Corruption: The exception or the rule?

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IMF chief Christine Lagarde raised hackles this week when she suggested one way Greeks could get themselves out of the pickle they're in would be to cut back on their national sport of tax-evasion.  She also suggested her tears of pity would be better spent on Nigerien children, forced to walk two hours to school and sit three to a chair, than on profligate Greeks.

 Africans and Greeks: Pity sweepstakes?

The Niger comparison was interesting, as it suffers from some of the same problems as Greece, but at astronomically higher levels. Among them is the one which gives the IMF fits, that stubborn, impossible-to-remove kudzu, the sinister C-word: Corruption.

It has become gospel among international policy-makers that corruption is a big problem, but a fixable one. Bad laws = corruption. Good laws = no corruption.  They thus traipse around the planet giving PowerPoint presentations on how to open your very own Anti-Corruption Ministry, sure that they're leaving little Swedens on the Sahara and Englands on the Euphrates in their wake.

With just a bit of HBD knowledge, a policy-maker might ask: What if corruption were not a product of laws, but of men?  What if corruption came from men's beliefs, their character traits, their deepest biological instincts? What if it is our natural state?  What if it can't be fixed? What then?

Besides the 'bad-laws' fallacy, a second error made by policy-makers is the 'bad-leaders' fallacy.  The poor honest folks in Country X suffer terribly because their leaders are so corrupt. And yet coup/election after coup/election, as if by magic, one bad leader after another comes to power.  Unless these people are being airlifted in from a foreign land, one can presume they are made of the same stuff as their countrymen.

In addition, what the throw-the-bums-out crowd fails to realize is that in corrupt countries, everyone (or almost) is on the take.  The same character traits that drive government ministers to  accept suitcases full of cash are also likely to be found in small shopkeepers who say, 'Do you want a receipt for that? Are you sure? (wink wink)', as well as the customer who responds, 'No no, of course not! (wink wink)'

Lagarde's admonishment to 'Pay your taxes!' is merely spitting into the wind.  In a country where the average taxpayer can buy off the average tax inspector with a sufficiently fat envelope, what precisely is she hoping for? Who watches the watchers?  This has led some Eurocrats to cry, 'Send in foreign tax inspectors!', which would be amusing were it not so disturbing.  Is a country whose government officials are under the control of a foreign power not by definition a colony?

We are thus led to ask: Corruption, that headache of international policy-makers--is it a behavior, or a state of being?

Hunting the Yeti: Institutional Racism in the 21st Century

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Omar Thornton, the beer-filching delivery man who, upon hearing he was to be fired for his thieving ways, unloaded a Ruger SR9 into ten of his co-workers then himself, has a posthumous website (h/t Crimes of the Times).  Created by his mother. Why?

It's hard to swing a cat these days without hitting someone decrying Institutional Racism.  It has become the catch-all excuse for Afro under-performance in relation to other ethnic groups...

Top Chicago Cop Links U.S. Gun Laws to Institutional Racism

Failing the Test of Fairness: Institutional Racism and the SAT

DC Million Hoodies March Denounces Institutional Racism

...And so forth.

Like the elusive Yeti, it has to be out there--we've heard stories, terrifying stories, of it ambling hither and yon leaving carnage in its path. Its footprints are visible everywhere. And yet...when pressed, no one seems able to cough up hard proof of its existence. 

Just as great footprints in the snow are no proof of the Yeti, the fact that Blacks do not score as highly as Whites on firefighter exams is no proof of Institutional Racism.  But the charge is a serious one. It deserves a serious response. Our question is not, however, 'did institutional racism exist in decades past?'--it unquestionably did--but rather, 'does it exist today?'  We at Those Who Can See have taken our snowshoes and our rucksack and gone in search of this beast:  Down what trail lies the evidence that Institutional Racism continues to harm Afro-Americans in 2012?

Who's Afraid of Affirmative Action?

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Meritocracy is rare indeed, however far back in history we may look.  Member-of-my-family-ocracy, on the other hand, can be found almost everywhere.  Political dynasties are as old as time.  Ancien régime France let state posts be passed down from father to son, like a house.  In clannish Arab lands today, one's spot in college, the army, or the civil service is largely determined by the power of one's relatives.  David Pryce-Jones on Arab society:

To take the everyday matter of wanting to obtain a job, a young man approaches the head of his family or clan, his patron.  The head of the family is under obligation to do his very best to make sure that his kinsman is given what he asks for.  The honor of the whole family is at stake. [...]  In the event  of the job going to someone else, the patron becomes the object of shame, and his standing is under threat [...] Whether or not the young man deserved the job is no kind of consideration.  Civic spirit, the good of the community, or mere consideration of who could best perform the job in hand has no part in these proceedings.

Where meritocracy is allowed, the results can be impressive.  The Ottomans' Janissary corps is one example. The ancient Chinese civil service exam system is another.  In the modern West, outbred and commonweal-oriented as we are, nepotism rubs us the wrong way.  Shouldn't the best man get the job?

