Great essay. One addition I would offer is that this phenomenon also ties into the US becoming an equilibrium lower trust society more generally. It sucks.
I can't help but feel that this is of a piece with the broader global authoritarian project to not abolish shared reality in democracies but to so muddy the waters that the average citizen has no choice but to throw up their hands and say "well they all suck so who's to say?"
I don't know of any feasible way to fix this. It's pretty bleak.
It is so difficult, though. I had a really hard time convincing a well-educated friend last night that some influencer is wildly incorrect in her video about how the 2030 census is collecting private information so the government can steal our identity or some such. The influencer's video was based on a supposed "test census" she received. But I am 99% sure she received an American Community Survey questionnaire, not a test decennial census questionnaire. The questions the influencer was complaining about were the same as the ones on the ACS, and the ACS site explains why they ask them. Also, the 2030 census is scheduled to only be tested in Huntsville and Spartanburg - an issue that lots of data people are complaining about - and the influencer is in Minnesota. I finally did convince my friend that this couldn't be the test census, but it took a long time. So how do we get our friends to stop sharing nonsense?
Sorry for the long tangential screed, but this librarian is despondent over the sudden and unexplained closure of the CIA World Fact Book last week (it is SO heavily used by students and researchers at all levels), and now it seems ACS may not long for this world, and perhaps people will stop responding to the census at all. It is all so discouraging. There is so much nonsense out there that it is hard to focus on the real threats.
90% of people do not have the ability to discern, with confidence, what is nonsense and what isn't. And the other 10% would mostly rather be doing other things. I don't think people ever really could, but thanks to social media they now encounter disinformation much more readily, and they don't trust the sources that provide actual information (or, increasingly, they just find them boring relative to infinite scroll short form video).
And even if that 90% are forced to admit that a factual claim was mistaken, that becomes "not the point" because of Gaza or Epstein or Drag Queen Story Hour. Even if there's no proof of COVID vaccines causing crazy side effects, Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend still had his balls explode on the eve of his wedding.
100% agree. In fact it’s even worse because most people seem to view correcting falsehoods are more transgressive than spreading them. But… what’s the alternative? I think it behoves one to at least try to correct falsehoods occasionally.
Yeah, I can't disagree with that. But it does feel pretty futile. And say you go through the back and forth, you walk someone through sources, you address their responses, and they finally relent and say okay, I shouldn't have shared that. They are just gonna do the same shit with the next piece of disinformation that feels compelling to them. Maybe they pause for a second, remembering the time they were misled and corrected. But at the end of the day they want to be a good conscientious person, and a lot of people from "their side" really care about this issue, and isn't it crazy what they said in this TikTok?? Giving up and disengaging is the best option for me. But I don't begrudge people who want to fight an unwinnable war, given that the cause is just.
I like to imagine if enough of us tried the norms would change. Obviously hasn’t worked so far! But the costs of public policy being based on an increasingly inaccurate fact base are so high I guess I feel one has to try a little bit.
I'm going to repost the Timothy Snyder quote I've posted here a few times in the past (with apologies).
"There's a slightly tricky thing here which I want to try to explain, which is why the Russians - or why Putin - doesn't really think he's a liar, or why they can combine lying all the time about everything with saying that we [the U.S.] are the ones who are always lying all the time about everything. You know, we lie some of the time about some things. I know few Americans who are capable of lying all the time, right? Whereas the Russian elite, and especially Russian television, that's just what they do, I mean, 24/7, five channels, wraparound reality, lying *all* the time, right? They really make some of our channels look like they're just teenagers. What Putin would say is something like this: 'We admit that we're lying all the time. And what we're trying to say is that everybody does. And so, in that sense, you're hypocrites, you're worse than us. Because you say that there's this truth thing, you say that there are values, you say that there's democracy. But we know that all of that is a lie. And we're honest enough to say that it's all a lie. And therefore we're not hypocrites, because we're always evil. And if you're always evil, you're not a hypocrite, right? And so in some sense, by being always evil, you're good, because you're consistent, you're not a hypocrite. That's where they rest. So there's a strange way in which this terrible cynicism becomes this kind of terrible naivete, where I think Putin believes just as you say, he believes that it's all cynical, it's all a conspiracy, it's all mirrors upon mirrors. But deep down inside, I think there is this notion that Russia's different, that Russia's innocent, because in Russia we don't fool ourselves about all of this *stuff*. And it's very hard to break that down, because that does become a kind of closed system. So that's tempting, right? It's tempting if you're a postmodernist on the left, because you're like, 'Yeah, I've always been challenging truth, and the structures. And here are these guys who tell me that it's really *all* a lie. So well, that's kind of attractive, that's kind of seductive. And then if you're on the right, you can say, 'Oh look, these guys have proven that if you have an army, and oligarchs, you can basically abolish truth and make the status quo permanent. And I like the status quo, because I happen to have some wealth myself.' And so it's an even stronger magnetic pull for the American right. 'Oh we can do things that way. We can do things the way Putin has done them.' And Trump just pulled the lid off of that and celebrated it and said, 'Yeah this is of course what I'm doing.'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRiDdvG-BDc
I'm not sure how tongue-in-cheek this was meant, but this is largely beside the point. Erosion of trust in public institutions whose mission is, on some level, public welfare is the problem. That we might replace that with trust in corporations (whose mission is to extract maximum producer welfare even if that means reducing consumer welfare) is not comforting.
The thing with Amazon and Netflix is that they seem to work pretty effectively. I have to think that's part of why people trust them. Ordering something from Amazon is easy and it shows up at your door the next day. Government, with the exception of the relatively well-trusted military, just doesn't operate with that degree of frictionless effectiveness. In many cases that's unavoidable, but I think people might trust government more if we invested some effort it making it work better.
I think Matt and others have written many times that blue states and cities governed by a majority of democrats needs to focus much more on effective governance to win elections.
Folks say this, the "lower trust society" bit, but I don't think most of the people saying it spend a lot of time in genuinely low-trust societies.
I ended up purchasing progressively more and more expensive and capable locks for bikes when I lived in Beijing, and still had 2 stolen and one destroyed in the course of a theft. Now, one of my kids' bikes has sat out behind our house in plain view of the alleyway, which sees ~30 people walk down it daily, since maybe June? Still there. Same for various gardening tools that live out there permanently.
When I had shit delivered in China, which is (largely rightfully) regarded as a low-crime culture, it would get stolen out of the hallway outside our apartment, probably by someone living on the floor, if someone wasn't there to open the door to a delivery guy.
I have had 1 package stolen here in a decade.
This is not a fancy area, it's a working-to-middle-class one, too.
Conspiracism about governing elites doesn't equate to a low-trust society.
Packages were pretty regularly stolen at the condo building where I used to live, in the suburbs of DC. I switched to using package holding services as much as possible. There's a reason why Amazon Lockers are popular!
I can't speak directly to the prevalence of bike theft, because I never learned to ride one -- in large part because the bike I had as a kid was stolen and my parents never bought me another one.
Seems like no correlation between areas with relatively high levels of package theft and areas with relatively high levels of believing in nonsense about politics though.
Agreed, although the residents of that building did believe a lot of nonsense (no relevance to this discussion, I'm just still bitter that we turned down an offer from Sprint to put a cell tower on the building because people were worried it would cause brain cancer)
Why? In particular, is that not rather in conflict with this site's long-standing concern about the harmful effects of sports betting, given that, per Gambling Insider, a plurality (39%) of Polymarket's revenue comes from gambling - sorry, 'predicting' - on sports. (This is even more obvious at other prediction markets, where 85% of Kalshi's revenue comes from sports).
I'd add that it is epistemically bad to use prediction market odds as an indicator of the likelihood of a particular thing happening, and is in particular obviously inferior to the disciplined approach to making predictions that this site has previously advocated.
