Decline of Western Democracy

Why is the west in decline?

Western democracies are no longer providing economic and social advancement. For 30 years, there has been unprecedented declining median income and declining living standards. China has emerged as the economic model that is reducing poverty, increasing median wealth, and improving health outcomes nationally. All the statistics point to western stagnation, and Chinese growth.

No system, such as democracy, or separation of powers, inherently produces increasingly improving outcomes for it’s people or protects against corruption. Since corruption is the primary determination of living standards across the world, living standards generally follow in line with corruption. And hence the outcomes in living standards are also the best measure of corruption. So if follows that the west is in decline due to corruption. While China reined in corruption and produced the ‘economic miracle’, the west has fallen to corruption as the norm. This simple reversal allows China to improve the living standards of it’s citizens while the west stagnates and declines in comparison.

The Decline of the West is due to the systematic undermining of the legal and government systems and institutions. Politicians have for decades perfected how to hack and undermine democracy and the institutions of western democratic societies. They are so corrupted, they now provide lower and declining standards of living compared to traditionally more corrupt systems without as many ‘safeguards’, such as China and Singapore.

No longer resembles democracy

Current western democracies no longer resemble the intent or functions of a functioning democracy, and the outcomes show it. Yet being gradual, populations seem to laugh it off, and pretend everything is ok. They pretend they control the world still, while the US economy slips to 4th in GDP PPP, and prints 1 trillion per year to pay the bills.

Western democracies have become almost absurd in their corruption levels compared to pre-1970s.

• Governments are now setup so there is no incentive to work, the fundamental reason why communism collapses.
• The quality of people running government is shocking, compared to China and Singapore. Gone is the concept of legal independence.
• Gone is the concept of low taxes, and tax being used for public services like health, education and transport.
• Gone is formal and judicious use of public finances and accounting. Now it is a game, who can get and spend the most without providing public services, while being unauditible and non-transparent.
• Freedom of information is gone. Governments are unauditable, unaccountable and ignore or redact FOI requests.
• Gone is the concept of keeping money out of elections, equal air time, and other democracy norms. Now they work for who pays them.
• Gone is the concept of government department overseeing corporations, now they work for them.
• All government services, from water to electrocity to trash to transport are now monopolies charging more than a market would provide.

Now, ironically, the west leads in fraud, government scams, militiary invasions, government controlled monopolies, corporation written laws and regulations, mass incarcation, mass surveilliance, high taxes, lack of public services, and undermining of human rights.

The sad outcomes

The results of mass corruption are staggering, causing an unprecedented reversal of livelihoods and outcomes.

The predicable results are proven by statistics, money transfer to the wealthy and median wages down over the last 40 years!

• The great recession and housing implosion due to government backed liar loans and fraud.
• The mass surveilliance state done in secret.
• The mass incarcation and prison labor system working for the military, larger than Stalin or Mao.
• Secret courts are now setup, with secret prisons and turture around the world
• Huge military invasions and war crimes are normal, without any vote, without most people knowing what or why.
• The median wage reducing over time.
• The health care opiod scam caused by FDA teaming up with corporations to push herion on the population and ramping up to 50,000 dealths per year.
• Trillions of dollars go missing, unauditable departments, while taxes keep going up and public services go in decline.
• Declining life span, the opposite of what normally happens, so much so that China has a longer lifespan now than USA.
• Rejection of markets, dictating and banning competition to protect industries, and using the military to undermine competition in a sad attempt to remain the sole world superpower.

This is all legalized, and done in plain daylight. Education departments can fail, yet nobody can be fired or remoted or replaced. Chertoff as head of homeland security while controlling the companies ‘licensed’ to sell the the government make millions in no-bid deals. Departments can be detrimental to health but stay around and get more funding. Whistleblowers are hunted down. Governments make up intelligence, spread misinformation, ban competition on behalf of corporations, dictate who can sell to who, and militarily blockade countries to undermine people and governments. None is this is supposed to happen, but it is all the norm. Societies are declining, and human rights are declining.

No turning back

The will be no return to normal after a system has been corrupted, since the corruption is large enough to prevent any changes back.

Democracy cannot return, and thefutile attempts to keep replacing leaders through voting has done nothing for 40 years to reverse this course, and it will not.

Corruption Defined and measured

Corruption is when funds and courts are not used for their intended purpose, and the society suffers.

The west pretends they have very little corruption, but this is due to the flawed measurement. Western corruption all being ‘legalized’ and is business as usual.

Corruption is measured by declines in common metrics and outcomes of public services. For example,

• lifespan and health standards for healthcare
• various standards and grading for education
• median real wages and poverty rates for economic growth
• prison populations, dealths, other crime statistics for society and crime
• international human rights for society

The west has fallen deeply into a corrupt state of affairs, shown by the declining outcomes in health, education, welfare, economic growth and real median wages.

The west pretends to not understand why standards are declining across all areas of society. But we can easily see the underlying root cause is corruption, since public money is no longer going to public services. Any money not going to the public service goal is corruption. Regardless if it is legal, it is still corruption. The absurd state of corruption can be seen, but nothing can be done about it, as it is all marked ‘legal’ due to the combination of political, legal, and governance corruption that is all ‘legal’. If billions of dollars of public money are marked for a train, yet the train is not built due to legal cases, environment studies, etc, then it is just corruption, since the public money has not gone to the public, but siphoned off into crony contracts.

