This is a symptom of something. While it is not easy to identify a specific underlying cause, I think if you’re not socialized at a young age in how to make friends or you don’t come from a large, extended family, it is nearly impossible to make meaningful relationships with others. Hobbies and social clubs are fine, but they can be transactional and transitory. Even with your spouse and kids and their friends/family, these relationships can be transactional. You’ll have a hard time communicating beyond words, sharing at a higher level.
To me it’s weird because when I heard the news I assumed he was full of shit. And the market realized pretty quickly as well. Wished I had shorted the stock...
I am far from an expert on Colombia but there are many reasons to be skeptical of this peace deal, and the failure of the yes vote is a sign that many people did not support it for reasons related to immunity deals for guerrillas and political representation as well. The peace deal is full of unfunded promises that the GOC lacks the capacity to fulfill. For example, my understanding is that the GOC has agreed to add police forces to the 40 percent of the land that they do not control, but they lack trained officers and funds to pay them. Land reform has been at a standstill, this is a very significant issue that has not been resolved. Lastly, coca production is at an all time high in Colombia. This is after years of reductions under Plan Colombia. Coca fuels the FARC and corruption in Colombia. The perception is that the GOC was going to target development aid under the peace agreement towards areas of high coca development, they cut off aerial spraying and the result is massive increases in coca. I don't see any way you can have peace in Colombia without addressing the coca issue.
Trust is something that I think is often taken for granted as something that is naturally occurring, but as you say it is based on shared culturual/religious background. The un-pc question, the uncomfortable question, is whether diversity/immigration contributes towards lack of trust and lack of assimilation.
I'd say diversity and immigration are separate things. America does a good job of assimilating immigrants into the american tribe. Diversity tends to mean giving power to people who have for whatever reason identified as outside that tribe, and the results are predictable.
Low trust societies with little immigration could be explained by strong local tribal identities within it, particularly ones which supersede identifying with shared institutions and narratives. Those tribes could be ethnic, class, regional, linguistic, gangs, families, villages, etc.
Village identity in places like Italy and Portugal is often stronger than national identity, mainly because their families are larger and more connected, and their national institutions are fairly recent appearances in those older familial narratives.
Diversity situations where you mix people from different tribes without a convincingly powerful umbrella narrative is when you get situations like Somalia and Mexico. They are power vacuums in which the violence continues because nobody is able to win.
Ironically the colonial history of places like India and South Africa may be what holds them together, as either you have someone take the reins of those colonial institutions and manage a transition to local rule, or fight a bloody semi-permanent conflict to resolve the power vacuum that not having them leaves.
Diversity as we know it today, for all its ostensibly noble goals, is just an attempt at resource redistribution from the tribe who inherited it with the institutions that preserve it, to some people smart enough to make off with it without too much violence. Not sure how people will react when they wake up and notice their stuff is missing and they are now debt slaves, but until then, kum-ba-yah.
It's interesting that you say America has done a good job of assimilating immigrants in light of the popularity of Trump. It seems to me the opposite is true. To me, America is a collection of states that is fairly cohesive, but is quickly ripped apart when politics comes up. Americans can have pleasent conversations over sports, entertainment, and food, but anything beyond that and the debates can get pretty hairy...
This is like the economic twlight zone, when you see one overvalued company trying to rationalize the value of another. Why not pay 4 billion or 5 billion when you are playing with monopoly money?
The article is arguing for more government intervention in the economy which I would argue is exactly what has led to this form of crony capitalism. What is the answer to 'to big to fail'? Failure. But the problem is that the government made a decision decades ago to bail out Chrysler, and the Fed cut rates in 98 and after to bail out the markets. The we had QE1, QE2, ZIRP, etc...All of these GOVERNMENT policies have created a massive excessive of capital in the system and creates all kinds of temptations to do share buybacks and boost dividends. Verizon workers are covered by unions, which are supposed to ensure their workers get a fair wage.
This article is paint by numbers economics designed to whitewash all the problems caused by the gov't and demonize corporations for taking advantage of a situation the gov't created.
Your comment started appropriately in that it acknowledges crony capitalism. Then it strangely diverts to decrying the government as if it alone created problems that corporations simply (and innocently) exploit.
You had it right at the beginning. It's the fusion of government with corporations that's the problem. Corporations manipulate and influence government for their benefit, not the other way around.
Well, that's my point: corporations and government are inseparable. It's useless to treat them otherwise, which makes questions such as yours misleading.
Likewise, treating corporations as hapless beneficiaries of some sort of bumbling government largesse is disingenuous. It's the deliberate co-opting of government by corporate interests that is the problem.
I would argue that the repeal of Glass-Steagall in itself was a government intervention, because it happened after Citi merged with Travellers, and it was based on lobbying from Citi.
But there were other pieces of legislation, namely the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, that had a more damaging effect.
The more general problem is that the market prices risk based on the underlying assumption that if anything bad happens the government(s) will step in and bail out the bad actors. The mentality leads directly to risky behavior and, in fact, induces risky behavior. If you take away that inducement, these actors will behave differently.
I never liked the word corruption because it lends itself to too many interpretations. I see the problem as tribalism. In most third world coutries, the poitical set up is a couple tribes that share power, control industry, and insulate themselves from the problems of the rest of their country. Everyone else not part of the tribe has to fend for themselves. A tribe is more than a collection of people/families, it is an institution that can impose social mores on its own kind.
What foreign aid does is insulate these tribal systems against change. It often supports repression, but also does provide needed medicine or food to people you would otherwise die. That, to me, is the problem.
Adding to your point: in a tribal culture within a "state" that began as some convenient lines drawn by westerners, when your tribesman gets into political power it will be expected of him to reward his tribe with jobs and/or monies from the public coffer.
When a common person needs help from above, he or she turns to the tribe strongman rather than a bribe-seeking policeman or bureaucrat.
While this may look like "corruption" to westerners, it is understandable in places that have different political histories than the west.