To offer a little more information about this, Polymarket & Substack created some kind of tool where people can embed Polymarket odds in a post rather than screenshotting or whatever. In order to promote this new functionality, they offered some Substack writers money to try using the embed.
There's no editorial strings attached or anything, and making reference to midterm odds seems like a very normal thing for me to do so I sad yes.
As I think people know, advertising has been a traditional part of the media revenue model for a very long time and to the extent that publications are able to attract advertising support it is possible to do more editorial work at a lower price for readers. I don't want to do anything intrusive or that would change the basic nature of our articles but this seemed like a very light lift that would have gone totally unnoticed if not disclosed (but of course I wouldn't do it without disclosure) and that is part of a strategy to help us delivering value to our members.
As a paid subscriber, I would prefer that I (and other paid subscribers) am the one paying you, not Polymarket. Maybe there should be a free version of the article with the Polymarket ad and a paid version without it
As a paid subscriber, I don't really care. Matt has a right to make money however he wants. The purpose of this newsletter is to make a living off his takes and it wouldn't feel right for us to limit that.
All I ask is that he's transparent about it and indicates how much it may or may not impact his thinking. If I ever think he sold out I'll just unsubscribe.
Frankly I would be more concerned about speaking fees, which I assume are much more lucrative and we know much less about.
Yeah I’ve never really understood the speaking fees = corruption take. Just because someone pays you for your thoughts doesn’t mean they have influence over your ideas.
The trouble is there have been some highly publicized examples of people getting speaking gigs as a reward or payoff. Those examples stick in people's minds even though most of the time that's not how it works.
This happens because:
1) human nature draws us toward believing everything is some sort of secret corrupt scheme, and
2) It's a lot of work to discern the truth and we're all pretty lazy.
If you financially benefit from maintaining a positive relationship with group X that pays you a speaking fee that incentivizes you to produce work that maintains that relationship.
Well I appreciate the disclosure in the post and the clarity of that post (so thank you). I still don't like it as a decision though; you should consider that the posts that have been created on here about the harms of the explosion of gambling in public life have actually been very persuasive! And at the end of the day the purpose is, ultimately, to guide people towards using platforms to do more gambling.
It's your house and your rules. But in the spirit of another piece of advice on here, about trying to live your morals to some extent, I don't think this was a great choice.
I've been a subscriber since the start and I personally hate this. I'm 100% in for getting your bag, and I'd be fine with 99.9% of brand sponsorships, but polymarket sponsorship in my hierarchy of brand affinity is similar in repulsiveness to me as to sponsorships by marlboro cigarettes.
1. I find prediction market odds useful context for claims about expectations for the future.
2. I don’t mind SB getting paid to embed Polymarket odds.
3. I appreciate the disclosure but would prefer it to be more salient. Maybe a banner over the embed. A footnote feels buried, especially for a new feature.
4. I think it would be good practice to backup the claim that other markets agree with some specific markets and numbers. If the sponsorship forbids this, that seems bad.
You clearly have a subscription to Silver Bulletin and have a good professional working relationship with Nate Silver. I don't understand why you wouldn't just link to his substack especially since his prediction model is almost certainly more accurate than Polymarket.
Also, Polymarket has some real shadiness directly related to the Trump administration! Remember that huge Polymarket bet regarding the capture of Maduro? Just a lot of "smoke" that Polymarket is actually directly involved with the Trump corruption you describe.
Look I don't actually think Polymarket somehow bribed you to make this post the way it is. In fact, I think your post does a pretty good job of explaining that the public has not only way way too expansive of a definition regarding the word "corruption" but way way too often ascribes corrupt motives for particular policy decisions when the real answer is often much more banal normal politics. But do you no think there is something kind of ironic that in a post basically decrying the public's perception of what counts as corruption, the post is sponsored by an entity that has direct ties to very real Trump corruption?
Fair point about Silver and Polymarket. Still, I think I'm solid ground in saying that at the very least there are links polls or substacks or even news articles he could have linked to that I think have some more methodological soundness. I think Polymarket is reasonably accurate, but it is skewed by "whale" betting and when there are other sources that are even more accurate why not link to them.
1. I have no problem with prediction markets generally, or with Polymarket specifically. In general, I think they're good things, though their devolution into "sports betting with extra steps" is disappointing.
2. I appreciate the disclosure in the article, but it was quite jarring and uninformative. My response upon seeing it was, "WTF does THAT mean?"
3. I also appreciate the discussion in the comments, but if you're going to start accepting payments for things like this (ie, changing your revenue model), that seems like a topic to fill your readers in on prior to the choice, perhaps in an evening discussion thread.
4. This seems like a particularly odd model for sponsorship. Do you get paid per link you embed? Per view ("impression"?) of the "ad"? Is it click-through-based? Some of these models are more pernicious (in terms of their editorial effect) than others.
This seems like something done almost on a whim, and experimentation is one of the valuable aspects of a format like Substack. But ultimately you've just managed to create a huge distraction from an otherwise-very-interesting post.
Just want to add to the chorus that I would have quite liked this to be both a lot clearer (what does "sponsoring" mean? and is it the whole post or just the embedded tool?) and more prominent than a footnote. I'm not sure how I feel about the act of taking the sponsorship money—like some other readers I have a big "ick" factor with these prediction markets, but I trust that merely embedding a tool doesn't exert any editorial influence—but I'd feel a lot better about a decision like this if something like "embed sponsored by Polymarket" were in a caption under the embed itself, with a footnote laying out more of the information you've provided in the comments.
I appreciate the disclosure, both here and the original footnote. Your transparency about the economics of your Substack has always been something I admired.
It’s a little unnerving to get to the bottom of a post by an author who has not traditionally published sponsored content and find out that the post has a sponsor.
I would respectfully suggest that sponsored posts are a bigger change than you may have thought, and deserve more prominent discussion.
Yeah I would appreciate more transparency about when things are sponsored content. I thought it was ironic to note, in a post about how people generally aren’t on the take, that there is actually a sponsor for this post!
Especially when the ‘sponsored content’ isn’t integral to the article. It would have been easy enough to find plenty of “who do you expect to win the Senate” sources that could be given a quick cite to make this point, pick one or two, and then move on.
Well we hope and think it isn't integral! This is the whole problem with this sort of thing - and where the post does frankly mirror the public concern to be honest - is that now there's some doubt introduced over to what extent we're reading the author's opinions versus the sponsor's, what the editorial process here involves, etc.
I wouldn’t say it meets the formal definition of corruption at all, but it was an ironic enough snap association before reasoned consideration in the context of the article.
Especially since one of MY's main goals in recent years have been trying to get people to his left to become more moderate. If you write something about the perception of widespread corruption being mistaken, then have it be the first of your posts to have a gambling sponsorship, you've poisoned your own well. Nobody you need to persuade will be persuaded regardless of the strength of your argument. This is the type of behavior MY would rightly criticize the left for with "Do Democrats even really want to win?"
I did think about making that argument but to my mind it's not corrupt if there's a disclaimer acknowledging the relationship (yes) and if the content/direction of the post has not been dictated or pushed by the sponsor (presumably not?).
I do think it's immoral to take money from prediction markets though, even if not corrupt.
I don’t really think it’s accurate to say the post is sponsored by Polymarket. It’s more that Matt received income for embedding the graphic and making readers aware of Polymarket which really isn’t much different from traditional advertising.
I inferred "post" as the screenshot of the Senate odds coming from Polymarket, not this entire article, but Matt or The Management are free to clarify.
I would think that was very bad, in that case. Given that readers of this site have been given articles on multiple occasions pointing out the harm's of the gambling explosion, those same readers should not be a captive audience for some native advertising of new wares.
