The founders of the United States of America realized that government, by its nature, had potential for tyranny and corruption. Out of this consideration they created a government of checks and balances, in which someone who chose to act in corrupt ways would be stopped by others. It occurs to me that the elected officials in the government are not the only entity capable of corruption.

One obvious example of an entity not subject to checks and balances that has potential for corruption is the CIA. As a secret organization with vast amounts of knowledge, they can easily do things that they are not supposed to do. I do not say, as some do, that CIA is universally evil; I say that it has an inherent potential for corruption; and it should be checked just as vigorously as are the potentials for corruption in Congress or in the White House.

Another example is the banking industry. While I disagree with those who claim that a group of bankers is secretly running the world, I have every reason to expect bankers to wield political influence. They control vast amounts of capital, and there are many things that they can do with it. I would expect bankers to influence elections, and I would not be surprised to see bankers controlling politicians, government workers and military personnel.

One place that does not get exposed for its corruption potentials is the family court. The family court proceedings are secret, which means that if a judge wants to enter a corrupt ruling, he can. The lack of transparency in family court is an open door for corruption; and whether or not that was the intent in making these courts secret in the first place, it has been a logical and inevitable result.

Police, social services and mental health also have strong potential for corruption. In these situations, one side has all the credibility and the other side has none. If a mental health worker wants to do something ugly to a patient, or if a jail warden wants to do something ugly to the prisoner, he can do so knowing that the court will not believe the patient or the prisoner. This makes these entities inherently capable of corruption; meaning that there need to be strong efforts to correct these corruption potentials.

There are also major corruption potentials in communities. Being sustained by strong internal loyalties, communities have ways to prevail upon one another to hide wrongdoings done by their members. They also have ways to prevail upon the victim to not prosecute, or to attack her should she insist on prosecution. These people have loyalty to one another, but not to anyone else; which means that they will do terrible things to others and think themselves justified in doing these things. For them, the loyalty to one another is paramount, and nobody else matters. This kind of thinking inevitably results in wrongdoing; and that is the case whether the entity is the Russian mafia or an American or Australian country town.

In families, there is also potential for very wrongful practices. The person who wants to batter his wife or has sex with his children is in many cases immune from prosecution, knowing that his wife or his children are either loyal to him, have nowhere to go, or are afraid to do anything about it. The problem is complicated by corruption in family courts and collusion between police, courts and social services in places supportive of violence to women and children. The sanctity afforded the family under "family values" complicates the situation still more.

With regular business - such as computers, manufacturing and food industry - the potentials for corruption are lesser, but they still exist. Some of these are corrected by competition, and others are corrected by law. If someone wants to charge exhorbitant prices or sell inferior goods, then the customer can go next door. And if someone wants to sell a defective product, there are laws to hold him accountable.

What all this means is that, to truly defeat corruption, it is necessary to fight it in other places besides the elected government. It's not only the President or the Congress that is capable of corruption; many other entities are as well. And there is a need to confront all of these entities based on their nature and hold them to a standard of integrity comparable to what is demanded of the government if any real progress is to be made against corruption.

Ilya Shambat
https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatwritings/