Corruption - 15. With despair ...

A break in the output of the next issues of the series "Corruption" is in no way connected with the political conjuncture. I don't follow her. It’s just that we, in the Indem, have a typical Soviet Zaparka. The project finishes, large, complex, three -year. We will definitely talk about him. And now a small clearance, and I take the opportunity to continue our series. A few words about our plans. This article will close the tragic theme of despair, and then I will go to the topic of hope, because I will try to answer the question that has long been torn from the readers: “What to do?!”. You know, on this subject I can burst out no less extensive than on the topic of lead aboats of corruption. But I promise to restrain myself, I will try to limit myself to two or three releases. And another promise. At the very beginning of this series, some forum participants said that it would be useful to release all these texts with a separate book. This proposal is accepted, such a book will be. And now to the matter.

Speaking about the political consequences of corruption, we will keep in mind that the word politics has two meanings. There is just such a situation when the great Russian language gave slack. This is not surprising: the diversity of practice gives rise to a variety of words. This is in the English tradition of a politician in all its manifestations has almost a millennium. Therefore, there are two terms: Politics - for politics as a sphere of power struggle, and Policy - for politics as a sphere of public goal -setting and implementing large state projects. In our language, there is no such distinction, which is quite consistent with our history, in which the term “politics” is attributed to the devil knows what, like the “policy of Ivan the Terrible” or “Stalin’s policy in the field of science”. All this is complete nonsense, for politics exists there and only where there is a social choice. The word "public" is important here. Individual choice is not related to the field of politics. There are simply situations when an individual choice becomes the problem of entire nations. But this does not mean that we are talking about politics. Sometimes it will be replaced by someone’s bellge, or paranoia, or self-interest. Well, God is with them. Let's get back to our mouflons.

First, consider a policy in the second of the above meanings of the word. In many advanced manuals on combating corruption, the following thesis can be found: " Corruption shifts the goals of politics ." We are talking about an obvious circumstance. Always and at all times any leaders, politicians, sovereigns had to share their efforts between the achievement of personal and public (at different times of different) goals. If we are talking about democratic states, then the main function of external public control over the authorities is just to limit the power of their resources by the authorities to achieve goals that are different from public. I hope that the readers understood: it is here that we fly into a topic of corruption at high speed.

Do you remember the principal-agent model and the associated determination of corruption? We discussed them in the article “Corruption-3”. Following the logic proposed there, we must reason like that. The authorities never dispose of its own resources, any of its resources are temporarily given to it to solve our problems in accordance with our goals. When the authorities begin to use these resources for its own purposes, it stole our resources and betrays our goals, replacing them with its own. You remember that according to the definition we adopted, this is the purest corruption.

Let us use further in this article a hypothetical example, a sort of minipflet, in which any coincidences with real acting characters are completely random. In short, imagine a country that exports to Western countries, obsessed with the idea of ​​producing environmentally friendly products, its main natural resource - manure. An all -free roads are now, it is not enough where it remains in commodity quantities. Therefore, prices are rising, and the profitability of this production is high. And most importantly, a convenient business that does not require great professional knowledge and organizational abilities: the entire population produces manure and takes to the preparation points. There they press, pack it, put the stamp “Made in the manure” and loaded for shipment to Europe. “Let our shit smell there!”, As officials that control deliveries like to joke.