1. It had to feel good for Matt to be able to work in a swipe at RDP, Matt Stoller, and others who are similar after all the feuding he's done with them on Twitter. And that upper right hand tweet from the RDP is hilariously pathetic: admitting they don't know who's funding something they don't like, therefore they must guess that it's someone rich and powerful that they also don't like!
2. Also, I'm surprised there weren't any questions asked about lobbying and campaign finance, because those are areas that people regularly think are corrupt, even though they also implicate some of the most core First Amendment protections out there.
3. "Donald Trump is running easily the most corrupt administration in decades." How about *ever*? I don't know who else could come close. The Grant administration tolerated a lot of corruption, but Grant himself didn't flaunt in it like Trump does.
4. Finally, those who go full cynical on politicians should consider their own agency, famously mocked as follows:
“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality.
They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders.
Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans.
So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.”
1. The issue with campaign finance, donor access, lobbying, etc... is not that it necessarily indicates corruption but that it deeply muddies the waters and destroys the information environment surrounding corruption. To the average voter, who is not us and doesn't want to spend the time we do gathering information about the state of the world, if much of Congress were pocketing money directly in exchange for votes for or against various measures, the data about election spending and donations would look similar, the headlines about Congress would look similar, and the outcomes would look similar. The information environment is so opaque that folks can simply attribute politicians doing things they don't like to corruption, and it's hard to disprove convincingly when the optics are so terrible because everyone is doing this.
2. To the extent that we do have actual corruption or a quid pro quo, it's almost certainly to be found in the pipeline *from* politics *to* the private sector. Virtually the entire governing class becomes multi-millionaires within a few years of retirement, and virtually all of them do it by lobbying or providing insight on government relations to private industry. It's almost impossible to prove or disprove how this affects their decisions about specific regulatory measures while in office, but it seems that if they're too rigorous, they cut off the lucrative post-Congress-gig pipeline.
So on #2, I think it’s an incredibly small percentage of people that are able to go from a career in government to becoming a multi-millionaire, and most of who do so become that rich through media, not lobbying. As a thought experiment, who is worth more: John Boehner or Joe Scarborough? Kurt Schrader or George Stephaopoulos?
Many former members and staff are lobbyists, but nobody who’s waiting in the hallway on the 6th floor of the Longworth House Office Building to meet with a 25-year-old staffer is a multi-millionaire who isn’t worried about their next paycheck. That’s a working stiff right there.
Re (2) my guess is that many voters think ~any kind of campaign fundraising besides small dollar donations is corrupt per se? That's just a hunch though
I actually think that can be reasonable with regard to contributions--I was thinking more expenditures from both campaigning and lobbying. It's also why I think the contribution vs. expenditure bright line that SCOTUS drew in Buckley v. Valeo is very sound.
Maybe Harding? I always got the sense he was very much up there. And with an expansive view of corruption (but one the public probably agrees with :P) Nixon has to be up there given all the bad stuff he did
Harding kicking the bucket soon after getting elected limits what he might have been capable of, which may always remain a mystery. I too thought the same thing about Nixon, but that would belie the whole point of this article, as your parenthetical implies.
Is it the most corrupt administration in world history? Putin might technically have more dosh but Russia was never a particularly rich country; there's far more to plunder in the United States.
Possibly, but the Roman Empire was tiny compared to the modern United States and just one of our Big Tech rich asshole probably wields more actual power than said emperor (minus an army). The difference of scale as compared to ancient times is mind boggling.
Maybe in dollar terms, since it's the largest economy in world history.
But you can't even really conceptualize "corruption" in a country where you have a "l'etat c'est moi" style dictator or monarch. How can a leader be "corrupt" if the system of government says that he owns everything in the country and is morally entitled to do whatever he wants?
I don’t think that the US has ever had a president as personally corrupt as Trump is, but at the whole-administration level, it was a huge problem for most post-Lincoln Gilded Age admins. (And the “normal” process for dispensing political offices then was so transparently transactional that we’d consider it extremely corrupt by our own standards).
> I think a less generous but more accurate take would be that because voters do not bother to inform themselves about the actual difficulties involved in assessing policy problems, they wrongly conclude that everything they don’t like reflects corruption or self-interested behavior from elected officials.
This idea can extend beyond just elected officials and governments.
People do not bother to inform themselves about the actual difficulties involved in:
- delivering anything under the sun to you in a day or two
- getting a drug molecule to bind tightly with a specific protein and not any of the hundreds of similar proteins
- how many seeds to plant and how much fertilizer to spray to optimize crop output down to the inch
- orchestrating a global web of liability through reinsurance
- positioning a rig on an ocean surface and drilling 20,000 feet into rock floor
They'd say a small prayer to big tech/pharma/ag/insurance/oil instead of considering them "corrupt".
“If there’s one thing I learned in college philosophy classes all those years ago, it’s that words are somewhat arbitrary and people can use language however they want as long as we understand each other.”
It seems as if latter part of this deal is quickly eroding everywhere, as I have lamented here before. But today I’m having trouble with this post, even though I think its thesis is correct and important. I (and apparently others as well) am confused about the Polymarket footnote. Is SB doing sponsored content now? If so, it should be less opaque (and honestly I am disappointed). Another nitpicking example: Trump did not *earn* hundreds of millions in the UAE deal—this is what corruption *is.*
Maybe secret congress can agree on automation over unionization and people won't notice until Unions are demanding degrowth, putting them firmly in the 'unpopular' camp. One can only dream.
All social programs that help people are corruption. If you make people's lives better using taxpayer money, then those people will want to vote for you, and you'll stay in power. The only way to not be corrupt is to keep money in the hands of the people who already have it.
Yea, I have an incredibly dubious view of Congress and this is basically where it resides. The primary modus operandi of Congress people is to maintain their own station by using taxpayer dollars to buy votes. This is the fundamental corruption of the system.
Truman retired to a small house and got by on his army pension. Now federal elected officials live in an entirely different world than most Americans, financially. That has to be part of it. Before the 70s we were not governed exclusively by the affluent. People of modest means were able to serve in Congress. And not get rich there either.
President Obama is a good example. I'd rate him the cleanest President since I was old enough to vote (early 90s). But his net worth/income went from middle-class to $50 million plus between his election as a state senator and today.
Truman's post-presidency was an exception in those days, too, as was his background.
But I'm not sure what you want exactly - people from modest means to rise to the presidency? Well we have that already with guys like Clinton and Obama. JD Vance wasn't born with a silver spoon, neither was OAC, Bernie Sanders, and the list goes on
Do you want people with "regular careers" to become president? Presidents have always come with political careers or successful careers in other spheres. Truman was a judge and a senator and before that a successful military officer. That's not way different from modern presidents, who were either in politics, successful in private careers or both.
I'm not sure I asserted that I want anything in particular. I offered a possible explanation for why the public feels Washington is corrupt. It probably would be a good thing if holding office wasn't an automatic ticket to riches. But I don't claim to have the answers.
I am kind of sympathetic to the voters here tbh. It seems like in a democracy political representatives should represent their constituencies.
But I constantly see political people plotting to see if they can enact their own views instead; they seem to view public opinion as a constraint to be managed rather than a North Star to be followed. A politician working for his/her own ideology rather than his/her constituents does seem like a form of betrayal/corruption IMO - a principle-agent problem.
Isn’t it obvious that the work hour tracking idea is in response to Biden’s incapacity?
I also think you’re misunderstanding the elite opinion idea. Voters regard the job of the politician as to represent the will of the people in decisionmaking. If that politician acts contrary to their preferences, that’s corruption in the sense of violating (what they think) is the principal-agent relationship. Voters don’t care as much as you do whether the motivation is financial, or ideological, or political (in the sense that Biden not cracking down on illegal immigration was because he perceived a segment of his coalition to be preferring loose borders, not because he was bribed.)
