Vote Sizing Institute Real change from within.

Corruption is a very serious phenomenon that affects us all greatly, yet it is a term that can be applied to many different things and in many different ways. On this page, we're going to try to whittle down our definitions so that we have a better understanding of what we mean when we say something's been 'corrupted'. Hopefully, as we connect all the dots that form corruption, we'll see just how effectively designed vote sizing is to combat it.

Roots of Corruption

According to vote sizing philosophy: Wealth and power represent two fundamental value systems within which we all operate. (There are subordinate categories, like asceticism, moderation and excess, but we'll stick to the two main ones here.) The first hurdle that we'll need to get over is to understand is that just because someone wants wealth doesn't mean that person is corrupt, and the same goes for those who want power. Each of them are just as legitimate a motivation as the other. The goal of wealth is to spur the market to produce lots of new and useful things, and in better ways. The goal of power is to regulate behavior in the least intrusive way to ensure the most freedoms for everyone. Wealth is the mechanism that facilitates our taking in from the environment and each other; power the way we respond and give back.

Kept separately, wealth and power work harmoniously; and allow for the maximum prosperity and contribution within society.

Okay, sure, so far so good - but that's not the whole picture, is it? For only the very ignorant and/or ideological see the world in such a simple way. No, in the real world, wealth and power don't obey these philosophic rules we try to give them. In fact, wherever we look, we are faced with a vast array of incredibly complicated problems that come into being as wealth and power are pulled from their roots and smushed together to form unholy alliances.

Bad Beginnings - Avalanche of corruption

Corruption is causal - meaning things don't just get corrupted all by themselves, they need to be corrupted by something else. The word "corruption" means to bring two different elements together in such a way as to destroy their integrity (from the Latin corrumpere, to destroy/break). So now the question we need to ask is: Exactly *how* does wealth corrupt power, and power wealth?

Let's not assume that it's going to be easy to define exactly when or where wealth and power have been corrupted either, for no matter how much we try, the fact is that in our ever-changing world there just aren’t any simple hard-and-fast rules to nail down exactly where power should begin (deeming things illegal) and where wealth ends (deeming things undesirable). What we do know is that so long as there is a nice middle-ground gap between the two we can all find peace and prosperity. But all too often an unscrupulous few cheats play the boundaries against each other in order to dodge the law and secure the best of everything... all the while using the same rules to keep the rest of us away from a rewarding life and in a state of hopelessness and misery. Drawing others into their corrupt schemes - with corrupted government officials, academics and the media in their pockets; and a production line entirely driven to please their insatiable appetites - these people allow for all kinds of unethical and immoral lifestyles to propagate... all the time making it harder and harder for the rest of us to have any say in controlling our lives and restoring some kind of common sense.

And when property and power are allowed to wrap around each other, the eventual effect is to roll the economy off the deep end and wipe out any middle ground - and the middle class with it. Once corruption takes over, the chasm between rich and poor, honest and dishonest, pawns and kings, practical and pure crap grows wider each day; and we end up with the downtrodden facing completely unsatisfying lives at one end while the disconnected rich (including corporate entities) continue to both prosper and recklessly destroy at the other end. But now, because of the huge gap, it's impossible for any of us to step back and discern the whole picture;  or change it - and now the beast we call corruption can grow beyond any of our control.

The fact that corruption does not come specifically from the institutions of power (representation / law) or wealth (opportunity / reward) themselves, but happens when a few individuals finesse an overlap between them; means that it will always be impossible to isolate corruption to eliminate it. Corruption is not simply a broken piece of the puzzle; it is a flawed way in which the pieces can be put together. This also means that corruption is not unorganized or random, and nor is it beyond our control - instead, it is an institutionalized system of mismanagement and control the ruling elite have designed, developed and continue to hone solely to perpetuate their reign. Corruption is systemic; without dealing with the system as a whole, we’ll never be able to control it. This institutionalized part of corruption must be dismantled before any integrity can really be restored.

Corruption is systemic and institutionalized. We need to change the way the system operates if we are to regain control and reduce corruption.

Pyramids vs. Hourglasses

Before get too far into how corruption operates, let's step back and try to figure out what a corrupted institution looks like. As we saw in our philosophy page, since structures with integrity and dynamic equality look like pyramids, we can assume that when two or more of these pyramids grow over each other, they produce something like an hourglass. Hourglasses not only look differently, they feel different and behave differently as well. They divide, deform, and are inherently unstable, as a large, heavy top rests on a very thin middle and an ever-weakening base. This imbalance of the hourglass perpetuates a state of un-empowerment, un-productivity, and un-enlightenment for the majority of the people caught up within its dynamics... which would be all of us, as no one is immune from corruption.

