Addressing corruption

A lot of political ideas can be good depending on the context, but they are worthless in a corrupt world.

Corruption is acting in contradiction to one's official position (i.e. in the eyes of the public) in return for benefits, whatever they may be. In order to avoid the consequences of their corruptibility, most people will seek to conceal the betrayal of their official commitment.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind that the principle of corruption can be applied to anyone, regardless of their level of power in the world. It will simply be more devastating and affect more people depending on that level.

It is one thing to design and propose political alternatives that seem brighter and more promising than what is going on in the world today. However, whatever solution is proposed, it will remain ineffective as long as the people who are supposed to embody it are prone to corruption.

And this is so true and verifiable that it makes sense to consider humans as naturally prone to corruption (at least in the current era). Thus, it is important that the design of the political system we advocate include disincentives and barriers to corruption.

Corrupting mechanisms

First, let's look at how the current system, and hundreds of others before it, systematically tends toward corruption.

The first element is simply greed.

The human being, in a situation where he can benefit from an undue advantage, while being persuaded to be able to get it with impunity, will only have his own conscience and his own values not to fall for the temptation. In this day and age, this is unfortunately not very much, and many of us cringe at the undeserved emoluments we can enjoy without taking responsibility for them.

The second element is therefore inevitably impunity.

If the temptation is strong, the duty of responsibility towards the consequences of a fulfilled greed tends to curb the ardors. The more impunity a system practices towards its representatives, the more likely they are to be corrupted and even to feel safe from any untoward repercussions.

The third element is conformity, fueled by the fear of being excluded.

Indeed, many people become corrupt the longer they are in office, without appearing corruptible in the first place. The reason for this is that the game of gaining power (at any scale) requires the ability to manage one's relationships so as to gain sufficient support to climb the ladder.

Those who do not accept to play the game, when it is in the majority and dominant, of corruption, like a ritual of passage in the corridors of power, are excluded.

Moreover, the principle of corruption can take many forms, from accepting an undue or even illegal gift, in order to attract sympathy from someone with strategic leverage, to possibly accepting to be the gift, so to speak, and then allowing oneself to be abused in the hope of benefiting from an advantageous situation.

It is also a form of corruption that is not so much to the detriment of the supporters as to the detriment of oneself and we can consider that in the end, it is pretty much the same.

Anti-corruption solutions

Let's see now what solutions exist that can limit the negative effects of corruption as much as possible.

Influencing the culture

Making the culture of a country particularly hostile to any form of corruption is a very good way to limit it. This is seen to some extent in the Scandinavian countries. It is not perfect, but it does provide an atmosphere that encourages honest and transparent behavior.

Of course, influencing the culture in this way requires a minimum of power, and this is good news, because anyone with a computer and an internet connection can do something, even a little bit. And almost everyone is ok to say that corruption is a problem, even the ones that benefit from it!

It is also possible to leaflet, denounce corruption with posters and organize public meetings. But this is only possible in countries with a minimum of freedom.

The advantage of an anti-corruption culture is undeniable, but it only makes sense if it reaches the people who are responsible for dispensing justice. This can be achieved through media scandals, for example, but is limited if those in power do not perceive any real threat to their position.

This is very much in evidence in France, Italy and the USA. Many people are fed up with the corruption of their so-called representatives, but the call for justice never reaches the legal and coercive authorities, and so this corruption continues without incident, with those in power protecting each other and shamelessly continuing their criminal and dishonest activities.

Remove all impunity laws

Many countries, even supposedly democratic ones, have specific laws that protect those in power in weird and iniquitous ways.

It is important for a country that seeks to combat corruption to treat all its citizens equally in this regard and to allow for impartial justice.

Require full transparency

This is rarely the case, but it is a minimum requirement for a people to protect themselves from abuse by their elites.

It is notably in the field of state budgets that many opaque areas appear, sometimes authorized by the law, which should therefore be reformed.

Organizing a holarchic power

Holarchy is a system of governance in which every decision is made at the level of the primary stakeholders. Its organization is somewhat concentric, with multiple levels of decision-making. Its goal is to allow each autonomous entity to decide what concerns it and it alone.

In this system, a decision affecting a particular commune, such as the allocation of land or the mode of agriculture or the distribution of certain local funding, will be made at the level of the commune itself, and of it alone. A regional project will only concern the region, a state project only the state, etc.

This mode of operation is the opposite of what is mostly done today, where globalism forces people to obey international laws, more or less official by the way, and where distant authorities impose some of the most localized behaviors that exist. This is, for example, the nonsense of the city bureaucrat who decides by means of a software how a farmer who lives thousands of kilometers away should behave. Even though this bureaucrat has absolutely no idea how a farm and the profession of a farmer work.