I have not read this Stealth Democracy book, but especially given that it was written in 2002, I’d like to see how they address the claim that people love the Fed because the Fed is simply the most effective part of the government. Pre-financial crisis, I think that was uncontroversial.
"Voters regard the job of the politician as to represent the will of the people in decisionmaking. If that politician acts contrary to their preferences, that’s corruption in the sense of violating (what they think) is the principal-agent relationship."
Maybe. But if a politician said "instead of thinking for myself, I just decide my positions on issues by calling up my favorite pollster and doing what he says" do you think people would view that positively? I'm skeptical.
The other problem here is that individual voters within a constituency have tons of disagreements with each other, thus it's very easy to try to argue that politicians aren't actually representing their individual will, even if the politician ends up in line with the collective will.
I think it’s more fundamentally about real and perceived dishonesty. Saying you’re going to do something to get votes and then not doing that. Or politicians who have to appear more left or right wing to win a primary and then move to the center to try to win a general.
Politicians also have a very bad habit of over promising on a campaign and under-delivering in office.
A slight majority of Americans are paid hourly, and plenty of salaried workers have to log and track their working hours for billing or budget purposes. It’s not hard to extrapolate to “If I have to fill out a timesheet, they should, too”.
I think another good example of this is the campaign tactic of linking your opponent's behavior to campaign contributions. Democrats routinely would talk about checks from the NRA to Republicans and that's why they oppose "popular" gun control measures. The oil and gas industry is another common corruption source. In reality we know that a significant share of Americans value their guns, affiliate with the GOP, and the NRA endorsement is a reflection of Republicans trying to pander to gun voters, not buying them off. But it sounds corrupt-y!
My read on "track congressman work hours" is that it's of course dumb and bad and unworkable as it's own idea but basically exists as shorthand for "they should spend more of their work hours legislating than they do fundraising."
Then the public should be open to the idea of extending House term limits to 4 or even 6 years. It’s absurd how quickly reps have to turn around and raise money for their reelection bid. Even though in theory a 2 year term makes them more accountable to voters
The public *has* been open to it, but the Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional. It was a 5-4 decision with Thomas writing the dissent, however, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, and Scalia. I wonder what today's SCOTUS would make of it, given that term limits were much more polarized back in the 1990s.
EDIT: I might retract this comment if Ben didn't mean to say "limits" in his comment, and was just referring to the term length instead.
I think most people look at "the dollars in are much larger than what we get for it" and think of the difference as "corruption." On that score why wouldn't a typical person see left and right as equally corrupt? I think it was one of the Noah's (Smith or Timothy) who pointed out that a typical voter faced, with 3x higher cost of building in New York vs. Paris, asks "Who's getting the difference?" The left has 2 more disadvantages here: 1) most progressives I know think of almost all profit as "corruption;" and 2) educated people tend to define "corruption" in process-oriented terms, which cuts against the results-oriented intuition above, and also works to the benefit of educated people who more adeptly articulate and work within rule-based processes.
The answer is "the construction guys, designers, and consultants," while also being partly rooted in a bunch of small-bore corruption/rent-seeking that adds up and is impossible to explain concisely to the electorate.
I think this comment is making an excellent point. If NY construction firms are 3x what a comparable Paris firm to drill a subway tunnel how is this not corruption? Clearly someone is getting rich on graft or outdated rules and regulations that allow them to fleece the government. Maybe others here don't think this is corruption but it feels that way to me.
A bit meta but why are Americans so convinced corruption is endemic? Having lived in an actual very corrupt third world country the idea just seems completely ridiculous.
If corruption was an actual problem then someone could do an Operation Blazing Furnace to put hundreds of competitors in prison and solidify power.... Which always happens in every actually corrupt country but never happens in America.
"What would the world look like if this were true?" is a powerful heuristic that people don't use often enough.
Two common reasons people believe that corruption is endemic:
- It's a ready-made, psychologically compelling and plausible explanation for events they can't otherwise explain. (This is Neeraj's point elsewhere in the comments.)
- Closely related phenomenon are true! Aot of successful politicians get into the business for self-aggrandizement. I think channeling ambition into constructive pursuits is even a perk of representative government, but it can look quite unsavory.
I don’t want to “both sides” Trump’s corruption, but Democrats’ hands are not THAT much cleaner. Democrat run places like Chicago, the West Coast, etc have massive, blatant corruption. And I am skeptical that the Clinton Foundation’s primary purpose is truly global poverty reduction versus being a wealth and influence laundering organization for the Clintons.
“I have a lot of bad things to say about Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton, but the idea that after getting law degrees at Yale and Harvard they moved back to their home states to run for office in order to get rich doesn’t make sense. “
I think the general population are smart enough to figure out that ambitious people like this aren’t just in it for public service. The opportunity cost is way too high. Ambitious pols may be able to defer gratification on the money front until they get the power, but doubt the money spigot doesn’t start flowing at some point.
Does it really matter? Do we think the corruption only starts once the money starts to flow to them personally, rather than a campaign or other places they want it put? I really doubt it.
If a guy with a Yale Law degree wants to make money there are much simpler and more direct ways than some kind of circuitous route through winning a senate campaign.
Great essay. One addition I would offer is that this phenomenon also ties into the US becoming an equilibrium lower trust society more generally. It sucks.
I can't help but feel that this is of a piece with the broader global authoritarian project to not abolish shared reality in democracies but to so muddy the waters that the average citizen has no choice but to throw up their hands and say "well they all suck so who's to say?"
I don't know of any feasible way to fix this. It's pretty bleak.
Social stigma can help, and something we can all contribute to. Just Say No to friends sharing nonsense.
It is so difficult, though. I had a really hard time convincing a well-educated friend last night that some influencer is wildly incorrect in her video about how the 2030 census is collecting private information so the government can steal our identity or some such. The influencer's video was based on a supposed "test census" she received. But I am 99% sure she received an American Community Survey questionnaire, not a test decennial census questionnaire. The questions the influencer was complaining about were the same as the ones on the ACS, and the ACS site explains why they ask them. Also, the 2030 census is scheduled to only be tested in Huntsville and Spartanburg - an issue that lots of data people are complaining about - and the influencer is in Minnesota. I finally did convince my friend that this couldn't be the test census, but it took a long time. So how do we get our friends to stop sharing nonsense?
Sorry for the long tangential screed, but this librarian is despondent over the sudden and unexplained closure of the CIA World Fact Book last week (it is SO heavily used by students and researchers at all levels), and now it seems ACS may not long for this world, and perhaps people will stop responding to the census at all. It is all so discouraging. There is so much nonsense out there that it is hard to focus on the real threats.
90% of people do not have the ability to discern, with confidence, what is nonsense and what isn't. And the other 10% would mostly rather be doing other things. I don't think people ever really could, but thanks to social media they now encounter disinformation much more readily, and they don't trust the sources that provide actual information (or, increasingly, they just find them boring relative to infinite scroll short form video).
And even if that 90% are forced to admit that a factual claim was mistaken, that becomes "not the point" because of Gaza or Epstein or Drag Queen Story Hour. Even if there's no proof of COVID vaccines causing crazy side effects, Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend still had his balls explode on the eve of his wedding.
100% agree. In fact it’s even worse because most people seem to view correcting falsehoods are more transgressive than spreading them. But… what’s the alternative? I think it behoves one to at least try to correct falsehoods occasionally.
Yeah, I can't disagree with that. But it does feel pretty futile. And say you go through the back and forth, you walk someone through sources, you address their responses, and they finally relent and say okay, I shouldn't have shared that. They are just gonna do the same shit with the next piece of disinformation that feels compelling to them. Maybe they pause for a second, remembering the time they were misled and corrected. But at the end of the day they want to be a good conscientious person, and a lot of people from "their side" really care about this issue, and isn't it crazy what they said in this TikTok?? Giving up and disengaging is the best option for me. But I don't begrudge people who want to fight an unwinnable war, given that the cause is just.