Vote Sizing Pyramids and the Corruption Hourglass

How can we recognize corruption when it’s so pervasive? It depends at which of the three sections - top, middle or bottom - we examine:

The ^{\dysfunctional/} top

It shouldn't be a big surprise to many of us to find that as we peel back more and more of the velvet curtains covering the top part of the corruption hourglass, we find a higher and higher concentration of opportunists taking advantage of the overlap that causes the hourglass in the first place. These people do quite nicely, at least compared to the rest of us, either directly or far below them. Their money and power combination work to keep them insulated from the grinding poverty and oppression that befall the rest of us. As we'll see on the pages to follow, wealth and power institutions function best when distributed in finite, unequal amounts ( ...and fairly); so those who have them are indeed luckier and better off than those who don't.

According to the vote sizing philosophy, in a healthy pyramid, leaders and industrialists are in tune with, and obey, the voice of the people below them. In a corrupt hourglass society, those with power can to do no wrong, hold themselves above the law, and are almost impossible to get rid of peacefully. Healthy economic pyramids provide opportunity and rewards for all according only to talent; but the nature of a corruption hourglass means that the people making the important business decisions are all-too-likely to be the same ones at the top of the power hourglasses. Wealth is for them accumulated in unbelievably dishonest ways and the manufacturing process is based on a slavery model geared towards producing status symbols that can only satisfy their own selfish desires.

But it gets worse. The dynamic of the top of an hourglass is an inverted pyramid. This inversion acts like some kind of freakish anti-gravity on the consequences of their actions, where the more inappropriate and selfish the behavior, the more likely the chance of rising. So over time the top opportunists grow more and more disconnected from the rest of us, which is embodied in their creed: “To get the rich to work harder ... pay them more.”

Domination Domination goes hand in hand with corruption, and it's a condition that many of us are facing - a system ruled ineptly from a distance by a select few using illegitimate force. But the real terrible elegance of this busted system is that, no matter how hard we try, it is nearly impossible for us to locate the exact source of the domination. Like corruption, as we find ourselves more and more dominated, it also gets harder and harder to pinpoint the exact source. Even in 'informed, enlightened, educated societies', as the corruption builds and we find more and more of it; we remain unable to nudge those who dominate from their perch. How is this so? Amazingly enough, the elite hold their higher ground by playing dumb - for in an upside-down pyramid the most powerful tool in the elite’s arsenal will be a kind of fuzzy, slimy, sneaky domination. Sure, they encourage all kinds of activities that make it seem that we are free to engage them, but as soon as they feel cornered by any specifically embarrassing fact, they just shift the focus from one corrupted pyramid to another. For example, they say: “We must be brutal to establish representation,” or “We must turn a blind eye towards greed in order to build opportunity,” or “We need to allow for monopolies because they reward us,” and so on. By allowing this kind of endless pointless discussion, and thereby cornering and exterminating dissent, the hourglass toppers are able to dismiss any real debate that might shed light on the fact that it is a total domination they enjoy. (To learn about how vote sizing deals appropriately with the domination principle, visit the interaction page.)

Things, however, are not as rosy as it would seem - for there are some inherent flaws in living in an inverted pyramid. First, even though wealth brings insulation from personal consequences (which, according to vote sizing philosophy is perfectly fine), once wealth and power are inexorably intertwined, society as a whole loses its ability to regulate itself. On top of that, now we have the entire marketplace geared to produce in order to satisfy those without real hands-on knowledge of the way the world works. So the people who want the most insulation are also the same people making decisions that will weigh heavily on the rest of us. To have this kind of imposed responsibility put on those on top seeking insulation is counter to their nature, and stresses then in ways they don’t seek or deserve (which is also remedied by the vote sizing vision).

Secondly, there are very real consequences to having the most out-of-touch people dominate the economy and cripple the regulatory function of government. The results are predictable and apparent enough - despair, crime, violence, resentment and poor quality work. So soon even the elite, holed up in their ivory towers and their walled compounds, find themselves unable to travel freely, enjoy really innovative goods, live in a healthy environment, or relax. And the only lesson that they learn once a violent uprising takes hold is that it's just not possible to dominate the people forever.

Thirdly, there is a cruel irony regarding the insulation these people seek, which is that it causes an insulating effect upon its own effect, thereby voiding itself. The truth is that the imbalance of the hourglass affects all levels of society, leading all people to feel fearful and unsettled. This insecurity cycles a selfishness throughout a corrupted society, which triggers everybody to desire to accumulate more wealth and power. In fact, in an egocentric society, the more someone has, the more they fear losing it. How do they try to reconcile this? By the further forced mating of their wealth and power. However, forcing these together only diminishes the value of each, and in so escalates and expands the crisis.

The _/crunched\ bottom

For most people stuck in the bottom of the hourglass, life is predictable enough. Every day they are forced to compete for shrinking resources and shrinking opportunities while all too often pitted against their own legal system - if one exists at all. For though they form the bulk of the manufacturing base, which carries the heavy load from above, they receive little reward for their hard work. The line handed down to them is: “To get a poor person to work harder... pay him less.” Without having any say in the real decision making, they are also the first to be pushed aside whenever they are unlucky enough to find themselves on top of some natural or strategic resource that the elite want to get their hands on.

