Soviet Lessons: How Corruption Really Works
What is the reality of living in a corrupt system and how can you use this shifting culture?
Corruption is one of the largest issues of our time. For that reason, it’s necessary to understand corruption, what it is, and how to utilize its benefits. The United States exists in a political hybridization of Soviet Managerialism and Libertarian Corporatism. In both cases, corruption is a common feature of our society, but we don’t see it on the ground the same way that Mexican business owners do or Russian gangs.
Thus, I pose the following question: Are our societies so different that we cannot also benefit from corruption while our culture is ground to dust beneath it?
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I recently saw a video from this YouTube channel called Silent East that discusses Russia and the psychology of living in an oppressive state with a low-trust population. A nation not of law, but of management, public policies, and mercurial Karens at every level. I’m not sure how it feels to be Western European (I get the impression the progenitor of the videos is now living in Western Europe), but I can say that, being an American, life seems similar to what’s described therein: Hope seems dangerous. Liberty seems like a time bomb until you step on the wrong bureaucrat’s toes, and your entire future and that of your family is held hostage by the proclivities of unaccountable bureaucrats that you’ve never spoken to1.
Meanwhile, at the top of government, billions of dollars are being laundered by corrupt politicians like Tim Walz, who will lie to your face. Import demographics that hate you. And if you dare defend yourselves, a lynch mob may well try to kill you. How do I get my hands on that money spigot that seems to be free-access for people who want to kill me?
Corruption, or lack thereof, is another one of those American Myths that needs to be deconstructed in the psyche of the population. To do that, we need to understand what corruption really is. Not at the national level of billions of laundered dollars for foreign pirates, but at the personal level. What is corruption for us stuck in the limbo of a faltering civilization?
When I was young, I witnessed corruption for the first time. I was a child, and I was just entering the primary school system in my home country of Russia. Like all things, there was government paperwork to fill out and submit. When we arrived at the office, an old woman sat behind a glass barrier to help people with their paperwork. My mother knocked on the glass to get her attention. The clerk ignored my mother. My mother knocked again and then took a chocolate bar out of her bag. She passed it through a window into the barrier to the clerk. The clerk looked up and took the chocolate bar, hiding it in a stack of forms. Then she asked, “How can I help?” and filed the papers so that I could attend school.
Corruption doesn’t have to solely give an advantage to those politicians and billionaires sitting atop the society. Corruption can act at every level, from top to bottom. The West exists in a system that is corrupt from the top down, while the Russians exist in a system that is corrupt from the bottom up. Corruption doesn’t need to take the form of extortion payments or threats of ending careers. Corruption can be small, personal, and in many ways more honest than managerial formalization.
Maybe a manager will find some problem with your paperwork, any paperwork you hand in. So to smooth over the process, you bring her a coffee or a chocolate bar. Maybe your academic advisor will help you make the right connections if you gift him a bottle of whiskey or schnapps for Christmas. Maybe you want a teacher to treat your child better at school, so you give her a cupcake or school supplies as a gift.
You don’t need police officers on the take to be advantaged by corruption.
Most people here on substack are underemployed. I am one of them for the time being. I can state with certainty that I have never gotten a job by applying for a job. Never once have I sent out a resume and heard back anything besides an automated “dear applicant, kindly go fuck yourself” from the HR manager. Maybe it’s a byproduct of being a White guy. Lord knows I have enough degrees to find work.
Rather, the only way I’ve ever found employment is through direct connection: I have a friend who has a friend who knows someone who needs an employee. I’m close to fitting the bill, so they’ll hire me. Sometimes they have to dip and duck around hiring-managers and HR to do it:
Here’s where we’re going to post the job. We’re legally required to leave the posting up for two weeks, but apply with these five keywords in your Resume. When I review the resumes submitted, I’ll be able to pick out yours.
It seems quite conspiratorial when you say it out loud, though that’s the way it has to be in more than a few companies. If they want to hire a White guy, there are hoops to jump through. The addition of “hiring policies” and “diversity” quotas has just added a few hoops, but did not limited one’s acrobatic ability.
Corruption is an individual or a small group of individuals acting in their own interests by ignoring or subverting legal or social rules of conduct.