The west is purposely using flawed corruption measures. While corruption can only be measured by budget vs outcome, the west uses organizations like Transparency International to hide corruption. Transparency International measures corruption based on ‘guilty verdicts of courts’. This is obvisouly irrelevant, since it misses all levels of soft corruption that is pervasive, and missed the most important point that corruption is all legalized.

The dual corruption model breaks checks and balances

The dual corruption of the ‘legal system’ and of ‘government’ allows the west unfettered legalized corruption causing declining standards across all measures. Undermining both systems have rendered the famous ‘checks and balances’ system of an indepedent court system useless against corruption. The fatally flawed and corrupt system causes the resulting poor results for society cross all the major measures of economy, society and life.

The courts are now subservient to politicians, as political rules control the courts. Sadly, judges just say ‘we are just doing our job’ now, rather than challenge any political law that undermines society for corporate interests.

legal :

The legal system has been hacked and undermined. Politicians have been able to essentially make the public courts be their own servants, servants to corporations, and with complete loss of independence. Governments have found that inundating courts with politician passed laws can tie up the courts to do anything they want. By undermining this public institution and independence horrible outcomes can result. The most egregious examples are things like the mass incarceration in the US (larger than Mao, Stalin and North Korea), but includes being able to have courts tied up with corporations fighting over money, using the courts against political opponents, business competitors, and so on. Laws are passed to make corporations monopolies in almost all areas of public concern, like health, transport, internet, etc. Laws target political opponents with ease, with the concept of having enough laws to entrap anyone when the time becomes right, or take down any person or company on behalf of another. Politicians use huge penalties for trivial problems allowing politicians to go after anybody with ease, and use it to tie up the courts chasing ‘pebbles’, while leaving the ‘rocks’. Politicians can pass laws that can cover large portions of the population, use the police and the courts to enforce them selectively, and use huge penalties to force plea deals rather than constitutionally protected jury trials. In this way, the US can round up and incarcerate entire groups of people, like incarcerating blacks for petty crimes that is openly called backdoor slavery by every other nation except the US. The governments have somehow justified and created secret rubber stamp military counts, and can get away with virtually any crime while at the same time putting whistle-blowers away for life.

government :

The government institutions are a farce, the population just has to accept and joke about it. Western Government collect and spend 25–50% of the GDP each year, so the economic and social advancement is directly tied to the running of governments now. However this has become a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich, comparatively little gets directly allocated to those who need it, and the majority across all areas goes to contracts, overhead, management, pet projects. Education departments run overhead and waste that would make parent sick. Health departments control supply, demand, monopoly pricing, and overhead so much to cause declining levels of health across the population. The military can cause chaos around the world, produce unheard of horrors in health, death, and migration patterns for no reason, such as in Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, Yemen.

Inflection Points, Comparing USA and China

Why do countries switch between economic miracles and decline?

• Why was China in poverty pre-1970s, then in the next 40 years become the best performing nation on earth?
• Why would Venezuela turn from being a prosperous democracy into being unable to feed it’s people in a few years?
• Why would the US, as the worlds superpower with a strong constitution and independent legal system, have rapidly declining measures in health, median wage, and education after the 1970s?
• Why did China and USA switch places in the space of 50 years? In 1970, China was poor in all measures, while the US was the leading on earth. By 2019, China had overtaken the US in health, poverty, education, growth measurements.
• Why would real median wages in the US start declining from the 1970s under the same system?
• Why would Chinese real wages start dramatically increasing from the 1980s, turning poverty into the largest middle class the world has even seen in 20 years?
• Why would life expectancy start falling in the US, but start rising in China? And why would in the space of 20 years China overtake the US in ‘healthy lifespan’?
• How can China finish an 800 mile high-speed train between Shanghai and Beijing in 2 years, and lay 10,000 miles of highspeed railway for the public in 10 years, while the US lay none? Why would California, starting in 1996, take over 20 years and billions of dollars just to ‘plan’ an 800 mile high-speed train, while estimating it will cost 100 billion propose completion after another 20 years?

How can the same place under the same institutions succeed for so long, then turn around and start declining? All can be anserwed with undermined institutions to let corruption flourish, siphoning public funds from the intended purposes.

From the statistics, we can look at clear inflection points in corruption:

• China: changing leadership after the great famine and cultural revolution (rapidly declining outcomes), into cracking down on corruption since the 1970s, and seeing the most rapid rise of outcomes over the next 40 years that the world has ever seen.
• USA: outcomes rising dramatically from 1850 to 1970 making it the undisputed world power in just 150 years. Then a clear inflection point from 1970, showing declining outcomes across welfare, health, education, growth, and median real wages.

Democracies no longer functioning

In the past 30 years, western democracies have been ‘hacked’, broken and undermined so much that they measurably function worse than systems without ‘checks and balances’, like China and Singapore. Western democracies do not remotely resemble the intent of the system, and the outcomes show it.

In the west, democracy, government institutions, and indepedent legal frameworks were created and celebrated as the backbone of advancements in society. They intended to protect the people from corruption, injustices, and increase living standards across wealth, health and well being. This setup served prior generations, but now serve statistically far worse than China’s or Singapore’s one party system without those protections.

