> The websites of the Kremlin, the government, the State Duma and the Federation Council, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Investigative Committee, and also Roskomnadzor itself stopped opening for users. At the same time, the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov said that there were no problems with access. "We have seen the messages, but, to be honest, they have not been confirmed with us. Because here I am now ... no, everything opens up for us."
I have hard time understanding what goes for the bribery in US. Apparently, a lot of stuff that would be considered corruption in Europe is just business as normal in the US. In this particular case I would guess that what they did would be considered OK. Apparently it wasn't. Can someone from the US comment on where the boundary between what's OK and what's not lies?
I suppose it's because this idea of individualistic and competitive 'work hard and make it yourself' attitude permeates our culture and so nepotism, or this case taking advantage of powerful family ties, is somewhat frowned upon as a free ride to success. Of course this also contrasts with our favor for another potentially major part of success based on who you know rather than what you know and social networking, both of which are less frowned upon than nepotism.
I guess the US and like countries attempt to base privilege on well-documented rules instead of ad-hoc, less predictable and more ambiguous 'do me a favor and I do you a favor' bribery that's more known in other countries. Of course it doesn't always work this way but in theory. The good ol' boy network is still a thing and money does buy judicial privilege in many cases but at least we sort of try.
Their bribe wasn't big enough, so it was the BAD sort of bribe, seems to be about the size of it. Bizarre.
I have a lot of concerns about the Irish college admissions system (a numeric score is derived from final school year exam results; places are filled based on the highest scores who applied by a national computer system, then anyone left is shunted to their second choice (which may be in a different institution) and so on), but at least people can't outright buy a place.
In India, a similar thing happens for engineering admissions.
People write a national level exam, get individual ranks. No two people get the same rank.
A convention is organized by the education body, where students are called in slots, with the top rankers going first. So they have all the colleges to choose from, all the subjects, etc.
Some % of seats in all colleges are reserved for various categories of students like athletes, physically handicapped, etc. But they are also prioritized based on their rank and an additional score (like a national level badminton winner is prioritized over a state level one, even if the national level player has a worse rank than the state level one).
Apart from this, all colleges are allowed 'management' seats, which are essentially seats that can be purchased. However, even to purchase seats, the student has to get a qualifying rank in the exam.
Costs for the seats are also fixed nationwide, with govt. doling out grants to the colleges for specific indexes, like male / female ratio, etc.
I've meant what is considered morally acceptable by an average American. I guess that you are describing who manages to get away with the corruption, rather than asserting that bribery by the rich is considered more acceptable that the bribery by the poor.
The average American approves of political donations when they agree with the political purpose. (donating to a hated politician is seen as corrupt, so Americans always see the opposing party as corrupt)
The average American approves of open and fair ability to buy extra service. Paying ten million dollars to get a dumb kid into college is only tolerated, but it would be generally approved of if it were on a published official price list.
It’s more like everyone tries to get away with as much fraud as possible under the guise of plausible deniability, which “philanthropy” and “lobbying” provide.
Let’s see all this “philanthropy” if tax deductible donations have to be anonymous.
I am from Slovakia and the country is pretty corrupt. But I feel that the moral boundary is somewhat different. In Eastern Europe, preferring your friends and family is more acceptable, whereas in the US it seems to be stuff that could be classified as, maybe, "lobbying" or "ecnomics".
The difference I've noticed between American corruption and Eastern European corruption, is that you need to spend a lot more money to be corrupt in the US.
To get basic things done in Russia, like official paperwork, basic government services, or dealing with cops, it always helped to grease the wheels in some way. None of that really works in the US, you need to spend a lot more to be involved in corruption, and even then, it's often uncertain.
I say this a lot: in many ways, I would rather be pulled over by the police in Mexico than the United States.
In Mexico, I know what they want: money. I know about how much they want (more, because I'm a gringo), I know that if I relax, keep my hands visible, and reach for my wallet when the time comes, I'll be on my way.
In the US, who knows what the police want. I have to actively represent my social class to avoid a delay while they fetch dogs and shake down my car; I'm leaning on my pale skin to avoid all sorts of unpleasantness, and if they're behind quota, I might get an expensive ticket which I have to return to that jurisdiction to contest, or just pay.
The US has, in many ways, the worst of both worlds: corrupt, but in an illegible, confusing, class-bound, and expensive way.