But such control over the West is formed not only by a sense of pride and a feeling of separation of the knees from this manure. The ability to easily produce and sell expensively pushes to an irresistible temptation to first nationalize the production of manure, and then privatize, but already for yourself. Which was done, but only in the dark, not very legal in the first part of the combination and is absolutely illegal - in the second. But this is only half a bastard. Even worse is that all “state activity” (they loved such an expression there) was subordinated only to four tasks: the first - to take away and nationalize the sources of manure; The second is to appropriate them; The third is to expand sales markets in the West (I will tell you below the fourth task). Everything else is a side effect. As a result, there was a notorious “displacement of the goals of politics” (in the sense of Policy). For example, the entire foreign policy of the authorities was subordinated to one - manure. They loved to create international companies and put them at all of their former Western presidents and prime ministers. It was also customary to construct routes for the supply of manure so that not a drop could linger in the neighboring countries with which they always quarreled. And the reasons were good: the neighbors composed offensive jokes about the producers of shit all the time. The West was also needed in order to purchase all sorts of surrogates there, which in the country called the subjects in bright packages in the country, to buy there. From this, the subjects died early, and the authorities shouted about the extinction of the nation, accused the West and the fifth column. All the media told about this. And along all the television channels there was a competition called "Hero of all time and peoples." On it, the winner was the Roman emperor Vespesian with his wise slogan: “Money does not smell!” And the authorities, know themselves, collected and gathered their beloved shit and drove him to the West they had been crumbling, where their children studied and wives were boiled. Both those and others ate environmentally friendly products nourished on their native manure. This was even more exalted by their sense of national pride. From year to year, supplies expanded, prices grew, income grew even faster, but less and less taxes were received to the treasury, because the new owners of shit production enterprises were classified. For the purposes of national security. And if the owner is unknown, then there is no one to take taxes from.

And what the population will ask the reader. And nothing! The subjects liked the bright labels of the surrogate feeding them, and everyone thought that he would live longer than a melting middle age. And the population also liked that the caring power periodically announced various plans for the development of the country, for five, ten, twenty and even half a hundred years. The main thing in them was to promise an “innovative breakthrough”, which has long been unrealistic in a country that produces one shit.

And now moral. Of course, it is clear to you that here we are talking about corruption. This is corruption at the highest level, political corruption. She inevitably leads to the following negative consequences. First: the political elite (let's call it so, although the term is not accurate due to the lack of policy in the sense of socially useful goal-setting), uncontrollable by society and mired in its fragrant business, replaced Policy with such a shameless imitation of one. And all her resources and powers belonging not to her, but to citizens, spent on their own enrichment. So that there were no replenishments from ordinary businessmen, just in case they were hindered by the development of any business. The manifestation has forgotten how to produce anything but its own feces.

And then the crisis struck. In the elections in the country of the main strategic enemy and buyer of manure, the candidate won, who proclaimed the refusal to use someone else's manure and offered to switch to the production of his own artificial ragweed with an amazingly pleasant smell as environmentally friendly fertilizers. The manure market collapsed, prices collapsed. This, of course, was followed by a mortgage crisis, and then financial. The production of sealed heavy tanks for transporting manure began to fall. The metallurgy market immediately collapsed. And everything sprinkled. It was difficult for everyone. But the most difficult thing is manure. She knew nothing else other than the export of manure. She did not know how to make real plans and bring them to life. More precisely, the authorities did not know how, and the subjects did not want. Looked and lost faith. And all this is due to corruption.

But I promised to talk about the fourth main task that the authorities of the manifold, who lived in the shit with which she traded. More than anything, the country's leaders were afraid to part with the authorities. Therefore, they set for themselves the following task: to rule forever. To do this, they threw the lots who, for whom in a circle will be called the main ruler. And to everyone else they hinted that they are only subjects, and this is forever. Those who did not understand the hint, they gave tasteless sweet gulls, from which they quickly and painfully die. The more they stole and killed, the worse they had to lose power; And the worse they had to lose power, the more they stole and killed. And it was clear to everyone that it could not continue endlessly. But here understand - do not understand, anyway. This flywheel is spinning faster, because it does not depend on someone's personal understanding of the danger, and soon it will reach such a speed that it will simply smash it, and it is unclear where the fragments will fly.

And then the people began to murmur. No wonder the crisis. When the income from trading in manure began to fall, the authorities began to export the remnants of their funds (and they considered almost any funds to be their own) to the West they had been scolded. Therefore, the money to purchase surrogate products in bright labels was missing. Import was reduced, the shelves are empty. And all this was so unexpected and already unusual, almost scary. And people began to think, look around, compare and draw conclusions. And the most terrible conclusion was that they, raised, had no way to influence the situation in the country. All these methods were liquidated by the authorities in the process of solving the fourth main task - to stay in power. There was only one way to express their dissatisfaction - to go out into the street all together and spread everything around to the hell. And this is really scary. This is the main consequence of political corruption in the sense of Politics.

To be continued

Author - President of the Indem Foundation