Western democracies and institutions have been undermined to the point where they are ironic. While the west had improved lifestyles for hundreds of years, a staggering reversal happened from the 1970s onwards:

• Legal systems are just enforcing political laws passed by politicians, no different to China, and the legal professional just resorts to claiming they are ‘just doing their job’ (not a good defense historically).
• Black budgets, secret courts, secret legislation, and special rules for those in power are standard in the west now. Military is used without consent or vote, and laws are routinely passed that the population does not know about, or are vastly against.
• In the US, mass encarceration system in place since the 1970’s is not even believable (and scary) in the scope. Dual corruption of poitics and legal system has created prison system and labor camps that drawf the combination of Russia, China, North Korea is scope, percentages and numbers.
• Ironically citizen surveillance is done in far larger numbers and budgets in secret by western democracies than in China. When citizens are brave enough to expose the regime in the west, retroactive immunity is given to everyone involved.
• Taxes went up, but education budgets went down, education as a government service ended, and mass corruption in the educjation beauracracy is the norm, causing measurebly lower education outcomes.
• Mass government fraud is now normal, where loans scams created via legislation with public money bailouts are the newest form of corruption. These directly cause poverty, homelessness, caused the great recession in the US, and unstantainable debt levels in housing and education.
• Checks and balances are routinely bypassed as standard procedure, bypassed with special laws, and no longer offer the population protection from corruption. Corruption in the west can be measured as far greater than in China, based on simple looking at budgets, money flow, and quality of life outcomes.
• Voting by the population, central to maintaining the Western System, has no effect on a corrupted government. Governments can tax the poor so highly, that causes riots like in France.
• Western government easily bypass and do in secret anything that might be ‘illegal’, such as surveillance, wiretapping, searches, and detentions (including torture). Politicians just introduce laws with the harshest penalties to target journalists investigating this.
• Especially in the US, the fundamental constitutional legal protections of citizens are simply bypassed, such as right to jury and lawyer. This is the only way it can lock up such an absurd amount of people in the last 30 years (far more than Russia and China at their worst scale of detention camps).
• Military engagements are no longer voted on, most are done in secret, bypassing vote procedures. Western government routinely ‘spend’ vast amounts of public money in absurd invasions. Llike Vietnam, based on lies, where the young were drafted up, war crimes well documented, and agent orange chemical warfare was used. Or Iraq, based on lies, where depleted uranium was used to cause cancer for generations, war crimes were shown on TV, and atrocities were normal. Or Yemen, where US joined with Saudis to bomb water plants, schools, hospitals to purposely cause the maximum civilian carnage. The population can do nothing about this, and have no vote.
• Taxation is so extensive that most places have multiple levels of tax on every good and service down the sandwich, providing accounting and bureaucracy overload. Taxation is continually levied until regular people riot and protest, such as recently in France due to fuel taxes. Capital Gains Taxes and Duties are used to tax inflation itself, so someone with a house cannot move, since they cannot sell and buy another place for the same price.
• Governmetn services are no longer provided from taxes, from water, to electricity, to transport to housing. All are for-profit government controlled monopolies that can charge the most they can before people start rioting.
• Politicians live in their own class now in the West. They keep paying themselves after retiring, cannot be fired, and regularly end up on company boards after leaving office ensuring continued money for nothing (based on favors done while in office).
• Politicians target each other through their own creation of laws, then use the public courts, taking public resources away from the public. Ironically they use their resources, money and public courts against elected officials, directly undermining democracy.
• Taxes no longer fund essential services like before. With overall tax rates in the West higher than in China, western governments don’t provide water, electricity, housing, roads, or free education anymore.
• Western Government decisions are now mostly secret, laws are purposely introduced so nobody has time to read them, and there are secret rubber stamp courts. Nancy Pelosi famously boasted that the 2010 health care bill cannot be read by anyone before the vote, and was drafted in complete secrecy with the lobbyists (reversing the fundamental campaign pledge that it would be open).
• Western media has turned into government mouthpieces similar to China. ‘Reporters’ gathers around government and military briefing rooms to receive the news of the day, blindly writing down what politicians say and then publishing it, no different to China propaganda. Journalists are prevented and severely punished for investigating or shining the light on government and military now in the West, no different to China.
• Western government somehow now claim that cannot be audited, or give out any public records. The US department of defense cannot be audited, neither can the federal reserve. The major institutions have no financial transparency, corruption on the grandest of scales, but nothing can be done about it.

Absurd Western Contradictions

Western economies are almost absurd in their contradictions and measured outcomes of what were once functioning systems. The incremental undermining of institutions has over time produced terrible outcomes. All are products of ‘legally’ funelling away public money from the public in various way.

Education in the west was provided free through high school and university. Now taxes are higher, yet high fees are introduced for public education. Education standards are declining in top of that. In the US, government bailout protection protects lenders who push bad loans to students, creating the next trillion dollar debt and credit crises (only a few years after the same system of government backed bad credit imploded for home owners). Now there are lower education outcomes than most single party systems, with students coming of school that used to be free with debt payments that were normally for their first house. This problem is covered constantly, everyone knows this system is wrong and corrupt, but it is very legal and enacted via ‘legislation’. A declining quality of education will ensure the continuing economic decline of the west vs east overall.

