Rugoz wrote:Why is it a terrible idea? You seriously think mentality is not related to corruption?
Yes, I think corruption is not related to mentality. In the end of the day, all human beings are still quite similar machines, working pretty much the same way. So, even if the collective mentality can influence corruption levels in one specific community, I doubt it is something that is intrinsically linked to culture. I think everything points towards the states with the most stable and long-lasting institutions being less corrupt. On the same time, states with unstable political institutions are more corrupt. That easily explains why Chile is less corrupt than Brazil, but not less corrupt than Sweden, for example...
Trying to relate corruption to culture, while a valid hypothesis, lacks enough reasoning and argumentation for testing. Especially considering it is not exactly what common sense shows. Much cultures that are intrinsically as Western as others are more or less corrupt, depending on how politically stable they have been through their history. Compare Argentina to the US, for example. There is a 4.2 difference between their indexes, yet they are roughly just as Western as each other. I'd even say that Argentina is more Western than the US, given that African culture didn't influence the Argentinian one as much as it did to the American. Almost all American popular music genres have its roots in African traditions, like blues, jazz, R&B, rock etc. But when you compare all coups, military juntas, constitutions and revolutions that have been there in Argentinian history to a very stable American politically history, it is clear why one would tend towards corruption more than the other...
And trying to relate corruption to genetics, like Kman is doing, is quite laughable. Not only he is ignoring all other factors, he is also using an argument that has been completely discarded in the entire scientific and academic communities. I could counter such argument, but I won't, because we are not really in the 1930s anymore, so I shouldn't really have to to show why such arguments are bad... lol
Kman wrote:Funny how the whitest nations are also the least corrupt eh?
Aren't you ashamed that the entire scientific community is already laughing at all racist pseudo-scientific arguments already? Do you really have to come up with it in a public forum? Especially after claiming that you were not a racist once and being yellow-carded for racist multiple comments...
Not to mention that your argument there is flawed, considering there are cases of countries that are whiter than others being more corrupt. Argentina is more corrupt than the US, for example... Or all of Northern Africa, for that matter...
PoFo ethnic party statistics: http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8&p=14042520#p14042520