China/Kakistocracy update "dlawbailey" <dlawbailey at netzero.net>
No, CB, I don't accept that the U.S. is nore corrupt than China. Under capitalism, honest dealing *among capitalists* is important for the system to work. That's why Enron is so threatening to capital markets. The US has the most transparent capital markets in the world and threats to that transparency are threats to liquidity. The evidence for that argument is right on the stock ticker.
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CB: The implication of what you say is that something different is going on in China than what is going on in the U.S. Since what you say is going on in the U.S. is honest dealing among capitalists, that implies that in China there is dishonest dealing among the capitalists. That capitalists rip each other off in China.
The institutionalized corruption in the U.S. is not ripping off capitalists, but ripping off workers and petit bourgeoisie. THAT'S BAD CORRUPTION. In China, according to the implications of what you say, where capitalists rip off each other, that would be a better type of "corruption" than in the U.S. in my book.
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Under the Chinese command system, corruption itself is important for the system to work. It is the corruption that provides liquidity. Who are the successes in the New China? The same people that succeeded in the New Russia - people who knew how to work the system from within, find real economic value and get at resources trapped in bureaucratic coffers to exploit that value. They were the corrupt officials - scroungers and fixers - who made/make the system work in the first place.
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CB: Right , capitalism is a corruption of the command system. This seems to the credit of the "command system" that it is antagonistic to capitalism.
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As Russia and now China give over to a more free enterprise system, the fixers and the scroungers are unleashed without the legal infrastructure to regulate their behavior, and thus corruption grows. In Russia, it destroyed the economy.
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CB: Again, this implies that corruption is integral to free enterprise, and it is. Enron is more typical of the cutthroat competition of free enterprise that has not had to come out of any command system.