In the US, tax payers fund a prison and legal system that governments and corporations use for free labor. The UN and other countries clearly call this out as modern day gulags, and calling is modern day slavery. The system incentivizes locking up people for as along as possible using selectively enforceable ‘crimes’ built to fill prisons. A statistically proven racist justice system with absurd sentencing mainly for prohibition and other victimless crimes is there to fill up private profit making prisons. 95% of convictions are plea bargain, dismantling the most basic protections like a jury trial. Prisoners now produce almost all military and police gear, allowing the government free labor and gear to extend the military, which is used for operations all around the world with no vote or declarations of war anymore. Everyone knows this system is outrageous, the UN and other countries openly call it out, the statistics are such absurd outliers, but the system in enacted by legislation undermining courts, and nothing can be done about it.

Control over health care drugs and pricing, particularly in the US are absurd, and so far out of sync with worldwide norms. Drug and hospital prices are so controlled that typically people are priced out of basic health care, with 10x to 100x the normal costs of the same things everywhere else in the world. The system pushes addictive drugs as medication producing a health crisis. Advertisements flood TV for drugs, generics are banned, imports are banned, and health care is the bottom of the developed world. Yet nothing can be done about due to corruption, as voters continually try to vote in leaders who might change things but outcomes continually decline. The situation is called an epidemic and crisis, created by the FDA whose job it is to do the opposite. Outcome measurement clearly shows the unbelievable levels of corruption. Everyone knows these absurd statistics, the first thing people notice in the US is media awash with drug advertisements you will see nowhere else in the world, yet nothing can be done about it. This is all legislated by design by corporations, and officially no ‘corruption’.

Gambling is banned, but government exempts itself to run gambling for revenue, with no accountability on the impact or spending. Then tax payers fund government criminal justice system and advertising to lock people up for gambling.

Total taxes are so large and complex, and penalties so harsh, that accountants are needed for regular families, while government services are in decline. Western economies attempt to tax and track every transaction in the economy. Sales taxes like VAT cause packages to be held at post offices, with fees and taxes required before someone receives something they purchased. The cost of collecting the tax being higher than the tax collected.

In the 1970’s, money supply backed by gold was replaced with paper federal reserve notes, allowing the west to continue fighting the vietnan war, an absurd abuse of lives and money that is one of worst attrocities ever.

All these accumulate to the lower recorded living standards.

No system is inherently safe from undermining

The key issue seems to be leadership, not the system. As we see over history, the measures of quality life can rapidly turn, regardless of the system, but under different leadership. Leadership can seem to undermine any system.

And why ironically do the most popular leaders produce some of the worst outcomes? The revered Mao ending up with the disastrous outcome from the cultural revolution and the ‘great famine’ might give a hint in how democracies using popular vote are susceptible to the same problems as single party systems …hugely popular leaders producing shockingly poor results. Why ironically do western populations accept this reality, or accept they can do nothing about it? Why has all this happened in the last 30 years?

And why when the population knows of the decline, it is ignored or unchanged? Declining outcomes have been well documented and show absurd statistical abnormalities in the US from the 1970s, from declining health outcomes and increasing costs, to declining education standards and increasing costs, to declining real median wages, to the statistically proven problems in the justice system and mass incarceration camps, to the absurd military spending. When nothing can be changed in a system, it is clear it has been broken and undermined, and cannot be reversed.

Different leadership under the same systems produce completely different outcomes. No system inherently keeps outcomes in check, the leadership and adherence to the principals do. Only the leadership and the population can determine the outcome in the end, regardless of democracy, institutions, and the legal framework.

China went from absolute poverty and ‘The Great Famine’ under the hugely popular and revered Mao during the 50s and 60s, into the largest and most successful economy ever seen just from a change in leadership within the same system. The system of governance was not changed, it was still the Communist Party, with the same legal system and institutions.

The US went from being the sole undisputed world superpower through the 1900s to the 1970s under what was thought to be the strongest system and institutions. It incorporated 3 branches of government creating separation of duties, checks and balances of power, and the strongest constitution and bill and rights of any country. However these are mostly eroded now by systematic undermining.The statistical outcomes have a clear inflection point of reversing and declining since the international default in 1970s and Vietnam war. Real medium wages have declined for 40 years since the 1970s, and the PPP GDP is third in the world, behind China and the EU. The famous freedoms and legal protections are no longer found, as can be measured by the largest incarceration system ever created starting in the 1970s, where prisoners are used to manufacture the majority of military gear for essentially no pay, far larger in scope than the North Korean and Chinese ‘retraining’ camps.

It is interesting and ironic that the most popular people, such as Mao and Chavez for example, can produce the worst outcomes for the people. It is easy to blame socialist agendas, but this does not explain the decline in the US, or how new leadership under the same communist social party system in China can transform China to the world’s sole superpower in 50 years. This hints that leadership is the key, and more important than the system. And may also hint a possible Achilles heel of western style democracies, that the most popular person wins elections rather than policy. Once corruption takes hold, it cannot be reversed, since the population no longer has the power. Statistics of outcomes can easily measure and show when this happens. Elections turn into popularity contests, not unlike socialist revolutions, that produce leaders and leadership that can produce the worst possible outcomes.

