Bertie Ahern was lying | 53 comments (53 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

But the land tax proposed by George taxes something that cannot move and that is the traditional store of wealth for the rich. That makes the process more transparent - if there are those with eyes to see.

If lack of transparency were the principal cause or enabling edifice of corruption, corruption would be a much easier problem to solve than it actually is. Even if one argues that land taxes will eliminate the bulk of the corruption associated with tax collection, this would still not be the bulk of all corruption in society. It is, for instance, more than a little difficult to see how the elimination of corruption in the tax office would meaningfully prevent clientilism in the relationship between central and member banks, or outright bribery in the procurement of armaments.

In the U.K. such a tax on the unimproved value of land, if imposed at a level that would cover a significant portion of the state's revenue requirements would destroy the ongoing scheme of making real estate available for housing development so scarce and expensive, as the holders of vast estates would be looking for ways to have their holdings generate the cash flow to pay the tax. Similar considerations apply in the USA. There are other ways to accomplish this, but that is not the present point.

Obviously, taxation of wealth (there is no particular reason to ring-fence land and give it a special treatment in this respect) will, given constant tax revenue, benefit labour and productive capital, to the detriment of idle wealth. Equally obviously, idle wealth serves no economic function, and can thus be dismantled with relative impunity. However, it is not obvious that shifting tax incidence from the factors of production to the holders of idle wealth will in any great measure diminish corruption. Which, remember, was the contention to which I objected.

- Jake

Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Mar 24th, 2012 at 02:09:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 0)

Unless you consider idle wealth to be in and of itself corrupting of the commonweal in the context of an era of rising inequality and increasing poverty. I accept that the definition of what constitutes "corruption" can be a social construct - e.g. where do you draw the line between insider trading and just having a good nose for business intelligence and the people who can provide it ..

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Sat Mar 24th, 2012 at 02:22:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

I wouldn't say that idle wealth is the major - let alone the overwhelming - source of corruption of the common weal. There is plenty of inequitable and concentrated wealth which is anything but idle. British Petroleum, to take one example of enduring and recent prominence, is hardly idle. In fact, a case could be made that the world would be a better place if British Petroleum were idle.

- Jake

Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Mar 24th, 2012 at 02:30:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (4.00 / 2)

I've suggested before that the only way to eliminate corruption is to make all financial transactions public, without exception.

This makes winger heads explode, because it's straight out of big brother.

But total transparency is the only tool that will do the job, because it makes criminal and corrupt transactions far more difficult.

Of course, the issue then is whether or not criminal or corrupt transactions are prosecuted as they should be.

But if there's public awareness of wrong-doing, it becomes much harder to justify it than is possible now.

(Unless you're running a true police state, in which case you're screwed anyway.)

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Sat Mar 24th, 2012 at 03:13:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

Considering how much legitimately private information can be traced simply from a thorough look at your cash flows, I would be very skeptical of such a proposal. The way the economies and diseconomies of scale work for large data mining operations means that it will only ever be practical for large organisations to target small groups of people for thorough examination.

Couple this with the fact that it will be much more difficult to find evidence of genuinely corrupt practise (blackmail, bribes, etc.) than to find evidence of conduct about which society maintains the "polite fiction" that it does not exist (non-mainstream hobbies, sexual "deviance," etc.), and you are looking at a battle of attrition that favours the powerful and well-connected. And that's before consideration of their privileged access to mass communication.

- Jake

Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2012 at 06:40:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

The way the economies and diseconomies of scale work for large data mining operations means that it will only ever be practical for large organisations to target small groups of people for thorough examination.

Open source.

The point is that openness is a significant disincentive to corruption. The possibility of public censure would be a significant deterrent.

The other point is that the powerful and well-connected already have superior access. The tax authorities in the UK can already look at any UK bank account. But I - as an individual - have no oversight over the earnings of elected representatives.

This is a huge power imbalance.

So I think the point stands - secrecy breeds corruption, and vice versa.

The issue is really one of obvious, direct public accountability in a very literal sense.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2012 at 07:05:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

Yes, if the civil service is out to get you, they can get you.

But there is a vast gulf between the tax authority having access to your bank statements and every two-bit far-right belief tank and tabloid shill having that access.