Enter racial quotas.

We may understand why they came to be, and loudly proclaim their time has gone. But the affirmative action coin has two sides.  What happens when a foreign group arrives among us and out-performs us?  Are we in our rights to establish quotas to keep them from forming an alien elite?  Indians in Uganda, Chinese in Malaysia, Ashkenazi Jews in the U.S., Europeans in South Africa--all have been excluded via quotas by a native population ill at ease with their success.  Is this fair?  When are quotas justified?

'In a Word We Suffer on Each Side'

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Afro-Americans have long committed violent crime at much higher rates than other ethnic groups.  With the election of our first black president in 2008, many predicted this would end, as seeing a face like their own in the Oval Office would lead young Afros to lay down their arms and pick up a schoolbook.

Was such a prediction reasonable?

We argue that it was not.

Culture, affirm conservatives, is what poisons the young Black mind. Welfare payments slacken it, lack of fathers stunts it, hip-hop perverts it.  Could we erase the Great Society and the sexual revolution, young Afro-Americans would revert back to the industrious strivers they once were.

The children represented by the Brown vs. Board of Education suit, Topeka Kansas, 1951: Vicky, Donald, Linda, James, Nancy, Katherine.

Progressives, on the other hand, admit some nefarious effects of black culture but attribute them to the lingering pain of 250 years of slavery and one hundred years of segregation.  Any day now, they insist, Afro-Americans will begin to behave just like everyone else.

The progressive view is relatively easy to dismiss, as black dysfunction has in fact increased as Jim Crow recedes further into the past.

And the conservative view? Seductive, but incorrect.  As it happens, Afro-Americans are not only well-known today for their violent exploits, but were so known far back in history.  Reading the police blotter from one hundred years ago can be a startlingly familiar experience. Then as now, Afros chose to act out aggressively in a variety of milieus.

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On public transport

Portland, April 2012:

A 57-year-old man who asked a group of teenagers to quiet down on a MAX train was assaulted on Friday... When officers arrived, they learned the man had asked a large group of around 15 to 20 black male teenagers to keep it down. That apparently didn't sit well with the teenagers and some of them allegedly attacked the man.

Baltimore, 1913:

Being a Progressive, Yesterday: Eugenics

 

It is one of our vanities to imagine that if we'd been born in centuries past, we alone would have stood up against the rampant injustices of the age (slavery, colonialism, religious persecution, etc.) instead of going with the flow like most people did.  Unlike others, we're in no way molded by our era--our righteousness is ageless. (The host's tut-tutting in this otherwise fascinating podcast on slavery is but one example.)

Another point of view is that those of a progressive bent in 2012, had they magically existed in 1912, would have likely followed the leftist causes du jour.  Ditto conservatives.  So what was the progressive doctrine in 1912 that today's liberal can be fairly sure he'd have fervently believed and agitated for?

Eugenics.

Darwin's 1859 work landed in the Western conscience like a rock heaved into a pond.  Nothing would ever be the same.  The idea that such social ills as insanity, mental retardation, and psychopathy were heritable began to seep into the popular mind.  One reason was Francis Galton (cousin of Darwin), who coined the term 'eugenics' and wrote tirelessly about it for decades.

Many in the late 19th century had an almost childlike faith that science could solve humanity's woes.  And it was thought then that some of humanity's woes were:

• The retarded and insane, a burden on the private and public purse, were having retarded and insane children.
• The stupid and dysfunctional poor were having many more children than the intelligent and functional rich.
• (In the U.S:) South and East European immigrants, less intelligent and functional, were hurting the racial stock of the country.

The word 'dysgenics' was coined in 1915 by British physician Caleb Saleeby.  Biologist Julian Huxley, founding member of World Wildlife Fund and first director of UNESCO, described the threat thusly:

In the first of these [addresses to the British Eugenics Society] he reaffirmed that natural selection had become greatly relaxed in contemporary civilizations, noting that “the elimination of natural selection is largely, though of course by no means wholly, rendered inoperative by medicine, charity, and the social services” and that dysgenic fertility was leading to “the tendency to degradation of the germ plasm, ” the result of which will be that “humanity will gradually destroy itself from within, will decay in its very core and essence, if this slow but insidious relentless process is not checked.  (1)

Building a Better Currency Union

Belly up to the trough 

Like so many policy domains, international economic policy in the West has fallen victim to the Late Twentieth Century Delusion: 'People are people.'

Foreign policy was once the playground of race realists at every level.  The only trace of this left may be the Pentagon, who in its double-secret PC-proofed dungeon whips up instructional pamphlets aimed at keeping GIs from getting killed by letting them know some people are, in fact, Not Like Us.  (Or used to anyway.)