The ‘ideals’ of socialism to produce equality for all typically fall to the realities and outcomes of unjust societies and inequality. The same is true for democracies, where the ideals will fall without strict supervision and adherence to the intents and purposes of the institutions. Once they are undermined, there is no going back, since the balance of power is lost and cannot be taken back.

It takes intense pursuit of ideals just to keep the hope or promise of those ideals going, regardless of the system. Every system can be undermined, it is only as strong as the people running it. Socialism can work, kings and queens can work, democracies can work…they all can also fail.

Western democracies have allowed themselves to be undermined by populations not being fanatical in pursuit of the ideals. Populations think or assume that existing institutions in place will forever keep things going. In the west, often the ideals are also attacked by leaders looking to undermine and corrupt the system, and can convince the population to go along. Idealism is a vision, where while reality will reach those ideals, the only way to keep that vision is to continue to strive for the ideals.

False Perceptions ingrained in Western Cultures

The perception and assumption in the west continues that the existing public institutions will keep society honest, free (as in not ruled over), well run, produce a strong economy, and keep corruption in check.

This did provide statistically improving outcomes for centuries up until the 1970s, when statistics show declining outcomes. But perceptions from the past are hard to break. Generations in the West lived through a period of dominance, relative good governance and legal protections. This filters down to the next generation as assumptions and expectations that it continues. This may also indicate a possible weakness in western societies, taking the system for granted by inheritance.

It is a hard pill to swallow (which most cannot and won’t) that China is statistically less corrupt than the west. Despite the numbers, outcomes, and statistics, almost everyone in the west will still claim that China is corrupt and the West is not.

However there is measurably larger corruption in western democracies. A low corruption perception comes from past safeguards that have been eroded, and from the growth of various propaganda methods. The perception also comes from incorrect and biased reporting of corruption. Most corruption is legal, or has been legalized, and is considered normal. On top of that, corruption easily moves around existing controls, monitoring and enforcement. The simple real measure of corruption is outcomes, of health, education, and economy (such as real median wages).

Yes, democracies with constitutions and strong institutions can just as easily fall prey to corruption as socialist or authoritarian rule. And it seems to have happened, slowly and insidiously as the population left it unchecked and the so called leaders built in loopholes bit by bit.

Real Corruption in the West

The important definition of corruption here is the ingrained systemic inefficiencies, not the typical official and recorded direct theft and graft. Direct corruption like this does not make up any significant part of the corruption of the system. Corruption in the west is part of the system, ingrained and all over the place, and legalized. Traditional measures miss the point.

Lack of progress implies corruption, and lack of progress should then measure corruption. Lack of progress, or declining outcomes, are the best measure of corruption. We cannot monitor and measure all the ways a system in undermined, there are too many tricks and tactics. The only way to really measure corruption is from the budget vs the outcome.

Health statistics, education statistics and economic statistics clearly indicate there is larger scale corruption in western democracies than there is in China. One-party controlled states like China, with no separation of legal systems, currently achieve better outcomes across the population. By statistically measuring outcomes vs budgets, we can show corruption.

For example:

* Statistical outliers like US health costs vs outcomes can statistically show and imply a corrupted system in the US. It is then possible to understand why from the policies, such as monopoly based laws over health care and medicines. The statistics easily show the corruption, while everything is presented as legal and good health ‘laws’.

* In Australia, there is no bill of rights, international treaties are not put into local law, and common law principals are just overridden by legislation passed by politicians, sometimes retroactively to do whatever they want. As an outcome, Australia can pretend to show a non corrupted system by by signing international treaties and conventions, but the outcomes show the corruption clearly with ‘mandatory indefinite detention’ of asylum seekers violating all the norms and agreements on human rights it signed.

* In the US, the right to a jury is so fundamental to human rights, but has been completely undermined to ensure nobody goes through that process. So the outcome clearly shows the corrupted system, with a mass incarceration system larger than Stalin, which is used for free labor in producing military and police gear. While all completely legal, the outcome is the only way to show the corruption of the system.

Democratic institutions are no longer relevant in providing checks and balances, from courts, to spending, down to basic human rights. Legislation, written by corrupt interests, is easily written and passed. Populations can do nothing since they are not aligned in vision or morals or philosophy. The corrupted systems are all ‘legal’ and do not show up on any corruption index, but the outcomes and statistics easily show it.

Undermining the legal system

The great social advancements enshrined in the Magna Carta, rule of law, suffrage, separation of church and state, separation of powers (especially legal), human rights, bill of rights, constitutions and voting rights underpin western democracies. These all propose ideals for a fair society free from authoritarian rule. In the real world it is not ideal, it is messy, but the concepts lay out the vision to strive for. The legal system protected the people from those in power.

All people are treated equal under an independent legal system (with right of jury in the US), and can participate in civic advancement with the foundation being each person getting a vote. Democratic institutions ran police and public finances, and replaced kings, warlords, mafia. This allowed society to advance and dramatically improve from the 1600s, through 1900s. Especially in the US, providing standard of living improvements all across the spectrum, and quick entry into becoming the sole world superpower.

