Enron-type coverups do not typically exist

Steve Kinney admin at pilobilus.net
Sun Dec 3 12:24:20 PST 2017



On 12/03/2017 10:03 AM, Ryan Carboni wrote:
> Most coverups don't really involve people grabbing reams of documents
> and forcing them down shredders (although the Iran-Contra case comes to
> mind). Instead they often involve deceiving their participants as to the
> necessity as to continuing the coverup and the ongoing actions. Let's
> call this a JFK-style coverup.

[...]

> I just wonder how this could happen. It is such a mystery.
> 
> All these millions.
> 
> Going no where.
> 
> Can't figure it out.
> 
> Such a mystery.
> 
> Insurmountable.
> 
> Really curious.
> 
> Don't get it.
> 
> Beyond me.

I view systemic corruption and malfeasance as an organic process
analogous to the evolution of ecosystems adapted to local physical
conditions.  As individual organisms pursue their immediate self
interest, some adaptations are more profitable than others.  In organic
evolution, whatever forms and behaviors combine to produce the most
grandchildren win out, while those that produce the least die out.

In human social organization, adaptive behaviors create mind-sets and
"cultures" on much the same basis:  The forms and behaviors that produce
the most power for the participating individuals win out, while those
that produce the least die out.  Across institutions where thousands of
individuals participate in activities that transfer and apply money and
power, the personal benefits of breaking rules and subverting the
organization's nominal mission will always reward those who excel at
deception, theft and violence - and especially those who develop
strategies for cooperating with others to apply these winning strategies
at the expense of "outsiders".

The rest is history.  Quite literally so because history is fossilized
propaganda, written by the winners in a given generation's perverse
incentives contest.

Solutions?  My suggestion is to limit "sovereign" States to the smallest
attainable size, because popular self-governance DOES NOT SCALE.  The
larger the organization, the more hiding places and the more
irresistible the incentives for bad faith actors.  Any system of
government that grows too large and complex for an "ordinary citizen" to
see and understand what it is doing in useful detail, is a government
that will be taken over and operated by bad faith actors, working for
their own advantage at everyone else's expense.

In this context, the good and bad news are one and the same:  My
preferred forms of government are coming, and no human agency can
prevent that.  Because by century's end the collapse of the world's
industrial economies and a significant human population crash will leave
today's giant State institutions bankrupt, powerless and irrelevant.

:o/




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