- Jake

Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2012 at 08:56:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

Not so vast, it would seem, from recent revelations. Is not that what the whole NOW debacle tends to show? Secrecy, combined with the power of money to corrupt public officials, appears to be at the foundation of all that came later. But, of course, in proper capitalist form, the information is only available to those who can pay for it, or those who are deemed appropriate tools by those who have legal access.

If numerous public agencies to the personal details of average citizens why should not the lives of people running those organizations, or, at a minimum, all official actions, also be an open book to all. Sunshine laws are more honored in the breach than in the observance. We need to level that playing field if we care about government accountable to any but the rich.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2012 at 11:54:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

Because the ordinary official of those agencies has little or no power to influence their conduct, and certainly insufficient power to withstand a determined attack on his person if he conducts his service in a manner that displeases the powerful. A comprehensive list of your financial transactions will reveal a number of pressure points that it really is not the public's business to know. Who your landlord is, whether you are paying an estranged former spouse to support your children, who you place phone calls with, where you buy your groceries, what your travel patterns are, right down to what porn you wank to. It's not quite as intrusive as placing a webcam with a live public feed in your living room, but it comes pretty close.

If you are talking only the highest echelons of corporate and government bureaucracies, and people of substantial personal wealth, it would be an understandable demand in light of recent events. But for everyone to submit to such intrusive surveillance is well nigh unthinkable.

- Jake

Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2012 at 01:13:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

But for everyone to submit to such intrusive surveillance is well nigh unthinkable.

Agreed. Unfortunately it is sort of the case, at least potentially. Any of us could be so investigated and the results leaked as a means of social control. It would be preferable to enforce serious sanctions on abusers of privacy, but when will that happen. But at least radical deprivatization of all personal information would tend to reduce hypocrisy and establish a more level field. It is a high price, but one that we have, in part, already paid, even if out of inattention and/or powerlessness.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2012 at 04:42:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

No... just... no.

Unless you're the secret police or some similarly official agency, you can't just get the tax authority to give you a breakdown of someone else's cash flow. It does not work that way, even in notoriously corrupt places like the US. The paper trail is too wide and too visible, and too many civil servants maintain the belief - or, in some cases, the polite fiction - that they are in a different league from the tabloid smear-mongers.

What you and TBG are suggesting here is orders of magnitude more intrusive than any breach of privacy currently happening in connection with the routine monitoring of the financial transactions of the citizenry. I don't think you understand what the world would look like if your claims of routine violations of confidentiality were actually true.

- Jake

Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2012 at 04:52:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 0)

I give you Valerie Plame Wilson. Though in that case what had happened came out. It was subsequently claimed that W had approved the declassification of her identity, so only Scooter Libby paid a price, one for which he has already doubtless been repaid many times. And I now invoke the theory of cockroaches.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2012 at 05:09:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

Yeah, no.

Let me paint you a picture here: Any moderately competent statistical service in any reasonably advanced industrial society could take the sort of data you and TBG are suggesting should be made generally accessible and use it to compute - to more than two significant figures - the average yearly number of rolls of toilet paper you used to wipe your arse with over the past decade. Without even trying very hard. I was not kidding when I said that such a measure approaches the intrusiveness of placing a camera in your living room and broadcasting the feed live on the internet. In fact, in some ways it is even worse, because the data will be available in a format that lends itself much more easily to data mining.

The advertising budget of Unilever alone could fund at least a handful of full statistical services, with all the bells and whistles. How many scientists or consumer safety advocates do you think Unilever would need to keep under 24/7 surveillance to - ah - dissuade such activities aimed at the company? Five hundred? A trivial expenditure. Five thousand? Easy-peasy. Fifty thousand? Now you're starting to talk somewhat serious money.

Now compare to the consumer advocate organisation. They would need to keep tabs on maybe fifty people in and around Unilever alone, plus maybe a dozen new people for every other transnat they wanted to monitor (there is a large overlap due to the incestuous nature of upper management). Call it a hundred, if they are fairly narrowly focused on food and general groceries.

Even if running a statistical service had no economies of scale - which it does - they would need a budget on the order of one per cent of Unilever's advertising budget. Or somewhere in the same order of magnitude as a small municipality. How many NGOs do you know who have that sort of operating budget, let alone research budget?