However every system can be attacked. It is now routine practice for lobbyists pay for laws written by them. Politicians pass laws that undermine the legal system and the common legal protections that have been in place for centuries. For example, required sentencing laws designed and made to put huge groups of people in prison, contradictory laws to catch people out, or political trading laws to put traders and business people in prison. Now the legal system is essentially just following dictates of politicians coming from lobbyists, and are no longer independent. The legal profession just uses the defense that they ‘are just doing their job’ when they shift people through the courts with fixed decisions based on the political laws.

Western governments used far larger citizen surveillance budgets that China in secret and against the law. When found out, retroactive immunity laws are passed for all involved, and the whole things is made legal. So there really is no rule of rule for governments or the secret agencies. It seems shockingly that the more honest system is in China, where surveillance is part of the law and transparent.

The result is astounding. In the US, since the 1970s under the same constitution, separation of powers, legal protections and rights declarations, incarceration jumped 500% (and hence 5 times higher than any other county). A shocking 95% of convictions by plea, so no court or jury is used (there is no other way to incarcerate so many people in such as short time).

Undermining the bureaucracy

Eventually enough holes are poked and built that eventually the system is undermined. People not aligned with the vision of a society with human rights ideals or morals will always subvert the system for their own purposes. This is relentless and ongoing, and must be fanatically kept in check by the population. We now have a shell of the visionary systems put in place many hundreds of years ago. Slowly and surely corruption is the fundamental operation of western democracies, and often measurably worse than a ruler or single party system. We can see and measure this with the outcomes, showing clear increases in society through 1700s to 1970s, and then the clear decline. Outcomes in the west are falling relative to societies with none of these democratic foundations.

Everyone knows the Chinese one party model is functioning far better in general for it's citizens than western democracies. There is no voting, no independent court system, yet China is delivering public works for citizens, not invading countries, health care outcomes are improving, poverty rates are declining, education outcomes superior to the west now, and has rising real median wages relative to the west. In the US, key outcomes across education, health, and wages are relatively declining. The US, with the perceived strongest constitution and public institutions, runs the largest prison industrial complex ever seen, has some of worst heath care outcomes among the developed world, and declining education outcomes measurably below many one party systems. Widespread corruption everywhere as always, but with outcome measurement, it looks to be supercharged in western democracies.

Corruption is all around western democracies in plain sight. Everybody knows it, but nothing that can be done about it. It is not even called corruption. We all know voting in a new figurehead is useless. We all turn a blind eye, and just joke about the large scale and 'grand' corruption in governments. We give the public institutions the benefit of doubt when they operate poorly. Corruption is legalized and written into law. Investigating or reporting corruption or secrecy in public institutions made illegal with the harshest penalties. This obviously just encourages and supercharges corruption.

We all know it is there but just live with it, or strangely justify it, make excuses for it, and accept it as a cost of government. 'Grand corruption', which is the altering or distorting of policy, is the norm, and everyone knows it. Everyone knows the revolving door of 'regulators', 'lobbyists', and 'public servants'. The door is not even revolving often, politicians simultaneously sit on boards (or end up on boards in prearranged deals) of corporations as they hand out huge no-bid contracts or loans while serving public office. For example, the huge no-bid contracts through the department of homeland security while Chertoff was the head of this government department and on the board of the company winning the contracts. The same examples are well documented and almost comical as text book corruption at the FDA, comical if it wasn’t happening in plain sight causing the worst health outcomes in the developed world.

Soft corruption in the west is now so significant that living standards are actually declining, and advancements in education, health, poverty and public works are slower than non democratic systems. This is unprecedented in the west, where economies have been advancing for hundreds of years. Yet nobody cites a definitive reason, and the population can do nothing about it. The population no longer fights for or strives for western ideals. From the 1980s, the next generation actually is worse off than the last measured by real median wages, a shocking outcome and result of this. The outcomes of soft corruption have been multiplying and can be clearly seen and measured, to education, to welfare, to health care, to public services, to roadworks, to retirement funds giving lower than real inflation returns.

Soft corruption

Almost all the corruption in the west is ‘legal’, and not even defined as corruption.

Filling positions with allies for favors is the norm. Hiring of friends and family, regardless of experience, qualifications or performance is the norm. People sitting in offices doing nothing or working on something entirely different for personal gain while on high salaries is the norm. Overpaying people and contracts for favors is the norm. Politicians trading legislation for future board seats or secret payouts is the norm. Incompetent hires, unqualified hires at the highest levels of government is the norm. Managing multi-billion dollar projects that are completely scrapped is the norm. Absurd expenditures or activities are exposed in media but nothing is done about it. First class flights, prostitution, all on tax payer money is normal.

Voters have no influence or say over policy. Fake receipts, fake contracts, nepotism is the norm. Hiring a love interest using tax payer money is the norm. Foundations or tax exempt 'charities' funnel money used by politicians, and take donations for political favors is the norm. Multi-million dollar legal fights due to bad contracts, or just infighting among government departments is normal, all funded by tax payers getting nothing in return. All this is legal, but corruption and 'grand corruption' all in plain sight. Government workers have given themselves a separate class, all with crony laws, proving themselves huge salaries, and even huge salaries even after retiring ensuring free money for life.