I like to imagine if enough of us tried the norms would change. Obviously hasn’t worked so far! But the costs of public policy being based on an increasingly inaccurate fact base are so high I guess I feel one has to try a little bit.
I'm going to repost the Timothy Snyder quote I've posted here a few times in the past (with apologies).
"There's a slightly tricky thing here which I want to try to explain, which is why the Russians - or why Putin - doesn't really think he's a liar, or why they can combine lying all the time about everything with saying that we [the U.S.] are the ones who are always lying all the time about everything. You know, we lie some of the time about some things. I know few Americans who are capable of lying all the time, right? Whereas the Russian elite, and especially Russian television, that's just what they do, I mean, 24/7, five channels, wraparound reality, lying *all* the time, right? They really make some of our channels look like they're just teenagers. What Putin would say is something like this: 'We admit that we're lying all the time. And what we're trying to say is that everybody does. And so, in that sense, you're hypocrites, you're worse than us. Because you say that there's this truth thing, you say that there are values, you say that there's democracy. But we know that all of that is a lie. And we're honest enough to say that it's all a lie. And therefore we're not hypocrites, because we're always evil. And if you're always evil, you're not a hypocrite, right? And so in some sense, by being always evil, you're good, because you're consistent, you're not a hypocrite. That's where they rest. So there's a strange way in which this terrible cynicism becomes this kind of terrible naivete, where I think Putin believes just as you say, he believes that it's all cynical, it's all a conspiracy, it's all mirrors upon mirrors. But deep down inside, I think there is this notion that Russia's different, that Russia's innocent, because in Russia we don't fool ourselves about all of this *stuff*. And it's very hard to break that down, because that does become a kind of closed system. So that's tempting, right? It's tempting if you're a postmodernist on the left, because you're like, 'Yeah, I've always been challenging truth, and the structures. And here are these guys who tell me that it's really *all* a lie. So well, that's kind of attractive, that's kind of seductive. And then if you're on the right, you can say, 'Oh look, these guys have proven that if you have an army, and oligarchs, you can basically abolish truth and make the status quo permanent. And I like the status quo, because I happen to have some wealth myself.' And so it's an even stronger magnetic pull for the American right. 'Oh we can do things that way. We can do things the way Putin has done them.' And Trump just pulled the lid off of that and celebrated it and said, 'Yeah this is of course what I'm doing.'" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRiDdvG-BDc
Americans trust things! Amazon, Netflix, to name a few
I'm not sure how tongue-in-cheek this was meant, but this is largely beside the point. Erosion of trust in public institutions whose mission is, on some level, public welfare is the problem. That we might replace that with trust in corporations (whose mission is to extract maximum producer welfare even if that means reducing consumer welfare) is not comforting.
The thing with Amazon and Netflix is that they seem to work pretty effectively. I have to think that's part of why people trust them. Ordering something from Amazon is easy and it shows up at your door the next day. Government, with the exception of the relatively well-trusted military, just doesn't operate with that degree of frictionless effectiveness. In many cases that's unavoidable, but I think people might trust government more if we invested some effort it making it work better.
I think Matt and others have written many times that blue states and cities governed by a majority of democrats needs to focus much more on effective governance to win elections.
Folks say this, the "lower trust society" bit, but I don't think most of the people saying it spend a lot of time in genuinely low-trust societies.
I ended up purchasing progressively more and more expensive and capable locks for bikes when I lived in Beijing, and still had 2 stolen and one destroyed in the course of a theft. Now, one of my kids' bikes has sat out behind our house in plain view of the alleyway, which sees ~30 people walk down it daily, since maybe June? Still there. Same for various gardening tools that live out there permanently.
When I had shit delivered in China, which is (largely rightfully) regarded as a low-crime culture, it would get stolen out of the hallway outside our apartment, probably by someone living on the floor, if someone wasn't there to open the door to a delivery guy.
I have had 1 package stolen here in a decade.
This is not a fancy area, it's a working-to-middle-class one, too.
Conspiracism about governing elites doesn't equate to a low-trust society.
I mostly agree, but there are many parts of the US where package and bike theft are quite common.
Common like what David describes, or common as in it happens occasionally but we hear about it a lot because there are video posts about it?
Packages were pretty regularly stolen at the condo building where I used to live, in the suburbs of DC. I switched to using package holding services as much as possible. There's a reason why Amazon Lockers are popular!
I can't speak directly to the prevalence of bike theft, because I never learned to ride one -- in large part because the bike I had as a kid was stolen and my parents never bought me another one.
Seems like no correlation between areas with relatively high levels of package theft and areas with relatively high levels of believing in nonsense about politics though.
Agreed, although the residents of that building did believe a lot of nonsense (no relevance to this discussion, I'm just still bitter that we turned down an offer from Sprint to put a cell tower on the building because people were worried it would cause brain cancer)
'Polymarket is sponsoring this post'
Why? In particular, is that not rather in conflict with this site's long-standing concern about the harmful effects of sports betting, given that, per Gambling Insider, a plurality (39%) of Polymarket's revenue comes from gambling - sorry, 'predicting' - on sports. (This is even more obvious at other prediction markets, where 85% of Kalshi's revenue comes from sports).
I'd add that it is epistemically bad to use prediction market odds as an indicator of the likelihood of a particular thing happening, and is in particular obviously inferior to the disciplined approach to making predictions that this site has previously advocated.
To offer a little more information about this, Polymarket & Substack created some kind of tool where people can embed Polymarket odds in a post rather than screenshotting or whatever. In order to promote this new functionality, they offered some Substack writers money to try using the embed.
There's no editorial strings attached or anything, and making reference to midterm odds seems like a very normal thing for me to do so I sad yes.
As I think people know, advertising has been a traditional part of the media revenue model for a very long time and to the extent that publications are able to attract advertising support it is possible to do more editorial work at a lower price for readers. I don't want to do anything intrusive or that would change the basic nature of our articles but this seemed like a very light lift that would have gone totally unnoticed if not disclosed (but of course I wouldn't do it without disclosure) and that is part of a strategy to help us delivering value to our members.
As a paid subscriber, I would prefer that I (and other paid subscribers) am the one paying you, not Polymarket. Maybe there should be a free version of the article with the Polymarket ad and a paid version without it
MattY has to pay for DoorDash somehow.
As a paid subscriber, I don't really care. Matt has a right to make money however he wants. The purpose of this newsletter is to make a living off his takes and it wouldn't feel right for us to limit that.
All I ask is that he's transparent about it and indicates how much it may or may not impact his thinking. If I ever think he sold out I'll just unsubscribe.
Frankly I would be more concerned about speaking fees, which I assume are much more lucrative and we know much less about.
I'm not even concerned about speaking fees, either. I wish someone could pay me a ton of money to say things in front of them.
Yeah I’ve never really understood the speaking fees = corruption take. Just because someone pays you for your thoughts doesn’t mean they have influence over your ideas.
If you're a skilled enough speaker, you can influence *them*!
The trouble is there have been some highly publicized examples of people getting speaking gigs as a reward or payoff. Those examples stick in people's minds even though most of the time that's not how it works.
This happens because:
1) human nature draws us toward believing everything is some sort of secret corrupt scheme, and
2) It's a lot of work to discern the truth and we're all pretty lazy.
Do you actually not understand the concern?
If you financially benefit from maintaining a positive relationship with group X that pays you a speaking fee that incentivizes you to produce work that maintains that relationship.
I mean, the alternative explanation is that people really love listening to speeches, which I think has certain plausibility shortcomings.
