Comment by threethirtytwo

>Within capitalism, this isn't what government officials are incentivised to do.

I am saying this is the problem. This is the origin of corruption because they aren’t incentivized for this. We are all aware that a good government official is one that follows these moral precepts.

However we know that government officials follow the moral precepts of ordinary private citizens. I’m saying that there are two sets of moral ideals. One for citizens to form thriving capitalism and one for government officials to form systems of management and guardianship.

When you combine these two moral ideas you get hybrid systems and that is the origin of corruption. That is why I’m advocating separation. Government officials making tax laws to favor themselves is an example of a hybrid system. A rich person lobbying a government official is another example.

> All fair, but we're not talking about the system we live in (whether it works or not), we're talking about ideals & how things hypothetically should be.

That’s your personal ideal and how you feel things should be. Which is fine but I’m not talking about your personal ideal or my personal ideal.

> However, I believe that limiting qualifier is extremely important & wasn't present in your original statement.

It wasn’t in yours either. That’s why I brought it up in my second statement because likely you weren’t thinking of it.

Basically most humans don’t follow your moral precepts. They give it lip service they may lie to themselves and think they follow it but the majority of the human race does not follow it.

What humans do is they optimize for survival first. Once that is fulfilled they optimize for status. It’s biological because status is associated with more mating opportunities. It’s a measurable social phenomenon that women sexually select mates based off of status and men need to earn more status. The more status they have the more mates these men tend to have.

That’s the biological reality. This is separate from moral instinct which you’re likely operating out of. You formulate a set of moral ideals from logic and many people like you apply that moral instinct to justify your current situation. Are they rich? Then likely their moral philosophy will center around the justification of that. Are they just moderately normal in terms of wealth? Then likely their moral justification is caused by that situation. A case where it’s not like that is not if a rich person gives up all his wealth to become moderate in terms of wealth deliberately because of moral philosophy. You may be a man who does that but this type of behavior where someone like Warren, Elon, Jeff or mark gives up their wealth to live as moderates in the name of some moral principle basically never happens. Likely these people have developed moral philosophies that justify their wealth and situation. But evidence for this lies in action and you rarely see rich people give up wealth in the name of moral precepts against wealth. Thus it can be said humans do not behave or truly embody your ideals.

Remember: Status is culturally defined; there are many cultures (in human anthropology) where status is not defined by money. My main point is this: modern culture is defined by capitalism and this capitalism defines their behavior more than their moral philosophies (which more often then not end up being justifications for their situations rather then an actual moral ideal).

The culture of capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with government because incentives for government is fundamentally diametric to the incentives of capitalism. That is the origin of corruption, that was my point for this thread.