Socio-Political Unrest = Good times! on your dollar
Nate explored an interesting train of thought on Lyin Cheatin Midwesterners - but I wanted to go just a little bit further with it by examining what causes our good honest politicians and government employees to go bad.
Lets start by setting some controls (facts), variables (assumptions), and operators (guidelines).
1) One of my personal favorite Sociological operators - "Perception IS reality". What people perceive as fact, they will treat as fact.
2) Another Operator - In Cost/Benefit analysis, greater risk = greater reward
3) Government Employee = any person whose pay check originates from "The Office of..." or holds political office of any level (Twp Supervisor thru Fast Eddie Rendell)
4) Variable - Personal Choice - You can't fix stupid, but everyone has a choice to be stupid.
5) All Facts as set forth by "Lyin Cheatin Midwesterners" - particularly the ratios proposed by Nate as to ratio of politicians to population
Ok, Now that that is out of the way - I countered Nate's line of thought with the idea that while corruption studied as a ratio to population is correct, it does not take into account enough socio-politico-economic factors. I proposed that corruption is more aptly found in higher concentrations of population such as major metropolis' and organized service provider campi.
Alright, I know I get long winded, so I'm going to boil this all down to a clip that you canpost on your refrigerators...
Political corruption will exist when individuals believing that their position of service gives them perceived power and when they believe that said power negates the cost benefit analysis of rational though to the point where all decisions are base on "what's in it for me."
Rod Blago - incorrectly believed that his position allowed him to put up the senatorial seat by whatever means he deemed appropriate. Conversely, society had already determined that no one person had sole authoritarian dictatorship of that process and any violation there of would be "corrupt." For all Rod's crying about whether the tapes actually said what they said is like Clinton asking what the definition of "is" was. Rod's obvious thought was what he would get from the persons interested in purchasing the appointment.
In larger population hubs such as Chicago, Philly, Pittsburgh, etc, large bodies of people directly correlates to an increased need for services and oversight. As the population grows, the needs increase, as the needs increase, positions must be filled. As positions are filled, personal ideals are bound to clash with ethical standards as personal choices soon outweigh the cost of being caught. When this happens, the seed of corruption is planted and soon blossoms into criminal activity.
The crisis really comes when one counts his ammunition and realizes there's not enough for all the corrupt people out there...pardon me, I need to run to Walmart and stock up on "supplies". Back in a jiffy.
Lets start by setting some controls (facts), variables (assumptions), and operators (guidelines).
1) One of my personal favorite Sociological operators - "Perception IS reality". What people perceive as fact, they will treat as fact.
2) Another Operator - In Cost/Benefit analysis, greater risk = greater reward
3) Government Employee = any person whose pay check originates from "The Office of..." or holds political office of any level (Twp Supervisor thru Fast Eddie Rendell)
4) Variable - Personal Choice - You can't fix stupid, but everyone has a choice to be stupid.
5) All Facts as set forth by "Lyin Cheatin Midwesterners" - particularly the ratios proposed by Nate as to ratio of politicians to population
Ok, Now that that is out of the way - I countered Nate's line of thought with the idea that while corruption studied as a ratio to population is correct, it does not take into account enough socio-politico-economic factors. I proposed that corruption is more aptly found in higher concentrations of population such as major metropolis' and organized service provider campi.
Alright, I know I get long winded, so I'm going to boil this all down to a clip that you canpost on your refrigerators...
Political corruption will exist when individuals believing that their position of service gives them perceived power and when they believe that said power negates the cost benefit analysis of rational though to the point where all decisions are base on "what's in it for me."
Rod Blago - incorrectly believed that his position allowed him to put up the senatorial seat by whatever means he deemed appropriate. Conversely, society had already determined that no one person had sole authoritarian dictatorship of that process and any violation there of would be "corrupt." For all Rod's crying about whether the tapes actually said what they said is like Clinton asking what the definition of "is" was. Rod's obvious thought was what he would get from the persons interested in purchasing the appointment.
In larger population hubs such as Chicago, Philly, Pittsburgh, etc, large bodies of people directly correlates to an increased need for services and oversight. As the population grows, the needs increase, as the needs increase, positions must be filled. As positions are filled, personal ideals are bound to clash with ethical standards as personal choices soon outweigh the cost of being caught. When this happens, the seed of corruption is planted and soon blossoms into criminal activity.
The crisis really comes when one counts his ammunition and realizes there's not enough for all the corrupt people out there...pardon me, I need to run to Walmart and stock up on "supplies". Back in a jiffy.
Labels: Blago, Corruption, Socio-Political Gobblety-gook
posted by ProLPconserve at
12:52
2 Comments:
Hah! "Supplies"! No doubt black powder and assorted ammo :) And a box of gummi bears, of course.
What I was arguing was that the set of possible corruptors is not the population but rather the number of people in government. I went sort of round-about and said I'd prefer USA Today to have shown
convictions/(pop*(% of pop in government))
but that, to within a constant factor (depending on whether you do percents like a normal person or without the extra 100) equals
convictions/(# gov employees))
because the total population cancels. Put that way, it seems much less magical, but looking back I admit that I actually didn't say anything more profound. Obviously, I used crappy numbers to try to prove my point loosely. I would prefer a more complete set of employees at all levels.
So, that said, I have an explanation as to why a state with more government per person can have a higher percentage of its people convicted for corruption-- there are more people per capita who can be corrupt.
What you're picking up is a good next place to go. I did who, and you're moving on to the more important why. And that is not so simple as the ratio I'm giving. There must be differences between different places, otherwise my formula would give the same number for every state. (Another way to express the difference in what we're saying is that I was looking at the denominator of the ratio while you are interested in the numerator.)
Your assertion, and I agree, is that population centers have something to do with it. Basically, density begets corruption, due to the reasons you give, and probably a book's worth of other reasons.
What I'm really interested in, even if it's only an approximation and leaves some outliers or gets a few states wrong, is some kind of metric that can be used as an additional factor. In other words, because there are differences in the corruption rate, are there simple quantitative factors that correlate? These could be identified by finding some metric that, when multiplied by the ratio of convictions to number of people in government, nearly levels out the scales and makes all states the same.
My mind goes to factors involving area, like local population densities, due to the fact that denser places seem to entice corruption. But actual local population densities might correlate spuriously due to socioeconomic differences that correlate to population densities.
What would really be cool is if somehow the factor that levels out the convictions per employee ratio somehow turns the denominator in my ratio back into overall population! Crazier things have happened to me, but not many.
By
Nate, at Sat Feb 07, 05:24:00 AM GMT
Ahh yes...so many corrupt people - so little ammo - lol.
By
ProLPconserve, at Tue Feb 10, 01:29:00 AM GMT
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