Corruption, whether it is paying double for envelopes, whether it is paying for a no bid contract for favor, or from the multitude of problems from unqualified people (legal, financial, time, bridges collapsing, etc) all have the same effect on lowering outcomes. They all contribute to lower operating efficiency and worse outcomes for the population than otherwise should be. To measure corruption, we can’t measure the obvious methods of direct corruption, we can just measure the outcomes to know how well a program is run, and this will mirror corruption.

Measuring Corruption

Most corruption is legal, and not measurable in the typical fashion. Corruption moves around the existing methods of measurement or enforcement. So attempts to measure, or audit, or enforce is a futile game of whack-a-mole. Even a freedom of information request is just ignored or redacted.

Organizations like ‘Transparency International’ attempt to measure corruption. The ‘Corruption Perceptions Index’ attempts to measure corruption by scandals reported in the media. This approach is completely flawed since most corruption is hidden from this analysis, and is legal. They attempt to report on just the scandals that get out, just the tips of the icebergs. So western countries rank well in their index, only due to perceived policies and procedures in place, but corruption moves around those easily and legally.

A definition of corruption is required that is outcome based. If a service is not producing or delivering normal expected outcomes for it's citizens, it is irrelevant if governments can claim or show there is no or low corruption. Low performing programs need to be linked to performance metrics and goals, with funding linked directly to the outcomes. This implies all public projects must begin with measurable outcome based mission statements. Currently there is no accountability or immeasurably in even huge programs like education and health. Outcomes decline yet the departments grow, the opposite of what should happen, and this ends up in a feedback loop.

If we take the budget vs outcomes, the difference is the overhead. The overhead is a mix of genuine required overhead plus a range of corruption. Genuine overhead is common and fixed, so we can just take all overhead as the general operating efficiency. This includes genuine overhead and corruption. There is no point distinguishing the two, or even attempting to. For example hiring someone who cannot do the job is legal, but is corruption. So just the overall overhead vs the outcome determines how well something is run, or operating efficiency, which can be considered equivalent to measuring corruption.

Operating efficiency measures corruption.

The PM of Malaysia can siphon an entire country’s sovereign wealth fund, get away with it, and still be PM! Most national sovereign wealth funds earn around a 5% return, this one return negative 100%! And the ‘investigation’ showed no corruption! But the outcome proves the corruption, and everyone knows it, no need to spend large amounts of money and time proving there was no corruption, because of course there is a way to prove there was no corruption, especially if the investigation itself is corrupt.

In San Francisco, the elevators at the busiest underground station in the central business district are out of service for a full 1/3 of the entire year. This is obviously corruption. It could never be proved in court, it is all legal. But the outcome statistically proves it. Something cannot be so absurd compared to all other systems without corruption, since it is such an outlier to every other elevator system operator. So the outcome provides the operating efficiency, which is an outlier, which implies corruption.

Measuring corruption in public services

Overall

In general, the US spends far more with lower outcomes when comparing US and China. This can be used to show statistically the far higher levels of corruption in the US. The US federal government spending 4 trillion per year (20% of GDP), on top of that states like California spending another 200 billion per year (7.5% of GDP), and another 10 billion for a city like San Francisco (over 11,000 per person, and spends 40,000 per homeless person). Per the IMF, total US government spending is over 7.1 trillion in 2018 (36% of GDP). China is around 31%. However all the key statistics on public health, public education, public transport, and public justice are lower than China now, when they were all higher only 50 years ago.

Welfare

As a fundamental government service, welfare is taking income via taxes and distributing to qualified recipients. Measuring outcome, one outcome could be direct help to recipients, cash or otherwise, verses the budget per recipient. We can measure the recipient help over the budget as the operating efficiency.

Measurement:

• homelessness
• poverty rate
• subsidized food

Budget

• welfare budgets

Outcome:

China has a lower homeless rate than the US with less spending.

Education

Education is considered a fundamental government service.

Measurement:

• test scores

Budget

• education departments

Outcome:

China spends less but has overall higher education.

The budget is from taxes, we consider the budget per student. We can measure the outcome as the resulting education level of students per budget per student. There are generally accepted education levels and indicators worldwide which can be used to measure outcomes. And not looking for specifics, just wide statistically significant outliers can show issues. From this, some or the poorest quality outcomes come from the richest places with the largest budgets, so implies widespread corruption. This is all legal, but departments are failing their citizens and society is set back from even what it would normally be. Education outcomes strongly correlate to economic improvement long term, so we can see the western decline will continue.

For outcomes, the public systems of singapore, hong kong, japan, south korea and taiwan produce the best outcomes worldwide for 15 year olds. These were behind the west, and have ovetaken, over the past 50 years. Lowering standards and outcomes and falling behind in public institutions shows the growing and now greater corruption in the west than asia (outcome based, not the usual corruption... ). These timeframes link to the declines in real wages compared to asia. Vietnam just overtook the US. The five lowest-ranked countries are Oman, Morocco, Honduras, South Africa and Ghana in last spot.

For spending per student, how much tax payers pay for the outcomes, the US is by far the highest, along with western democracies of australia, canada, uk, france. Almost a direct reverse of outcomes. Finland is the exception, with high spending but high test scores. So in a general oitcomes

A typical argument, or excuse, is that these testing methods are not suitable or accurate. But when the west was ahead, there was no controversy over using testing or testing scores. Better global test standards should be the focus if that is the case, and should be developed and used. This is based in pisa, timss, and terce tests worldwide. Only as test scores and outcomes deteriote, do the systems question using testing... which could be seen as an indicator of systemic corruption itself.

