Denmark being at the top of these lists is always so fucking funny to me. We just hide the corruption in a few layers of abstraction and whoops look at that, we’re rated extremely well on all the charts!
Yeah. I laughed seeing Sweden up there. It’s as if our right wing Nazi collaborator government hasn’t been privatising and selling our welfare.
They’re currently vowing to double the amount of surveillance cameras. Oh, and what powers the police force? Palantir. Nevermind the fact that chat control originated with a Swedish politician.
I guess the scale works if corrupt and morally bankrupt is the top of the scale.
If all it takes to buy a politician is to send a threatening letter or DM, and then financing their private security on the down-low, then our politicians are easy to buy.
Sometimes Swedish corruption is even simpler. Politicians get such a high salary – motivated by that making them less bribeable – that they realize “when I’m out of politics, I’m fucked”. What are they going to do, go back to a quarter of their salary? Then a lobby org. hands them a piece of legislation, and they know what it means. It is not a threat, they know they have just been saved, they have a way out from politics.
I don’t think we agree on what corruption is. I hear this a lot from Danes in the context of “The farmers and bankers have whole political parties in their pockets” and “all our MPs are career politicians” and “you can’t get a nice job unless you know someone”.
While these statements aren’t fully true, they’re definitely real issues. But I would suggest these are not corruption. You could consider them problematic, sure, but corruption is about using your public authority to steal and misappropriate resources to enrich yourself. Stuff like bribes, embezzlement, etc. Which happens far less in Denmark than most other places I’d say.
The main exception is the royal house, which is super duper corrupt.
The first paragraph quotes are complaints about influence peddling, kickbacks, regulatory capture, cronyism, and nepotism, all of which are absolutely forms of corruption. I’m sure others forms probably apply as well.
Denmark being at the top of these lists is always so fucking funny to me. We just hide the corruption in a few layers of abstraction and whoops look at that, we’re rated extremely well on all the charts!
Yeah. I laughed seeing Sweden up there. It’s as if our right wing Nazi collaborator government hasn’t been privatising and selling our welfare.
They’re currently vowing to double the amount of surveillance cameras. Oh, and what powers the police force? Palantir. Nevermind the fact that chat control originated with a Swedish politician.
I guess the scale works if corrupt and morally bankrupt is the top of the scale.
Nazi collaborator? what???
The only reason we have a right wing government is because they are actively choosing to work with the Nazi party. Otherwise they’d be a minority.
Table of Nazis and all that.
But is that due to corruption or just the state wanting more power for itself? Those problems aren’t necessarily the same.
Privatising public welfare to sell off to your grubby little friends is corruption. Taking bribes from Peter Thiel is corruption. One of the leading Christ Democrats has a secret donor financing her private security.
If all it takes to buy a politician is to send a threatening letter or DM, and then financing their private security on the down-low, then our politicians are easy to buy.
Sometimes Swedish corruption is even simpler. Politicians get such a high salary – motivated by that making them less bribeable – that they realize “when I’m out of politics, I’m fucked”. What are they going to do, go back to a quarter of their salary? Then a lobby org. hands them a piece of legislation, and they know what it means. It is not a threat, they know they have just been saved, they have a way out from politics.
Johannes Klenell describes this type of corruption (among other things) in his latest book, summarized in parts in the interview here: https://poddtoppen.se/podcast/935202361/scocconomics/i-bananrepubliken-med-johannes-klenell
I don’t think we agree on what corruption is. I hear this a lot from Danes in the context of “The farmers and bankers have whole political parties in their pockets” and “all our MPs are career politicians” and “you can’t get a nice job unless you know someone”.
While these statements aren’t fully true, they’re definitely real issues. But I would suggest these are not corruption. You could consider them problematic, sure, but corruption is about using your public authority to steal and misappropriate resources to enrich yourself. Stuff like bribes, embezzlement, etc. Which happens far less in Denmark than most other places I’d say.
The main exception is the royal house, which is super duper corrupt.
The first paragraph quotes are complaints about influence peddling, kickbacks, regulatory capture, cronyism, and nepotism, all of which are absolutely forms of corruption. I’m sure others forms probably apply as well.
Could you give me a few examples?