Back when foreign conquest was the norm, the primitive peoples of the world were seen as docile labor to exploit (rightists) or as poor backward heathen to civilize (leftists).  But what no one disagreed on was that they were, in fact, primitive.  That is to say, Not Like Us.

De-colonization, the U.N., etc. at last clued us in to the fact that everybody on planet earth was, in fact, just like us.  International economic policy has thus taken on a rather surreal cast, as on the one hand the West insists that Africa is its equal, but on the other hand sets up trade agreements with her that make her appear, decades after de-colonization, to be a slightly retarded child.

One current example of the perils of 'People are people' is that of the European Monetary Union, or Eurozone.  Conceived in the chaos of the waning days of Bretton Woods, it aimed to be something entirely new--a monetary and economic union of several large sovereign states.  The hard work of Jacques Delors, among others, made it all happen.

(The British, then as now, were not enthusiasts.)


Ten years later, it all seems to be falling apart. (Don't be fooled by the lull in hysterics; disintegration continues apace.) Economists are openly warning that to survive, the Eurozone will have to split in two.  Yet the 2011 EU decision-makers seemed totally baffled by the meltdown. Why?

The reasons are many; we shan't look at all but only one: People aren't people.



The Eurozone, some have surmised, was at its heart an attempt by the French to neuter fearsome Germany once and for all.  The German cities and states had long been wealthy trade centers, but unification in 1871 gelled them into a power that brought Europe to its knees.  Germany was, in a word, scary.  Forcing her to entwine her fiscal fortunes forever with those of Mediterranean Europe... what better way to leash the giant?

So how did it happen?

As Bretton Woods broke down, several European states began to peg their currencies to each other:  The European Monetary System (EMS) was born.  The end goal was a single currency for all of Europe, with liberté, égalité, and fraternité for all.  But there was always a niggling problem.

During this time [1983-87], the Deutsche mark evolved as the anchor currency of the system, and the anti-inflationary policies of the Bundesbank became the reference point for partner countries....

There were perceptions that the system was "asymmetric" because of the dominant role of the Deutsche mark...

In the wake of the Wall Street crash of October 1987, ...international funds sought refuge in the Deutsche mark, and strong tensions developed within the ERM [European Exchange Rate Mechanism]... (1)

What to do when the dream of equality bumps up against the reality of superiority?

While Germany may have chained herself to this shaky ship to atone for her WWII sins, for the weaker southern economies it was basically a free-cash bonanza. (Much like EU accession).

Once they had joined the euro zone, Europe's southern countries gave up trying to sort out their finances, says [ex-Finance Minister] Papantoniou. With a steady flow of easy money coming from the northern European countries, the Greek public sector began borrowing as if there were no tomorrow. This was only possible because the country, in becoming part of the euro zone, was also effectively borrowing Germany's credibility and credit rating.

Then the 2008 world credit crunch hit and the tide went out, revealing who was not wearing a bathing suit.  Unpayable debts, hand-wringing, finger-pointing, late night negotiations, harried Brussels press conferences, riots, tear gas... Time to throw in the towel?

Heretics, Kulaks, and Witches: All That's Old is New Again

Haunted by his own thought crimes, baffled by the zombies spouting dogmatic nonsense all around him, today's American is lost.  He reaches into the mists of history and gropes for a comparison.  What has his country become? What is this?

     Is this like the persecution of the heliocentrists?

     Is it like the witch trials in early modern Europe?

     Is it like the Soviet fight for doctrinal purity?

Happy Easter

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Happy Easter, to those who can see and to those who cannot.

You may have missed...


Travel:  The adventurers who set out to see the world and its peoples, one of Europe's enduring legacies.  You can see the tribes they encountered through their eyes, often reading their very words, for free on the internet in 2012.  Let yourself be swept away...

The Far East:
The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 1 and Volume 2
Also:
The Journals of Jesuit Matteo Ricci, 1583-1610 (in Chapter V of Hukluytus Posthumus)

South America:
The letters of Amerigo Vespucci, from his voyages in 1499-1504.
Also:
A brief account of Sir Francis Drake's voyage around the world, launched in 1577.

North America:
The Voyages of Samuel Champlain in North America in the early 1600s.
Also:
The expedition of Lewis and Clark, 1804-06.

 The South Pacific:
A Voyage Toward the South Pole and Around the World, by Capt. James Cook, 1775.

Sub-Saharan Africa:
Mungo Park's excellent Travels in the Interior of Africa, 1798.
Also:
Sir Henry M. Stanley's How I Found Livingstone, 1871.

The whole world:
The Exploration of the World, 1882, Jules Verne.  A marvelous anthology of narratives from the world's greatest travelers, from Herodotus to Ibn Batuta to Columbus.  A real treasure trove, not to be missed.


Wishing everyone the simple pleasures of celebrating with family.  'The days are long, but the years are short...'  Happy Easter / Joyeuses Pâques to all.