That is a battle of attrition that the good guys are going to lose.

- Jake

Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2012 at 05:29:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

The picture is all too familiar. It is the consequence of allowing the emergence of the existing corporatist order. Those organizations with the resources are already doing all of the stuff you describe. We have lost -- at least in any game of contesting events on their grounds. Bur the average citizen doesn't have access even to enough solid information to know for sure what any of these guys are doing.

In the USA at least there is a limitation to libel and slander laws in the case of public officials. If you are a public figure you have less recourse than purely private individuals. That helps some. We need more of that sort of leveling of the playing field. As I noted a ways up, I do not advocate giving legal access to the personal details of individuals in general. But neither do I pretend that such access is not obtained routinely by those with power and, usually, without serious consequences to them.

In theory corporations are creations of the state and a price could be extracted for their privileges. In practice they are shields for private wealth and interest and are largely unaccountable. The situation is so bad that I believe that repealing the legislation that makes limited liability corporations legal may be the only real solution -- if that could ever be accomplished. I will be pleasantly surprised should it come to pass. Meanwhile, I do not pretend that, functionally, I have any real privacy - for the reasons you outline above. However, it probably would be worse were what I expect routinely occurs on an informal and, technically illegal basis, to be made explicitly legal.

But requiring that all contracts be made public in order for them to be enforceable would mostly be a problem, if that, for the wealthy. But we need to focus on punishing the use of supposedly privileged information on private individuals by those in government and in corporations, even if that won't stop them from finding out the information.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Mon Mar 26th, 2012 at 10:20:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

Those organizations with the resources are already doing all of the stuff you describe.

No, they do not. Because they do not have access to the data, and obtaining it is expensive. There really is a difference in kind, not just in scope, between what happens today and what would happen if every two-bit Kochsucker and Swiftboater got unfettered access to this sort of data.

Meanwhile, I do not pretend that, functionally, I have any real privacy - for the reasons you outline above.

There is a vast gulf between assuming that anybody who is sufficiently interested and prepared to throw enough man-hours at the problem can invade your privacy and knowing that anybody who is even slightly interested and has two guys and a SAS license on his payroll can invade your privacy.

- Jake

Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 03:23:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (4.00 / 3)

Yes they do. If A Corporation wants to find out how much toilet paper I use a year, they can check any number of loyalty cards.

I know people who do this stuff, and not only is the surveillance acute, it's also statistically homogenous. It's possible to guesstimate spending and buying habits from age and location with frightening accuracy.

But so what? No one cares how much toilet paper I buy a year. It's not an interesting fact. It's barely interesting to toilet paper sellers.

And let's not get started on the data on interests and habits already collected by Google, Facebook, Apple, and the rest.

The point is that statistically poor people have much less to hide than rich people do. If Tony Blair happens to have a Swiss bank account, it would be useful to know how much is in it and who paid him.

And so on. Currently there is no way - absolutely none - of making that critical information public.

The current situation doesn't just aid abuse, it sponsors it.

As for the costs - crowd sourcing can be a powerful thing. We already have WikiLeaks and Anonymous.

This would be more of the same, but with teeth.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 03:33:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (4.00 / 2)

We are living in an age of increased power inequality as exemplified by increased inequality in wealth. However in future power inequalities will be increasingly exacerbated by increased inequalities in access to information - and the ability to analyse and act on it.

We can already see how low information tea partiers can be played for fools by even low grade corporate interests in the US. The power to extort compliance from individuals by threatening to reveal information they don't want revealed may become pervasive. Are you an in-the-closet-gay, do you have a criminal record, unpaid debts, accessed porn, did you have an affair? All useful information for someone who wants to manipulate you.

But that is all about individual information about a particular individual someone powerful may want to cow or manipulate. More pervasive still is the aggregate information which can be used to target marketing campaigns or to manipulate a polity.