If you have a friend you’d rather hire than some Indian with a slightly nicer resume? That’s corruption. When the boss hires his nephew, that’s corruption. When you give the DMV associate a chocolate bar, and she helps you with your paperwork instead of telling you to go fuck yourself, that’s corruption. When you hand the inspector of your 40-year-old truck a fifty so that he marks “passed” on your emissions inspection, that’s corruption.
Corruption is what happens when people start relying on personal relationships instead of bureaucratic rules of conduct. You don’t need to be a millionaire to benefit from corruption; you can do it with five dollars and a chocolate bar. When societies drown in official policy statements and rules of conduct, corruption becomes the lubricant for gears that would otherwise seize. While modern bureaucracies are built around complex interlocking systems of rules, laws, and resource exchange, corruption is built on people and communities.
The thing is that little gifts often get passed up the chain. You give the DMV worker a chocolate bar, she might give it to her boss later that day. Every one gets a little bonus: you do, the DMV worker does, and her boss does when he gives it to his wife that evening. At the higher levels of politics and NGOs, powerful people qualify gifts they receive from different people. “Johnson gave me a car, so his legal concerns go to the top of the stack. Maribel invited my family out to dinner, I can get to her stuff next week. Kelly just gave me tickets to a football game; I can give those to my boss and maybe he’ll give me a raise next year.”
The type of corruption we’re seeing in the United States is no longer isolated to the wealthiest and criminals; it’s in the process of becoming systemic. In blue cities, it already is.
These behaviors are vilified because they take power away from the managerial class, and gives it to informal communities through informal connections. People are told to hate corruption because it benefits only the rich and powerful, but the fact is that it can also benefit you, the individual IF you’re brave enough to start using it. These are tools used by groups of people through unofficial connections, and large groups of people who do not need the bureaucratic state to exchange resources or build lives for themselves are a threat to the state, and the corrupt upper echelon that rules it.
Now, corruption is better and more profitable if you can get your hands on the money-hose, but you can’t get your hands on the money-hose unless you know the right people. To know the right people, you have to make friends with their friends. And to do that, you have to engage in networking, gift exchanges, and communications with individuals you may find unsavory.
“Corruption” is the label that the [Powers that Be] use to vilify individuals who share wealth and favors who are not members of the ruling elite. That’s all. Cultivate your own networks by engaging in informal quid pro quo. The only thing stopping you is a social taboo that our own leaders flagrantly flaunt. A small favor or gift for someone now can pay off dramatically a few years down the line. Keep that in mind.
This is the sort of thing that our Leftist Governors like Tim Walz and even President Biden engaged in2. Once one is elevated in status, these a little quid pro quo can go from being a chocolate bar to being a house or a funded vacation3. It’s okay when they do it, but some how a serious moral failing should any one not in the Elite club engage in such behavior.
I, and many others are sick of that line of bullshit. If we’re going to be corrupt, we can be corrupt from the bottom up just as readily as the top down. You don’t need to be paid off to gain the benefits of “corruption” all you need is to be open to the idea. Personal relationships matter a great deal more than the rule of law, particularly when that law only ever seems to serve the interests of powerful people with wide networks of personal relationships.
Start building your networks now, at the position you’re in. Be friendly with people. Occasionally do something nice for them. There’s no need to formalize a quid pro quo, there’s only a need to build a network of people with whom informal favors can be easily traded. A police officer. A sheriff. A local politician.
You can form an Limited Liability Company or a Non-profit easily enough. Get some guys together, form a board, and then start applying for government grants and donations. It isn’t that hard. If a 69 IQ Somalian can figure it out, so can you. It’ll take a few thousand dollars to hire a lawyer, but it’s a lot easier than you’d think.
The United States is often considered a “minimally corrupt” country by international standards. There’s a reason for that: the United States legalized it and called it “lobbying.”
It has not escaped my notice that managerial tyranny has had a much more difficult time establishing itself in eastern Europe and South America.
“I am Russian. Here’s how corruption really works.” I highly recommend a look.
I mean, if you asked a normal personal if societies should be run by byzantine mountains of bureaucratic rules or by personal relationships, I think a lot of people would choose personal relationships. I just didn't realize that the reason we don't do it, is because we call such personal relations "corruption".
Hiring someone you know isn't necessarily corrupt. Resumes and interviews aren't great proxies for the most important employee virtues: attitude, responsibility, and clue. Knowing someone well reveals those things.