I might not be corruption, it might be worse.
I was told by Brussels insiders a few decades ago the Commission people are not really corruptible. They are guaranteed a very comfortable life and the sanctions are harsh. That might have change, I don't know.
What I was explained is the system is designed for lobbying. The main input is by the lobbies, not the people.
Most of us assume the EU is designed like the US system or individual countries like Germany, Italy or France but it is not. The power of the Parliament is very limited, but we see here that little power has become too much of an inconvenience for the people in power.
For anyone daring to look into the boring design of that thing will come to the conclusion it is absolutely not democratic.
Why are we ignoring the other side of the transaction? The side responsible for taking the money.
Giving bribes for lobbying is bad, but that would not be an issue if those found taking the bribes would be guillotined or hanged.
With an egalitarian government, corruption is a problem, its bad, its something we try to fight and there are mechanisms to do so. Having no government is just giving up and going straight to 100% corruption.
I am very pro regulation.
Still, kinda weird to complain about bureaucracy and regulations in this context cus its the only solution to these problems of egality and corruption which humanity has been struggling with ever since the dawn of civilisation.
Tho, It's kind of a solved problem too. We should all just try to be like Denmark, they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon. They have a massive powerful bureaucracy, lots of strong regulation, extremely high taxes, low corruption.
The solution to any eco-geo-political issue is just "be more like Denmark". Once everyone gets to that level we can think about further improvement.
Wait, but doesn't Denmark have the strictest immigration policies in the entire EU?
> they at the top or near the top of practially every metric. Happiness, corruption index, Gini, Quality of life, healthcare, education, carbon.
I don't understand. Are you suggesting deporting all migrants to improve the statistics to Denmark's level? But that's impossible in our legal system. We've been actively importing culturally incompatible foreigners for decades now, and many already have citizenship. You can't just strip people of their citizenship in an attempt to improve the statistics.
They’re fighting a battle against the real problem which is the paid up influence campaigns that give them problems to defend. Start at the press, the social media companies and the think tanks.
This last sentence immediately made me think of Epstein’s island and the “ultimate taboo” they were engaging in there.
Nothing unites the scum stronger than a guaranteed scorching pan in hell for all of them.