More open access to information to all could be one way of reducing this inequality - but I suggest an enhanced right to privacy and effective sanctions on those who breach this is a more effective safeguard. Sure, those with wealth and access to lawyers can abuse this to hide their nefarious activities. But the abuse by a few should not be allowed dictate the rights of the many.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 08:11:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (4.00 / 3)

I don't think blackmail would be the main consequence even on the personal level. If everything you do is known, there is little basis for blackmail. What we do see in societies where everything is known is not rampant blackmail, it is stifling social control, which brings social conservatism.

Frank Schnittger:

More open access to information to all could be one way of reducing this inequality - but I suggest an enhanced right to privacy and effective sanctions on those who breach this is a more effective safeguard. Sure, those with wealth and access to lawyers can abuse this to hide their nefarious activities. But the abuse by a few should not be allowed dictate the rights of the many.

Yes.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

by A swedish kind of death on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 09:29:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

Combine that with enhanced requirements for openness and transparency for corporations in their dealings with the political realm and the media and we might have a program. But this will be spun by corporates as invasion of their privacy - which it is, but it is more like revocation of some aspects of privacy as a condition of the continuation of other benefits of corporate personhood. If only.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 11:12:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

By definition, Democracy should be the rule of the people by the people and corporates are NOT people (contra Citizen's United). All corporate "donations" should be considered ipso facto bribes and all public officials (active and receipt of a pension) should be debarred from receiving payment for services rendered from for profit corporates. The public good requires that we grant corporates certain indemnities and privileges for the economic benefits they can confer on the common-weal. That does not include granting them political powers or influence over us.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 12:46:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 0)

Democracy should be the rule of the people by the people

Whatever that means.

by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 12:57:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

Of individual human beings by individual human beings?

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 01:05:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (4.00 / 3)

In my version of democracy, entrance to the voting booth is guarded by one of those truckstop slot screens with Trivial Pursuits on it. Unless you get a minimum score in all 6 categories, you can't vote. But you may keep playing (it costs 1€) until you better your score.

Candidates for election must get to Gold level before they can enter the rolls.

It needs just a little refinement, but it's already better than what we have.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 01:17:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (4.00 / 2)

Who gets to write the questions?

- Jake

Austerity can only be implemented in the shadow of a concentration camp.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 07:11:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 0)

In a reality TV show voting qualification process everything is controlled by Simon Cowell

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Tue Mar 27th, 2012 at 08:09:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Trivial Pursuit (none / 0)

Upper school kids not yet old enough to vote.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Mar 28th, 2012 at 12:44:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (4.00 / 5)

And the answers? "When does life start?" 1) Conception 2) Birth 3) When all the kids leave the nest and the dog dies.

by gk (g k quattro due due sette "at" gmail.com) on Wed Mar 28th, 2012 at 02:15:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 0)

by sgr2 on Wed Mar 28th, 2012 at 12:10:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

JakeS:

If lack of transparency were the principal cause or enabling edifice of corruption, corruption would be a much easier problem to solve than it actually is.

If by corruption you mean exchange of favors that are unacceptable by the societys standards, then transparency should help. But that reduces what is commonly called corruption to only a subset.

I think the thesis that LVT cures most corruption is unprovable unless there is a stipulated definition of corruption that is much more distinct then the terms general use. I searched Gaffney's monograph and did not find a definition, just some - well deserved - rants against the existing corruption. (Note that I have only read bits and pieces around where the word "corruption" has been used, so it is probably terribly unfair as a charactherisation of the monograph.)

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

by A swedish kind of death on Sat Mar 24th, 2012 at 03:35:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bertie Ahern was lying (none / 1)

Mea culpa. To the extent that I implied that prevention of corruption is the thesis of Mason's work I mischaracterized that work. His actual thesis is that the discipline of economics was turned upside down specifically to undermine the sort of arguments that George would make in favor of his tax proposals, which the wealthy of the day found abhorrent. They had accumulated vast wealth in land from federal railroad development schemes and the land grant university system, and while sitting on that land for generations was less destructive to US society than what has happened in the UK, it still served as an untaxed store of wealth which had originated as public commons.

What I can more properly say is that he shows how such a tax has been used to great effect and shows in lurid detail how the beneficiaries of those grants of public lands inveigled to see that the discipline of economics was restructured and presented in ways that would not challenge the status quo.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat Mar 24th, 2012 at 05:25:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Bertie Ahern was lying | 53 comments (53 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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