Well I appreciate the disclosure in the post and the clarity of that post (so thank you). I still don't like it as a decision though; you should consider that the posts that have been created on here about the harms of the explosion of gambling in public life have actually been very persuasive! And at the end of the day the purpose is, ultimately, to guide people towards using platforms to do more gambling.
It's your house and your rules. But in the spirit of another piece of advice on here, about trying to live your morals to some extent, I don't think this was a great choice.
The reactions to this on a post about people unfairly assuming corruption is too on the nose lol
I kinda don't like this boss!
I've been a subscriber since the start and I personally hate this. I'm 100% in for getting your bag, and I'd be fine with 99.9% of brand sponsorships, but polymarket sponsorship in my hierarchy of brand affinity is similar in repulsiveness to me as to sponsorships by marlboro cigarettes.
This feels like the time Slow Boring wanted to do bundling with Hanania.
Thanks for the clarification, Matt. And I have no problem with this.
This is the type of decision that will make me unsubscribe if it continues.
I assumed you made this decision to provoke a meta-debate on whether Matt Yglesias is, in fact, corrupt and under what definition of corruption.
1. I find prediction market odds useful context for claims about expectations for the future.
2. I don’t mind SB getting paid to embed Polymarket odds.
3. I appreciate the disclosure but would prefer it to be more salient. Maybe a banner over the embed. A footnote feels buried, especially for a new feature.
4. I think it would be good practice to backup the claim that other markets agree with some specific markets and numbers. If the sponsorship forbids this, that seems bad.
You clearly have a subscription to Silver Bulletin and have a good professional working relationship with Nate Silver. I don't understand why you wouldn't just link to his substack especially since his prediction model is almost certainly more accurate than Polymarket.
Also, Polymarket has some real shadiness directly related to the Trump administration! Remember that huge Polymarket bet regarding the capture of Maduro? Just a lot of "smoke" that Polymarket is actually directly involved with the Trump corruption you describe.
Look I don't actually think Polymarket somehow bribed you to make this post the way it is. In fact, I think your post does a pretty good job of explaining that the public has not only way way too expansive of a definition regarding the word "corruption" but way way too often ascribes corrupt motives for particular policy decisions when the real answer is often much more banal normal politics. But do you no think there is something kind of ironic that in a post basically decrying the public's perception of what counts as corruption, the post is sponsored by an entity that has direct ties to very real Trump corruption?
Nate doesn't have Senate odds up yet. And in any case, Nate also has done some consulting with Polymarket.
Fair point about Silver and Polymarket. Still, I think I'm solid ground in saying that at the very least there are links polls or substacks or even news articles he could have linked to that I think have some more methodological soundness. I think Polymarket is reasonably accurate, but it is skewed by "whale" betting and when there are other sources that are even more accurate why not link to them.
Matt's attitude is that people should take any mother fucker's money who's dumb enough to give it away. I have no problem with that.
1. I have no problem with prediction markets generally, or with Polymarket specifically. In general, I think they're good things, though their devolution into "sports betting with extra steps" is disappointing.
2. I appreciate the disclosure in the article, but it was quite jarring and uninformative. My response upon seeing it was, "WTF does THAT mean?"
3. I also appreciate the discussion in the comments, but if you're going to start accepting payments for things like this (ie, changing your revenue model), that seems like a topic to fill your readers in on prior to the choice, perhaps in an evening discussion thread.
4. This seems like a particularly odd model for sponsorship. Do you get paid per link you embed? Per view ("impression"?) of the "ad"? Is it click-through-based? Some of these models are more pernicious (in terms of their editorial effect) than others.
This seems like something done almost on a whim, and experimentation is one of the valuable aspects of a format like Substack. But ultimately you've just managed to create a huge distraction from an otherwise-very-interesting post.
This was a strange post to pick for the first time you availed yourself of that convenience and revenue.
Just want to add to the chorus that I would have quite liked this to be both a lot clearer (what does "sponsoring" mean? and is it the whole post or just the embedded tool?) and more prominent than a footnote. I'm not sure how I feel about the act of taking the sponsorship money—like some other readers I have a big "ick" factor with these prediction markets, but I trust that merely embedding a tool doesn't exert any editorial influence—but I'd feel a lot better about a decision like this if something like "embed sponsored by Polymarket" were in a caption under the embed itself, with a footnote laying out more of the information you've provided in the comments.
I appreciate the disclosure, both here and the original footnote. Your transparency about the economics of your Substack has always been something I admired.
It’s a little unnerving to get to the bottom of a post by an author who has not traditionally published sponsored content and find out that the post has a sponsor.
I would respectfully suggest that sponsored posts are a bigger change than you may have thought, and deserve more prominent discussion.
Yeah I would appreciate more transparency about when things are sponsored content. I thought it was ironic to note, in a post about how people generally aren’t on the take, that there is actually a sponsor for this post!
Especially when the ‘sponsored content’ isn’t integral to the article. It would have been easy enough to find plenty of “who do you expect to win the Senate” sources that could be given a quick cite to make this point, pick one or two, and then move on.
Well we hope and think it isn't integral! This is the whole problem with this sort of thing - and where the post does frankly mirror the public concern to be honest - is that now there's some doubt introduced over to what extent we're reading the author's opinions versus the sponsor's, what the editorial process here involves, etc.
Or just used Polymarket and not taken the money!
Is this… corruption?
That ironic thought crossed my mind when I read that disclaimer. The sponsorship undermines an otherwise thought-provoking piece.
I think it proves his point. You don't like his decision and now think of it as corruption, although in all likelihood it has nothing to do with it .
I wouldn’t say it meets the formal definition of corruption at all, but it was an ironic enough snap association before reasoned consideration in the context of the article.
This was possibly the worst possible article to start this with.
"Americans think everyone is fat", brought to you by Doritos. "Tone deaf" is the kindest possible description.
Especially since one of MY's main goals in recent years have been trying to get people to his left to become more moderate. If you write something about the perception of widespread corruption being mistaken, then have it be the first of your posts to have a gambling sponsorship, you've poisoned your own well. Nobody you need to persuade will be persuaded regardless of the strength of your argument. This is the type of behavior MY would rightly criticize the left for with "Do Democrats even really want to win?"
Or maybe the best one to start this with.
I did think about making that argument but to my mind it's not corrupt if there's a disclaimer acknowledging the relationship (yes) and if the content/direction of the post has not been dictated or pushed by the sponsor (presumably not?).
I do think it's immoral to take money from prediction markets though, even if not corrupt.
That caught my eye, too. I was unaware that entire articles (posts) are paid for by third parties. That's what is known as an advertorial, isn't it?
I doubt that's what Matt meant.
I don’t really think it’s accurate to say the post is sponsored by Polymarket. It’s more that Matt received income for embedding the graphic and making readers aware of Polymarket which really isn’t much different from traditional advertising.
I inferred "post" as the screenshot of the Senate odds coming from Polymarket, not this entire article, but Matt or The Management are free to clarify.
That seems like a weird use of the word 'sponsoring', but yes it would be great to get some clarity on this.
My guess is they wanted arm article showing their analytical data product. The footnote suggests this.
I would think that was very bad, in that case. Given that readers of this site have been given articles on multiple occasions pointing out the harm's of the gambling explosion, those same readers should not be a captive audience for some native advertising of new wares.
Slop Boring
Four thoughts:
1. It had to feel good for Matt to be able to work in a swipe at RDP, Matt Stoller, and others who are similar after all the feuding he's done with them on Twitter. And that upper right hand tweet from the RDP is hilariously pathetic: admitting they don't know who's funding something they don't like, therefore they must guess that it's someone rich and powerful that they also don't like!