Health care

Basic health outcomes of life expectancy has dropped for 2 years running (https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/health/us-life-expectancy-study/) (just 1 year up from the late 1970s), and the basic health outcome of child mortality is double the rest of the developed world (7% vs 3.5%) while it was the same as the rest of OECD countries in the late 1960s.

Health care is a core measure of society wellbeing.

Measurement:

• life expectancy
• infant mortality

budgets:

• spending per person
• cost of care
• free coverage for anyone

Outcome:

China spends less and has overtaken US in core metrics.

The cost of care is the total spending on health per person. Outcomes are measures by multiple items such as infant mortality rates and life expectancy.

China has overtaken the United States in healthy life expectancy at birth for the first time, according to World Health Organization data. Chinese newborns can look forward to 68.7 years of healthy life ahead of them, compared with 68.5 years for American babies. The United States was one of only five countries, along with Somalia, Afghanistan, Georgia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where healthy life expectancy at birth fell in 2016. U.S. life expectancy is falling, having peaked at 79 years in 2014, the first such reversal for many years.

The US is such a clear outlier here, statistically proving almost unbelievable levels of corruption.

Public Infrastructure

Measurement:

• new public projects and services for the public good

budgets:

• taxation per person
• cost per head for delivering and running the service

Outcome:

China spends less and produces far more outcomes than the US. In high speed rail and airports, China far outpaces the west.

Conclusion

We need to measure corruption by outcomes verses budgets, since corruption easily moves around checks and balances, is legalized, or cannot be directly measured. When measuring outcomes across general goals for improving the well being of a society: improved economic standards, education, health care, public services like transport, and incarceration, China is the clear winner over the past 40 years. The US by contrast has been through something never thought possible…a decline across all these key living standards. It has a lower median real wage than the 1970s, lower education standards, lower health outcomes, the most outrageous incarnation statistics ever recorded (which seems to be used for free military labor), and almost no ability to deliver basic new public infrastructure services like public transportation.

Corruption in western democracies is growing, entrenched, and rarely can reverse. As more money gets involved, more avenues become available, and more legislation is written to enable more corruption. It only accelerates. Once it starts, it feeds the next round, and so on. US public spending is 36% of GDP, China is around 31%, however all the key statistics on public health, public education, public transport are now lower than China now, when they were all higher only 50 years ago. Outcomes imply corruption, and higher corruption is statistically proven, showing the US is far more corrupt than China.

Western economies are rated well on corruption indexes and institutions with checks and balances, but outcomes show they are as corrupt or more than single party states. Authoritarian and one party systems in the last 30 years often perform far better, such as China or Singapore, when measuring outcomes.

The approach of 'Transparency International' is flawed in their analysis of corruption, and in their solutions. The index is based on anecdotal evidence intended to be hidden, and their solutions proposed do not change the incentive for corruption. Introducing policy to fight corruption just moves it elsewhere. It is a whack-a-mole problem. Transparency international even admits after 10 years of policy and attempting to measure and bring to light corruption, it is getting worse!

It is human nature to want more for yourself and family, we cant deny or fight this. We can pretend it can be legislated out, which has failed, even supercharged corruption in the west, eventually ending up with legislation that breeds corruption since legislators are corrupt. It is just the same as prohibition, legislating the ban or alcohol supercharged crime, and legislating prohibition of pot supercharged the prison industrial complex, and all sorts of corruption such as unwarranted civil forfeiture used for state revenue.

No system can protect against corruption, only moral leadership and a moral and educated population can. History shows us this. A system of checks and balances is good, but not if it is undermined or avenues are found to go around it, which is the case in western democracies, western institutions, and western law based on British common law or US Constitutional law. Immoral leadership can always find ways to get around any system. In western democracies, elected representatives can collude and pass almost any law with the courts being subservient. Or complex mechanisms just provide unlimited budgets or bailouts in secret or without public input or capability to stop it.

We have seen all systems fail, from the great democracies of Europe producing 2 world wars, poverty, hyper-inflation, and the holocaust. Socialist revolutions like China producing the great famine, and Venezuela producing the current hyper inflation and famine. The system cannot be relied open, only morals and good leadership. Good leadership is not a given in Democracies or Socialist revolutions.

Solution

To combat corruption, public funding can only be linked to outcomes. We can not assume a deeply philosophically and educationally aligned population or set of morals. The current method of trying to play whack a mole with all the avenues of corruption just leaves the original incentives of corruption, and solving one hole opens another ten. If money can be made, corruption should be assumed, regardless of checks and balances. Current incentives in government public institutions is to do as poorly as possible to get more funding, and the results are in the statistics.

1. Public funding of an institution to be linked to the public goal and outcomes only. This changes the incentive, and directly combats corruption by attempting to improve outcomes, which is supoosed to be the end goal anyway.
2. The goals, outcomes (and the measurement) can be directly voted on by the population, not by proxy by voting for a 'party' or person. The population chooses the outcome and funding rules.