I was on the Economic Freedom Index and was somewhat surprised by the Freedom from Corruption Score for certain countries. Here is what I saw:
Denmark - 94.0
Sweden - 93.0
Finland - 94.0
Norway - 90.0
Considering that these states have massive government intervention shouldn't there be more corruption?
So, basically because the EFI says they're less corrupt, that means it's true?
And, how exactly are they defining "corruption"? Better yet, how are they measuring it? Those countries do have a combined population that is a small fraction of the US. I imagine their government sectors are quite smaller by number of public employees. Perhaps "less government workers = less corruption"?
Not necessarily. I would say that it's more of a function of the culture and ethics of the society.
Isn't government itself just a corruption that violates natural law? How can a thing like the state have a "percentage" of corruption when the state itself lives on it?
I suppose that would be the reason. It would make sense that the homogenous population of 5 million or so will be more inclined to not tolerate corruption like citizens of a small town would.
Those coutries are small. Smaller countries have better functioning bureaucracies because they have less people (less people in generaql means less people to manage which means less data to pour over). The governments might do a whole lot, which might tempt you to call it more government, but it isn't exactly true.
The more bureaucrats there are the more corruption there will be. It is the quantity of people that will translate to more or less corruption and it will not be limited to government. The same will go for churches, corporations, ngos, banks, etc..
Now, the quality, or level, of corruption is a different thing. But, the quantity function woud play into it as well (the more people in government, the more likely there is to be an especially corrupt one).
Isn't government itself just a corruption that violates natural law?
This kind of thing is why people will not converse with libertarians. This place is like a broken record. Asking things (rhetorical device) like that is preahing to the choir. You don't need to continuously repeat things like this every fucking thread. it makes it impossible to get past. (It is the same as "subjective value" when inquiring about cultural norms et al).
I see. Diseconomies of Scale.
North Korea: 10.0
Neodoxy, if this was a question your post would be the answer.
Ballin'
Are you also shot callin'?
The problem is with your government metrics.
You are basically taking the Budget-GDP ratio as a proxy to the "size of government".
This is very flawed. Some countries are literally tyrannies without necesseraly having large official budgets. All African countries and to a lesser extent, Russia, China and most of Latin America (with the exception of Chile) follow such pattern.
And Scandinavia and Switzerland have high Budget-GDP ratios, but their governments are very small, in the sense of disposable political power.
The main reason is because government there is very local. Most decisions about spending public money are taken by local officials who are held accountable by their neighbors, and not by some nameless electorate.
In the case of Switzerland descentralization was the main theme since the inception of the Confoederatio Helvetica in the middle ages. As for the northern countries, it's mainly an indirect consequence of their populations being small and concentrated in a few locations.
Centralized governments tend to be more corrupt and pervasive because the consequential players are federal level representatives and bureaucrats safely insulated from their constituencies and therefore able to pull all sorts of scams.
Germany is also less corrupt than France and Britain due to similar reasons, eventhough all of them are very centralized.
So it's not something cultural, since corruption was very intense in the DDR and the Weimarer Republik/Deutsches Reich, because of centralization.
A Budget-GDP ratio metric does not capture this. Actually a Budget-GDP ratio is not useful for comparisons between different systems, since other variables play a larger role. It's used mainly because it's simple to compute and understand, and not because it's meaninful.
Agree with ToxicAssets. Additionally, those four countries have something that's close to a balanced budget.
Good thing AE tends to be hyper skeptical / apathetic of probably any method used to achieve such results - it probably doesn't pass a test of basic subjectivism
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
For your information, I'm actually working on SPSS. I could perform some multiple regression, and/or partial/part correlation if you wish. I have some data. For economic freedom, there is the commonly used "Economic Freedom of the World" (the 2012 Annual Report is the one I would like to use). Here's the link. For the index of corruption, the only one I have found, and also often used in a peer-reviewed paper (to my knowledge), is the Corruption Perception Index also known as (CPI). Here's the link. I know of no better measure of corruption. If you have some suggestions, I could add those (better) data in my SPSS file. But for now, I haven't yet finished writing all the data in my files. The economic freedom index in the link has five component, + a summary ratings. In another words, 6 values for each countries, and I want the years too, (i.e., 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010). So this means 12 values for each countries. It takes a lot of time to type those figures and check if I reported them right.
If you wish, I will post the results later.
Wow, walked into that one.
I'll take your word on it
""I know of no better measure of corruption.""
whats wrong with using the total amount of expenditures added to the total amount of revenue collected?
So as promised, I posted my results in this thread. Briefly, more freedom is not associated with higher corruption.
Their governments are not trying to govern the entire planet.
""I know of no better measure of corruption."" whats wrong with using the total amount of expenditures added to the total amount of revenue collected?
Scandinavian countries are honest,but not because they are socialist.