2. Also, I'm surprised there weren't any questions asked about lobbying and campaign finance, because those are areas that people regularly think are corrupt, even though they also implicate some of the most core First Amendment protections out there.
3. "Donald Trump is running easily the most corrupt administration in decades." How about *ever*? I don't know who else could come close. The Grant administration tolerated a lot of corruption, but Grant himself didn't flaunt in it like Trump does.
4. Finally, those who go full cynical on politicians should consider their own agency, famously mocked as follows:
“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality.
They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders.
Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans.
So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.”
--George Carlin
Two points:
1. The issue with campaign finance, donor access, lobbying, etc... is not that it necessarily indicates corruption but that it deeply muddies the waters and destroys the information environment surrounding corruption. To the average voter, who is not us and doesn't want to spend the time we do gathering information about the state of the world, if much of Congress were pocketing money directly in exchange for votes for or against various measures, the data about election spending and donations would look similar, the headlines about Congress would look similar, and the outcomes would look similar. The information environment is so opaque that folks can simply attribute politicians doing things they don't like to corruption, and it's hard to disprove convincingly when the optics are so terrible because everyone is doing this.
2. To the extent that we do have actual corruption or a quid pro quo, it's almost certainly to be found in the pipeline *from* politics *to* the private sector. Virtually the entire governing class becomes multi-millionaires within a few years of retirement, and virtually all of them do it by lobbying or providing insight on government relations to private industry. It's almost impossible to prove or disprove how this affects their decisions about specific regulatory measures while in office, but it seems that if they're too rigorous, they cut off the lucrative post-Congress-gig pipeline.
So on #2, I think it’s an incredibly small percentage of people that are able to go from a career in government to becoming a multi-millionaire, and most of who do so become that rich through media, not lobbying. As a thought experiment, who is worth more: John Boehner or Joe Scarborough? Kurt Schrader or George Stephaopoulos?
Many former members and staff are lobbyists, but nobody who’s waiting in the hallway on the 6th floor of the Longworth House Office Building to meet with a 25-year-old staffer is a multi-millionaire who isn’t worried about their next paycheck. That’s a working stiff right there.
Re (2) my guess is that many voters think ~any kind of campaign fundraising besides small dollar donations is corrupt per se? That's just a hunch though
I actually think that can be reasonable with regard to contributions--I was thinking more expenditures from both campaigning and lobbying. It's also why I think the contribution vs. expenditure bright line that SCOTUS drew in Buckley v. Valeo is very sound.
Maybe Harding? I always got the sense he was very much up there. And with an expansive view of corruption (but one the public probably agrees with :P) Nixon has to be up there given all the bad stuff he did
Harding kicking the bucket soon after getting elected limits what he might have been capable of, which may always remain a mystery. I too thought the same thing about Nixon, but that would belie the whole point of this article, as your parenthetical implies.
If you go with the expansive view of corruption, LBJ is probably the winner.
I also doubt we've ever had a more corrupt politician than Trump. I think Matt was just being conservative.
Is it the most corrupt administration in world history? Putin might technically have more dosh but Russia was never a particularly rich country; there's far more to plunder in the United States.
I dunno. Oil rich Arab countries and post colonial African countries come to mind.
Didn’t someone literally win the Roman Emperorship at auction once?
Possibly, but the Roman Empire was tiny compared to the modern United States and just one of our Big Tech rich asshole probably wields more actual power than said emperor (minus an army). The difference of scale as compared to ancient times is mind boggling.
“Except for the army” is a MASSIVE caveat
Maybe in dollar terms, since it's the largest economy in world history.
But you can't even really conceptualize "corruption" in a country where you have a "l'etat c'est moi" style dictator or monarch. How can a leader be "corrupt" if the system of government says that he owns everything in the country and is morally entitled to do whatever he wants?
I don’t think that the US has ever had a president as personally corrupt as Trump is, but at the whole-administration level, it was a huge problem for most post-Lincoln Gilded Age admins. (And the “normal” process for dispensing political offices then was so transparently transactional that we’d consider it extremely corrupt by our own standards).
It's quite ironic that the guy who argued that there was a corrupt bargain ended up creating the spoils system.
And with the Gilded Age, there would have certainly been competition with Trump if The Continental Liar From The State Of Maine had won.
> I think a less generous but more accurate take would be that because voters do not bother to inform themselves about the actual difficulties involved in assessing policy problems, they wrongly conclude that everything they don’t like reflects corruption or self-interested behavior from elected officials.
This idea can extend beyond just elected officials and governments.
People do not bother to inform themselves about the actual difficulties involved in:
- delivering anything under the sun to you in a day or two
- getting a drug molecule to bind tightly with a specific protein and not any of the hundreds of similar proteins
- how many seeds to plant and how much fertilizer to spray to optimize crop output down to the inch
- orchestrating a global web of liability through reinsurance
- positioning a rig on an ocean surface and drilling 20,000 feet into rock floor
They'd say a small prayer to big tech/pharma/ag/insurance/oil instead of considering them "corrupt".
It's a miracle a literal miracle that we're all not freezing to death in the dark while starving.
Fair point but also raises the question whether the government is able to attract people smart or capable enough to regulate these activities.
“If there’s one thing I learned in college philosophy classes all those years ago, it’s that words are somewhat arbitrary and people can use language however they want as long as we understand each other.”
It seems as if latter part of this deal is quickly eroding everywhere, as I have lamented here before. But today I’m having trouble with this post, even though I think its thesis is correct and important. I (and apparently others as well) am confused about the Polymarket footnote. Is SB doing sponsored content now? If so, it should be less opaque (and honestly I am disappointed). Another nitpicking example: Trump did not *earn* hundreds of millions in the UAE deal—this is what corruption *is.*
Re this week’s Politix podcast, does giving taxpayer money to the Teamsters in the hopes of getting their votes count as corruption?
No. That counts as "stupidity.'
Well, let’s double down!
It's only stupid if it keeps not working! And how long could it possibly not work for?
We should have fucked them on their pensions just like we should have fucked the east coast longshoremen on automation.
If they want to support union busters, then let them. We shouldn’t waste a penny of public money to bail out their malfeasance and corruption.
We should also be union busters. Unions make our country and economy weaker.
Nope.
What is a union that produces benefits for anyone other than its members
There are better uses of limited political capital.
I don’t disagree. From a political perspective, my idea is electoral suicide. But it’s still right on the merits.
Maybe secret congress can agree on automation over unionization and people won't notice until Unions are demanding degrowth, putting them firmly in the 'unpopular' camp. One can only dream.
This is largely what has happened and every left populist has convinced themselves that unionization has declined due to Reagan-style anti-union laws
All social programs that help people are corruption. If you make people's lives better using taxpayer money, then those people will want to vote for you, and you'll stay in power. The only way to not be corrupt is to keep money in the hands of the people who already have it.
Yea, I have an incredibly dubious view of Congress and this is basically where it resides. The primary modus operandi of Congress people is to maintain their own station by using taxpayer dollars to buy votes. This is the fundamental corruption of the system.
What’s going on with that?
Truman retired to a small house and got by on his army pension. Now federal elected officials live in an entirely different world than most Americans, financially. That has to be part of it. Before the 70s we were not governed exclusively by the affluent. People of modest means were able to serve in Congress. And not get rich there either.
President Obama is a good example. I'd rate him the cleanest President since I was old enough to vote (early 90s). But his net worth/income went from middle-class to $50 million plus between his election as a state senator and today.
I mean. He wrote multiple best-selling books, and I think his wife did, too. He's not a great example of this.
I mean, he wrote books
Truman's post-presidency was an exception in those days, too, as was his background.