I can't say I agree in the slightest. Corrupt third world cops are far worse than US cops (maybe not if you're black but that's a different issue, and i'm sure you'd get even worse treatment being black in Mexico). I would much rather deal with US cops, who you can record (and often are recording themselves) within more or less a functional government system than with a bunch of vigilantes who probably want money but also they can do pretty much whatever they want with zero reprecussions or accountability (yea yea you can point to the US and say the same thing but clearly you have zero experience dealing with third world cops based on your comment. They are the worst of US cops taken to the extreme)
I have a Mexican friend who was drugged, beaten and robbed by the police in Mexico. Would they treat me differently for being a gringo? I don't know, but I would much rather roll the roulette of getting a ticket that is documented and is an inconvenience vs dealing with a cowboy system.
Not being able to scale is one of the arguments that are often being use to dismiss Swiss political system, without much further explanation. However, where is the bar? I mean, I would understand if there was a limit somewhere around the Dunbar's number, but why would something that scales to 8 millions not scale to 20 or 50 millions?
The decomposition of the federation into appropriately sized cantons, which are decomposed into appropriately sized municipalities seems key here. At some point, the community level must be reached for all parties to feel they are being treated fairly. The Jurassic example shows this.
Implementing popular and legislative referendums at the federal level of the United States is a pipe dream. The powers that be have too tight a grip to relax it any. What is feasible in America today, especially in the more progressive cities like New York, is for the local city council to modify the constitution of the city and cede some its power to the people through the referendum mechanism. This would be popular and politically feasible.
There's going to be a long section about the Blocher case in part III. However, honest question: Do you see SVP succeeding in polarizing the society? How exactly? Have the friends voting for SVP started treating you as an enemy? Do you fear expressing your opinion at particular places? Etc.
Judging from the kinds of examples you give (fear of expressing one's own opinion etc.), I'm thinking that you might be talking about a level of polarisation that I mostly associate with the US currently. That's certainly not what is going on in Switzerland, but it's also not what is going on in many other parts of the world, so I don't think "not as bad as the US" is a sufficient criterion for "not polarised".
All of these examples (and many, many more, going back over decades) attempt to paint the political opposition as subhuman and as selling out the country to "bad people", and don't forget: this is the most powerful party in Switzerland (though, to be fair, in Switzerland with its multi-party system that doesn't mean more than 25-30%).
There are also numerous examples of the SVP using the same sort of language and imagery when referring to immigrants, muslims, etc., but while equally repulsive, I'll grant you that it's not an example of polarisation necessarily.
By contrast, I now live in Germany, and before the rise of the far-right AfD party just a couple of years ago, this sort of rhetoric and imagery would have been completely unimaginable. Even now, the AfD is politically isolated and its politics, language and imagery are reviled pretty much across the political spectrum, whereas in Switzerland, the SVP has succeeded in "normalising" this sort of political discourse over decades.
"More than you ever wanted to know" is a great name for an article format, where a single topic is explored in depth. I don't think there's any other term with that meaning in English, except, maybe, "monograph", but that doesn't make such a nice title.
Author here: At multiple places people pointed out that there are elements of the system missing from the article. Please note that there's going to be part II. (on decentralizaton, subsibiarity principle etc.) and part III. (on concordant democracy, magic formula, collegiality principle etc.)
I agree that the analogy is fruitful, but you have to look at a big ancient codebase full of spaghetti code, dead code, code that nobody knows about and so on. Parts are in COBOL and assembly, parts are in JavaScript. There are shims on top of shims and a lot of mutually interacting half-assed attempts to rewrite the codebase. With that kind of system you get a glimpse at how a biological system looks like.
It's more like zillions of lines of uncommented assembly written by exponentially more programmers who each try to execute the code against a particularly brutal test harness.
Interesting problem. It would be partly solved by the look-and-look-back protocol, because then it's obvious that you are speaking to a single person. But then, it could still happen that you accidentally avert your gaze and drop back to the common chatroom, making what you are saying audible to everyone.
OTOH, I, as an introvert, appreciate presence of extroverts at parties because they divert attention to themselves and thus create kind of sheltered zones around themselves, quite comfortable for introverts to be in.
> The websites of the Kremlin, the government, the State Duma and the Federation Council, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Investigative Committee, and also Roskomnadzor itself stopped opening for users. At the same time, the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov said that there were no problems with access. "We have seen the messages, but, to be honest, they have not been confirmed with us. Because here I am now ... no, everything opens up for us."