I have been thinking about why institutions seem to get progressively more corrupt over time until they fail and collapse, or at least have a traumatic reform. I think it is because of bad people. Bad people come in 3 broad classes. Dumb, average and smart. Ideally, institutions like governments and religions and even businesses fill a purpose from a social standpoint of ensuring that bad people dont get to hurt good people. Again, ideally, religions teach people how to be good, governments protect good people and punish bad people, companies promote and enrich good people and cast aside bad people, etc... Now, if you are a dumb bad person, you do bad things in a obvious ways. You get caught and punished. These are the petty thieves and assorted malfeants you see every day on the local news. The average bad person blends in. They still do bad things and hurt other people but they are smart enough to mostly fly under the legal and social radar and are just that guy you hate because he is a jackass. Then you get the smart bad people. They are the ones who are the most damaging. They are smart enough to see the institutions that are in place to oppose them and they know the best way to not run afoul of those institutions is to run them. They work hard to get to the top of very entities that are supposed to stop people like themselves. These are the people that turn courts into railroads that put kids in privately run prisons for kickbacks, the people operate businesses that keep their wages below poverty levels, maintain dangerous work environments and poison the environment to make a few extra dollars, the people that have setup the systems where our politicians are for sale to the highest bidder and the people who have consolidated control of the media to spread misinformation and encourage willful ignorance. Eventually those institutions cant function anymore because they have rotted from within and topple. So, what can we do about it? Question authority. Dont be intellectually lazy. Work to reform our institutions and break the cycle. Stand up to bullies. Recognize both the petty, the mundane and the grand bad people and take away the power we have given them. Easier said than done, but you have to start somewhere.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 06:12:45 +0000
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