In a holarchic functioning, which has long been the case in Europe in all countries, especially in feudal times, the most general decisions (those that involve everyone) are taken at the state level and concern war, major construction sites, national monuments and foreign policy decisions.

This model of organization naturally limits the extent of the power of leaders and promotes accountability for their decisions, since the people over whom power is exercised are within their relational perimeter.

Introduce impartial mechanisms

Since corruption is a form of cheating, putting in place systems that make it impossible to cheat could reduce it.

There are few ways to do this. The first thing is that the mechanisms in question should not be in the hands of a few people, as this would encourage cheating again.

The second is that these mechanisms should not be too complex, so that too few people would be able to understand them and thus denounce them if they became corrupted, creating another form of centralization through skills, that could easily lead again to corruption.

In fact, these mechanisms would have to be synergetic, and meet the criteria defined: they would therefore be efficient, accessible, transparent, predictable, simple, reversible and satisfactory.

Among the possible solutions, here are the ones I thought of:

• Live public events where the people could express their assent and disapproval. Ideally, these events should not only be dedicated to rhetoric (which is a talent that shows little of a person's value), which would favor the smooth talkers, but also to wisdom, intelligence, strength, agility, kindness, etc. Tests of a sort that would help to reveal the true nature of the participants and could thus allow the people to decide in favor of those who appear to them as the most reliable and inspiring. In order to avoid the rigging of these events, it would be necessary that they be live and can be filmed and broadcast by anyone.

• Elements of sovereignty such as currency, taxes and administrative declarations that are managed through free, open-source and totally decentralized software, so that no one in particular can change their functioning and so that only a majority (which is not necessarily acceptable from 50.1% but can be from 80.1% for example) can do so. The goal is to seriously democratize the exercise of these authorities, and to avoid, for example, that the allocation of taxes goes into the pockets of a large malicious company or some corrupt potentate.

• Make sure to dissociate powers, as Montesquieu advocated, which has not worked much so far, and to guarantee this dissociation through transparency of activities. For example, a person in a position of significant power in a commune should not be the one in control of the budget, and vice versa.

• Allow everyone to exercise executive power based on the holarchic model. To do this, it is necessary that all families have weapons to defend themselves against tyranny. This basic precaution is very well understood by many Americans in the USA. It is also what was practiced in certain cases in feudal times, where the population, sometimes exasperated, was able to go directly to force their local lord to change his ways, on pain of being put to death.

• And finally, to strengthen its community dynamics, because only a united community is capable of organizing itself to achieve a system that minimizes corruption. It is for this reason that the current globalist states are doing everything to destroy any feeling of belonging to an ethnic, religious and cultural identity, justified by thousands of years of history and hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Only a homogeneous people is capable of proposing systems in phase with their nature and as far as the West is concerned, it is obvious that white people are the most sensitive and opposed to corruption, and the most able to remedy it. Iceland is probably the best example right now.

Start small, think big

Our time is extremely corrupt and the minds seem to be so for the majority of people. It is therefore important that community initiatives be carried out in a concerted and mature manner.

The fact, for example, of basing certain mechanisms of power on the majority presupposes first of all that we have confidence in this majority, and this can only be the case when we ourselves have at least chosen this community, or when we have an affinity with it, so that we place it before the others.

Many politicized people do not perceive the people they live with within the administrative borders of their country as trustworthy. Some don't even want to put in the effort for them. It is quite understandable as the mass media has dumbed down the masses a lot.

This is why we should first consider the types of communities we wish to join in order to work collectively. It's not an easy task, it's not something trivial: it's a commitment that can be difficult and will always require patience and compromise. But if we have chosen the community that suits us wisely, the objectives to be achieved will justify the efforts made.

Then, once we have clarified ourselves on this point, it is necessary to carry out its own communication work in order to strengthen the community in question and to push towards the public ideas and initiatives that seem meaningful to us (like the ones I just wrote for example).

It is only in a second phase that real achievements can be made, because it is first necessary to organize collectively in order to be able to test new models and methods. Of course, some small exercises can be carried out locally but they will only take on real value through the adoption of a greater number of people.

This is also why, and I will come back to this in a future article, that I defend the multipolarity of models, because it is important for the human world to remain diverse and for many different political currents to be able to express themselves. Otherwise, it is the one-track thinking that prevails and this can only lead to the spiritual and moral impoverishment of all humanity.

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