IF THE STATE, THEN, is a vast engine of institutionalized crime and aggression, the “organization of the political means” to wealth, then this means that the State is a criminal organization, and that therefore its moral status is radically different from any of the just property-owners that we have been discussing in this volume. And this means that the moral status of contracts with the State, promises to it and by it, differs radically as well. It means, for example, that no one is morally required to obey the State (except insofar as the State simply affirms the right of just private property against aggression). For, as a criminal organization with all of its income and assets derived from the crime of taxation, the State cannot possess any just property. This means that it cannot be unjust or immoral to fail to pay taxes to the State, to appropriate the property of the State (which is in the hands of aggressors), to refuse to obey State orders, or to break contracts with the State (since it cannot be unjust to break contracts with criminals). Morally, from the point of view of proper political philosophy, “stealing” from the State, for example, is removing property from criminal hands, is, in a sense, “homesteading” property, except that instead of homesteading unused land, the person is removing property from the criminal sector of society—a positive good. ... Let us consider in this light the question of bribery of government officials. We saw above, that, in a free society or free market, the briber is acting legitimately, whereas it is the bribee who is defrauding someone (e.g., an employer) and therefore deserves prosecution. What of bribery of government officials? Here a distinction must be made between “aggressive” and “defensive” bribery; the first should be considered improper and aggressive, whereas the latter should be considered proper and legitimate. Consider a typical “aggressive bribe”: a Mafia leader bribes police officials to exclude other, competing operators of gambling casinos from a certain territorial area. Here, the Mafioso acts in collaboration with the government to coerce competing gambling proprietors. The Mafioso is, in this case, an initiator, and accessory, to governmental aggression against his competitors. On the other hand, a “defensive bribe” has a radically different moral status. In such a case, for example, Robinson, seeing that gambling casinos are outlawed in a certain area, bribes policemen to allow his casino to operate—a perfectly legitimate response to an unfortunate situation. Defensive bribery, in fact, performs an important social function throughout the world. For, in many countries, business could not be transacted at all without the lubricant of bribery; in this way crippling and destructive regulations and exactions can be avoided. A “corrupt government,” then, is not necessarily a bad thing; compared to an “incorruptible government” whose officials enforce the laws with great severity, “corruption” can at least allow a partial flowering of voluntary transactions and actions in a society. Of course, in neither case are either the regulations or prohibitions, or the enforcement officials themselves, justified, since neither they nor the exactions should be in existence at all. Murray Rothbard - Ethics of Liberty, 24 (The Moral Status of Relations to the State)
...
Let us consider in this light the question of bribery of government officials. We saw above, that, in a free society or free market, the briber is acting legitimately, whereas it is the bribee who is defrauding someone (e.g., an employer) and therefore deserves prosecution. What of bribery of government officials? Here a distinction must be made between “aggressive” and “defensive” bribery; the first should be considered improper and aggressive, whereas the latter should be considered proper and legitimate. Consider a typical “aggressive bribe”: a Mafia leader bribes police officials to exclude other, competing operators of gambling casinos from a certain territorial area. Here, the Mafioso acts in collaboration with the government to coerce competing gambling proprietors. The Mafioso is, in this case, an initiator, and accessory, to governmental aggression against his competitors. On the other hand, a “defensive bribe” has a radically different moral status. In such a case, for example, Robinson, seeing that gambling casinos are outlawed in a certain area, bribes policemen to allow his casino to operate—a perfectly legitimate response to an unfortunate situation.
Defensive bribery, in fact, performs an important social function throughout the world. For, in many countries, business could not be transacted at all without the lubricant of bribery; in this way crippling and destructive regulations and exactions can be avoided. A “corrupt government,” then, is not necessarily a bad thing; compared to an “incorruptible government” whose officials enforce the laws with great severity, “corruption” can at least allow a partial flowering of voluntary transactions and actions in a society. Of course, in neither case are either the regulations or prohibitions, or the enforcement officials themselves, justified, since neither they nor the exactions should be in existence at all.
Murray Rothbard - Ethics of Liberty, 24 (The Moral Status of Relations to the State)
Clayton -
Or it could be a function of state programming. It is possible Scandinavians believe there is a moral difference to using state power to pursue goals that appear to them to be in the national-state interest, but assume using the same for their private interest is not. Meanwhile the Africans are not so brainwashed and know both are morally coordinate. (Ie one is just as bad as the other, therefore if you're a state official there is no reason not to line up your pockets, instead of foolishly spending the money on various government initiatives.)
+1 Marko
Comprehensive welfare is not the same as socialism.
That's what every liberal and most braindead conservatives believe, but that's false. That's precisely the opposite of what Hayek was trying to say in the Road to Serfdom.
In that book he warned that the pursuit of social security through socialism is a dangerous path to tyranny.
But socialism is defined as any political doctrine or ideology that defends the concentration and amplification of political powers wielded by a central authority government.
So, in that precise sense, the nordic countries and switzerland are NOT socialist.
They may have higher taxes and they may have the welfare system. They may have had their decades of social democratic rule.
But they have no central planning going on nor central authorities. Taxes are spent improving the communities where they were collected.
And, with the exception of Finland, they all declined the European Union/Eurozone full-membership. That's because they understand that it's better to keep their bureaucrats close. They realized that the whole thing was a socialist ploy designed to move government to Brussels and Strasbourg and away from their constituents, where they can project their evil more effectively.
A local hospital or school funded by local tax-payers is not socialism.
Socialism is what goes on inside the Kremlin, or in Brussels or D.C.
Socialism is the Patriotic Act. Socialism is the Q.E. rounds and the Wall St. bailouts. Socialism is the Greek financial tragedy. Socialism is UN Agenda 21.
That is, a bunch of technocrats in some distant place affecting decisions that impact the lives of millions of flesh and bone people but who they perceive as being abstract statistics.