Specifically, the ultimate goal of communism (socialism) is to maximize the amount of utility that an individual can acquire for a certain amount of work time, by applying the following changes:
So, that is what communism is about. That’s what a socialist country “by the book” should do. Of course, not every country does this, especially since there are just 5 (?) of them, just like most capitalist countries in the world are pretty bad for capitalist standards.
@pancake
It’s not exactly the governance mechanisms becoming corrupt. It’s about power mechanisms that are bound to corrupt people. When too little people hold onto power for too long, the risk of corruption grows exponentially. You need to have some checks and balances in place - i.e. some other people with certain powers - that ensure these people perform their duties properly. If you’ve had any previous experience in sysadmin, it’s like making sure some users have the proper permissions and none unneeded extra. The sysadmin, in this case, would be the people - they would be the one needing the leadership and the power of those able to decide for them, and they would really be able to make proper decisions in this regard. It may sound complicated, although I tried to explain it in simple terms, but the idea is to have less trust that things go right, but more securities that thing will do go right. That’s how democracy works. And because none of these securities exist under communism…
As you said, money can be used to gain power. This means that money is pretty much worthless without influence in corrupting people. Again, how can you reject someone’s influence if there are literally no consequences against you? As flawed as democracies are, healthy democracies always manage to recover in situations of crisis - again, by having these checks and balances in place, and involving the society in the decision process.
And this can mostly be seen when money are mostly needed by everyone, when economy goes down the drain.
You mentioned in your comment corruption through media and lobby groups. That’s likely a valid point in a society with wild and unchecked capitalism like the United States. However, in former communist countries like mine, corruption boils down to a three word phrase: I know someone. By knowing someone you don’t need large amounts of money. You just offer that person a gift, and they’ll open the doors for you wherever you need. Abortion is forbidden? I know someone who does this, trust me.
I also know someone who brings Pepsi and Jeans from outside our country. I also know someone who will help your kid go to a good school. You only have to bring him/her one bag of coffee and maybe some expensive chocolate or flowers and he/she will bring your kid on the list, regardless his/her performance. Are you sick? You need a surgery? I know someone who is sure to perform it well, all you need to do is, again, bring a bag of coffee and maybe some good brandy, and you’re set. You need to do this and that, but you need authorization? I know someone from the party who will help you with this.
All the things I mentioned here were things that were happening in this place, and they helped, in time, create an environment where corruption was the norm. Where corruption was ingrained into the raison d’être of the society at large. A large scale normalization of corruption. And no one to keep that in check. You couldn’t arrest members of the Communist Party, because they too knew someone. And those who knew someone, knew someone themselves as well, all the way up to the person having the absolute authority - all in the name of creating true socialism. And who was to say that that person could for a split second not be focused into bringing true socialism upon us, the mortals, right?
Who does lose from all this I know someone network? It is us, the people that strive to be correct, that play by the rules, that are afraid of breaking them. And people see when something’s not right. They see the hypocrisy, they see the contrasts, they see when someone moves ahead of the queue and try to find a compelling reason why that person moved ahead without having one. And if they do not see one, they get angry about it. At first, they report this, they seek a resolution to it. If that resolution does not come, they try harder and harder and harder. If they are not only unsatisfied about the results, but the system is turning against them for reporting things, for “speaking against the system” and shedding an allegedly bad light on it, these people will then become one with the system.
That might sound dystopic to you. But think for a second: the Romanian Communist Party or PCR (Partidul Comunist Român) also had its acronym mocked as coming from Pile, Cunoștințe și Relații or Influence (my poor translation of the first word imo, but having a similar meaning) Acquaintances and Relations.
Then this means that the said loopholes are not eliminated, and wealth is less dependent on merit in this regard, correct?
Not necessarily. To provide a silly example by contradiction, you could ensure that the country is governed by an automated system that doesn’t involve people at all. A more reasonable example would be implementing the exact same procedures as any democratic country, but constitutionally constraining the economy to a socialist system, which would give strictly less power to officials and thus be at least as resistant to corruption.
Separation of power into parts that will not cooperate is important in any system. Offloading power into a constitution is also necessary. Your points are valid and highlight the need to constrain power in a way that corruption is as unlikely as possible.
The goal of socialism is to create a society that is governed by the people, for the people, so ensuring the above is a task for any socialist state. A socialist state where this does not hold is not just a flawed democracy, but also a flawed socialist state. The ideal state is one where all the flaws (exploits, if you wish) of traditional states cease to exist, which implies that corruption should be out of the picture. Communism only states that capitalism and traditional democracies are intrinsically exploitable due to the issues I mentioned, so in order to create the ideal state, they should also be abolished. What you describe is a situation where some issues were corrected while others were created, so little or no progress was made.
A scientific approach to politics and the economy is what Marxism promotes, so I highly doubt the “ideal state” could not be created at this time, especially since we now have absurdly powerful mathematical tools allowing us to create virtually secure consensus systems, robust voting methods, literally unbreakable software, and other stuff that seems out of a sci-fi novel. Making a system that is resistant against attacks is now as realistic as ever.
It’s nice that we can talk about statistics, I really like the subject. Please note that what I wanted to imply is that China is, in the short term, sacrificing economic equality and other goals typically sought by socialism, in favor of maximizing the chance of success against a world that wants to destroy communism.
Now, that set aside, I like to be skeptical of such analyses, for a few reasons that I will outline.
Low statistical power
Accompanying these correlation analyses with an adequate error analysis usually reveals that the sample is too small to yield any significant results. Countries’ different population further complicates this.
Confounding factors
Unfortunately, many statistical analyses in the field, even done by professionals, fail to take this into account. E.g., the “economic freedom index” publishes a report where the value of the indicator is shown to be positively correlated to higher standards of living (presumably to influence the reader’s opinions). Upon closer inspection, one realizes that some of the values used to compute the index depend themselves on economic stability, and recalculating the index without them removes the correlation entirely.
Arbitrary definitions
Not only are these indices based on non-linear scores or arbitrarily weighted operations between incompatible magnitudes, but sometimes they are even defined in vague or subjective terms. E.g., “are deputies elected by fair elections”, rather than being answer as some quantitative measure of transfer of entropy, is simply left to opinion. Furthermore, for the question of whether all citizens have equal voting rights, the US gets 0.81 out of 1, while China gets 0.00, despite the laws of both countries setting basically the same restrictions on voting.
Your comments on “such analyses” are not only (intentionally?) false and misleading, they have in part nothing to do with what I said. You have either really no idea about the subject or you are acting in bad faith by applying the same hypocritical double standards as in many other of your posts. Such a conversation doesn’t make sense.
Fair. It’d be helpful if you’d point out the falsehood in my comment. Or the reason why these don’t apply to the specific analysis you suggested. Or the double standards in my comments.