The most interesting and sinister characteristic about the bottom half of the hourglass is that those unfortunate enough to live there still, in large part, experience their immediate surroundings as a pyramid! And although the elite use their inverted top half of the corrupted hourglass to keep the downtrodden ignorant and outside, they are still more than happy to give them enough autonomy and responsibility within their lower - upright pyramid - half of the hourglass so that they can freely and competitively participate in knocking each other around.

However, the people are not completely blind, and lurking underneath this facade are constant reminders that instead of having a part in any important discussion, they are presented with political bobble-head dolls or apologists and then pressured to do their own nodding in agreement on command. Denied wealth and power organizations, the harder they work to break into the corrupt society controlled by the elite, the more they reinforce it and support the criminal structures that keep them down. So they feel as if they are constantly swimming hard against the current yet getting nowhere - and the source of that strong-flowing current seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Frustration Ahh, if life were only as simple as oppressing people forever; but nature finds energy in resistance, and there are limits to people's tolerance - even for those living in a pyramid. So, unable to express themselves and under the constant weight of a corrupt load brought down on their shoulders, the people grow unbearably frustrated. This frustration only feeds the anger and resentment growing in the bottom. Couple it with the defiant self-indulgent mentality percolating down from above, and you have a large part of the population with very low self-esteem and nothing to lose. In this frustration, some of them find a kernel of power... and start to lash out at anything and everything through disobedience and violence.

The less value people think they have, the less they feel bound to any kind of social contract; and the less belonging they feel, the more dangerous and reckless their actions become.

Suddenly, we have all edged towards a very dangerous precipice - where everything threatens to come crashing down, and the only thing stopping this from happening is a stable middle. But just how well does a middle fare in an hourglass structure? Not very well at all...

The |squeezed| middle

By its very design, an hourglass has no room for a middle; so people such as you and me (most likely) caught trying to stay here feel a tightening constriction, and slowly or quickly are propelled up or down - depending on luck, resistance, and which end we fit into best for those on top. So it takes a lot of energy simply to remain in place, and it's not too hard to find ourselves, because of one wrong move, quickly consumed by the inertia and shot out into a very different and unexpected situation. Is this uncertainty unwanted and keeping us up at night? You bet. What's more, the more acute the corruption, the closer to extinction are those of us in the middle.

This is yet another not very attractive part of a corruption hourglass. Although we provide stability, contact, vibrancy and continuity throughout a healthy pyramid, a corrupt hourglass devalues our important role. Instead, the dislocation between and among the “haves” on top and the “have-nots” on the bottom represents a growing chasm, which we find harder and harder to straddle. Instead of being a line of communication bridging the corrupt reign of the elite with the unjust plight of the oppressed masses, we too become anxious and alienated from ourselves. This anxiety moves us away from the moderation, centeredness, and general avoidance of extremes that we seek; and once our role begins to disintegrate, everything around us becomes even more unbalanced and further threatens a collapse.

Meeting the Challenge

Okay, so the four components of a corrupt system (tyranny, brutality, patronage and greed) will always interconnect. For example, greed begets brutality (and most other sick systems) and brutality begets tyranny. You usually can’t have war without profiteering, discrimination without injustice, or slavery without someone living off the spoils. In this way, the path towards a corrupt system is like a row of dominoes - you tip the first domino over and it topples the next one, which topples the next, and the next... and so on until all the dominoes lie in a heap on the floor. But while these dominoes seem to be scattered randomly, by looking closely we can see that one did fall first.

To find out which one that is, we just need to look at a stable system. Most of us would agree that a sign of a truly healthy system is a functioning form of representation. We see that wherever and whenever people put good pyramidal governments in place; and have some say in, and responsibility over, their lives, then the other power/wealth structures are kept intact. Representation is required for a good rule of law: a good rule of law prohibits patronage, and without patronage we can build a vibrant economy which satisfies people without spurring greed.

Of all our four main institutions, representation comes first: Once representation becomes tyranny, then it's all too easy for the rule of law to be subterfuged into brutality, which then invites patronage, and that finally kicks greed in to fuel the corruption cycle.

In other words, first we'll need to build our power structures properly, in order to trust them to distribute power fairly, then within those laws build our economic engine, and then see how well it will reward everyone. (This idea goes hand-in-hand with our concepts of internalization/externalization, and you can read in our vision page that just like corruption hourglasses, how by instead surrounding ourselves with healthy social pyramids, we can internalize them and end up treating ourselves and our environment much better.)

So the first priority of the Democratic Empowerment Party is to introduce vote sizing in order to establish a democratic way of giving you a voice and a fair choice - and then wait to see just how well the economy responds. To learn how this will be done, skip to our action page; otherwise, to read how specifically terrible tyranny is, continue to the next page...