But I'm not sure what you want exactly - people from modest means to rise to the presidency? Well we have that already with guys like Clinton and Obama. JD Vance wasn't born with a silver spoon, neither was OAC, Bernie Sanders, and the list goes on
Do you want people with "regular careers" to become president? Presidents have always come with political careers or successful careers in other spheres. Truman was a judge and a senator and before that a successful military officer. That's not way different from modern presidents, who were either in politics, successful in private careers or both.
I'm not sure I asserted that I want anything in particular. I offered a possible explanation for why the public feels Washington is corrupt. It probably would be a good thing if holding office wasn't an automatic ticket to riches. But I don't claim to have the answers.
I am kind of sympathetic to the voters here tbh. It seems like in a democracy political representatives should represent their constituencies.
But I constantly see political people plotting to see if they can enact their own views instead; they seem to view public opinion as a constraint to be managed rather than a North Star to be followed. A politician working for his/her own ideology rather than his/her constituents does seem like a form of betrayal/corruption IMO - a principle-agent problem.
But, the public has conflicting views, if you follow public opinion you will bankrupt the state overnight.
Isn’t it obvious that the work hour tracking idea is in response to Biden’s incapacity?
I also think you’re misunderstanding the elite opinion idea. Voters regard the job of the politician as to represent the will of the people in decisionmaking. If that politician acts contrary to their preferences, that’s corruption in the sense of violating (what they think) is the principal-agent relationship. Voters don’t care as much as you do whether the motivation is financial, or ideological, or political (in the sense that Biden not cracking down on illegal immigration was because he perceived a segment of his coalition to be preferring loose borders, not because he was bribed.)
I have not read this Stealth Democracy book, but especially given that it was written in 2002, I’d like to see how they address the claim that people love the Fed because the Fed is simply the most effective part of the government. Pre-financial crisis, I think that was uncontroversial.
"Voters regard the job of the politician as to represent the will of the people in decisionmaking. If that politician acts contrary to their preferences, that’s corruption in the sense of violating (what they think) is the principal-agent relationship."
Maybe. But if a politician said "instead of thinking for myself, I just decide my positions on issues by calling up my favorite pollster and doing what he says" do you think people would view that positively? I'm skeptical.
The other problem here is that individual voters within a constituency have tons of disagreements with each other, thus it's very easy to try to argue that politicians aren't actually representing their individual will, even if the politician ends up in line with the collective will.
I think if they disagree with a decision, they will prefer that justification much more than “I believe in X”.
In any case, they wouldn’t call it corruption. They might call it something else, but not corruption.
I think it’s more fundamentally about real and perceived dishonesty. Saying you’re going to do something to get votes and then not doing that. Or politicians who have to appear more left or right wing to win a primary and then move to the center to try to win a general.
Politicians also have a very bad habit of over promising on a campaign and under-delivering in office.
You can cast anything in a negative light by phrasing it.
"I will do what my friends want rather than what my constituents want." wouldn't poll well either.
A slight majority of Americans are paid hourly, and plenty of salaried workers have to log and track their working hours for billing or budget purposes. It’s not hard to extrapolate to “If I have to fill out a timesheet, they should, too”.
Government workers have to fill out a timesheet and time card fraud is one of the only genuinely clear cut ways to get insta fired from government
I think another good example of this is the campaign tactic of linking your opponent's behavior to campaign contributions. Democrats routinely would talk about checks from the NRA to Republicans and that's why they oppose "popular" gun control measures. The oil and gas industry is another common corruption source. In reality we know that a significant share of Americans value their guns, affiliate with the GOP, and the NRA endorsement is a reflection of Republicans trying to pander to gun voters, not buying them off. But it sounds corrupt-y!
My read on "track congressman work hours" is that it's of course dumb and bad and unworkable as it's own idea but basically exists as shorthand for "they should spend more of their work hours legislating than they do fundraising."
Then the public should be open to the idea of extending House term limits to 4 or even 6 years. It’s absurd how quickly reps have to turn around and raise money for their reelection bid. Even though in theory a 2 year term makes them more accountable to voters
I am 100% for this.
It's not even reelection for the individual member. Even safe House members have to fundraise for members of their caucus in swing seats.
The public *has* been open to it, but the Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional. It was a 5-4 decision with Thomas writing the dissent, however, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, and Scalia. I wonder what today's SCOTUS would make of it, given that term limits were much more polarized back in the 1990s.
EDIT: I might retract this comment if Ben didn't mean to say "limits" in his comment, and was just referring to the term length instead.
He means extending the period between elections, not adding absolute term limits.
Yup!
That would definitely require a consititutional amendment.
Hence my edit, which Ben has now clarified as I thought.
My read on it is “if we had had this in place during the Biden presidency, we’d have known what was up earlier.”
Presidential schedules are reasonably public and I believe it was observed his schedule was unusually light. Same is being pointed out about Trump now
I think most people look at "the dollars in are much larger than what we get for it" and think of the difference as "corruption." On that score why wouldn't a typical person see left and right as equally corrupt? I think it was one of the Noah's (Smith or Timothy) who pointed out that a typical voter faced, with 3x higher cost of building in New York vs. Paris, asks "Who's getting the difference?" The left has 2 more disadvantages here: 1) most progressives I know think of almost all profit as "corruption;" and 2) educated people tend to define "corruption" in process-oriented terms, which cuts against the results-oriented intuition above, and also works to the benefit of educated people who more adeptly articulate and work within rule-based processes.
The answer is "the construction guys, designers, and consultants," while also being partly rooted in a bunch of small-bore corruption/rent-seeking that adds up and is impossible to explain concisely to the electorate.
I think this comment is making an excellent point. If NY construction firms are 3x what a comparable Paris firm to drill a subway tunnel how is this not corruption? Clearly someone is getting rich on graft or outdated rules and regulations that allow them to fleece the government. Maybe others here don't think this is corruption but it feels that way to me.
Yeah, there’s something here.
A bit meta but why are Americans so convinced corruption is endemic? Having lived in an actual very corrupt third world country the idea just seems completely ridiculous.
If corruption was an actual problem then someone could do an Operation Blazing Furnace to put hundreds of competitors in prison and solidify power.... Which always happens in every actually corrupt country but never happens in America.
"What would the world look like if this were true?" is a powerful heuristic that people don't use often enough.
Two common reasons people believe that corruption is endemic:
- It's a ready-made, psychologically compelling and plausible explanation for events they can't otherwise explain. (This is Neeraj's point elsewhere in the comments.)
- Closely related phenomenon are true! Aot of successful politicians get into the business for self-aggrandizement. I think channeling ambition into constructive pursuits is even a perk of representative government, but it can look quite unsavory.
I don’t want to “both sides” Trump’s corruption, but Democrats’ hands are not THAT much cleaner. Democrat run places like Chicago, the West Coast, etc have massive, blatant corruption. And I am skeptical that the Clinton Foundation’s primary purpose is truly global poverty reduction versus being a wealth and influence laundering organization for the Clintons.
“I have a lot of bad things to say about Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton, but the idea that after getting law degrees at Yale and Harvard they moved back to their home states to run for office in order to get rich doesn’t make sense. “
I think the general population are smart enough to figure out that ambitious people like this aren’t just in it for public service. The opportunity cost is way too high. Ambitious pols may be able to defer gratification on the money front until they get the power, but doubt the money spigot doesn’t start flowing at some point.
I think it's just incorrect to view money as their motivation rather than power. The money is a bonus to them after the fact.
Does it really matter? Do we think the corruption only starts once the money starts to flow to them personally, rather than a campaign or other places they want it put? I really doubt it.
If a guy with a Yale Law degree wants to make money there are much simpler and more direct ways than some kind of circuitous route through winning a senate campaign.
Sure. But money not being target 1 doesn't mean the money never comes, whether they succeed or fail at the political career.
The problem is the people. The people are broken. And I don’t know how to fix them.