The omnipresence of corrupt formats and hierarchies spreads across the entire capitalist infrastructure - from football to business and from politics to finance. Due to the extensive and singular rewards available to a monopolist, there is a constant dynamic underpinning the strategies of all power groups which aims to effectively corner all relevant sectors. These manipulations of our world and our lives create huge inefficiencies in the shareholder capitalist system as individuals are chosen not meritocratically but via a whole range of different non-democratic processes.
No matter how these individual power bases are established and structured, there are a number of factors that appear with repetitive regularity when one chooses to analyse corruption.
* Secrecy - Whether a strategy is semi-legal or illegal, a prime concern of monopolists is the control of information flow that might undermine their power. This may be achieved internally by both limiting the number of participants in a corruption and by structuring the internal hierarchy in manners appropriate to the needs of the individuals at the top of such hierarchies. Although this system of concentric circles of power within a monopolistic organisation is in the interests of all insiders, it is particularly valuable to the prime manipulators ie the positions of ultimate power.
* Hierarchy - Different undemocratic hierarchies result from the age of a particular manipulative structure. New areas of cartelisation and monopoly (eg football) tend to be more horizontally integrated than the older establishment organisations (eg the triads and the freemasons) that are highly vertically integrated. This is not to imply that, say, Rupert Murdoch and Andy Gray are equally powerful, but rather to indicate that there are less levels to Sky's pyramid of control within their vertical monopoly.
* Competitive Corruption - Although the goal of all mature businesses and organisations is monopolistic control, the presence of governmental bodies adds friction to the dynamics of the process. Unfortunately, this deceleration is merely a temporary factor as, eventually, either the strategies of government and corrupt organisations develop shared synergies or creative bribery greases the necessary palms of the state. The window of market activity prior to monopoly sees different power groups battling for the ultimate control of their sectors. For example, the global football markets are currently being fought over by American private equity firms, Sky television, the triads behind the highly liquid Asian markets, the Russian and Italian mafia, the major European bookmakers and the B'nai B'rith zionist entity.
* Generational Issues of Subtlety - One of the reasons that the corruption in football is comparatively easy to model in comparison with more expansive societal criminality is that football's structures are naive in their format. Creative corruption is scientific in it's foundations and utilises logic, psychology, sociology, game theory etc etc. Experience, both within and between generations, of a power base helps to establish a considerably more opaque entity which requires significantly more advanced algorithms to solve.
* The Media - The media are more than happy to confront corruption in other cultures and territories but virtually never focus on the corruption within their own system - although it should be noted that this willingness to publicise foreign criminality tends to disappear if linked to corrupt structures in the media outlet's prime territory. Masonic and corrupt entities directly target the necessary societal sectors to enhance their power and the media is a critical part of informational control in spectacular society. For example, in twenty years of reading The Economist, I have never seen the word "freemason" mentioned once which is highly peculiar considering the omnipresence of the masonic handshake in business, politics, military, the police and the legal system. Similarly, isn't it slightly unusual that the Asian betting markets rarely are mentioned in the media despite over 95% of global football betting turnover occurring in the Far East? In the words of Chomsky, "propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state".
* Viral Nature of Corruption - Once a power grouping has identified the requirement to control a particular business, sector or organisation to the benefit of their proprietary strategy, the prime aim is to infiltrate. Only one individual is needed initially and the takeover proceeds exponentially as the target operation is increasingly and virally overrun. For example, during a consultative project, one of our Trading Team watched the Board of Directors of one particular organisation develop from one member of the catenians to total catenian control within ten years. In football, the equivalent process sees firstly one referee corrupted by the system prior to an extension of this control through the co-opting of other referees (sometimes by force but more usually by utilising the fact that everyone has their price).
* In different territories, different power strategies are utilised to optimise the control. For example, in Italy their mafia target businesses, the legal system, the Italian investment banks, media, sport etc - how else did Berlusconi avoid prosecution repeatedly through statute of limitations or, for that matter, convert Milan's 45 point deduction and relegation to Serie B into a top four finish in Serie A and a place in the Champions League final? Meanwhile, in China, the triads are big on distributive networks, business and gambling. Each corrupt edifice incorporates the necessary territorial power loci.
* In many locations, the educational system forms the foundation of the corruption. As an example, Nicolas Sarkozy is the first Gaullist president since Pompidou not to have graduated from the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration in Paris (Hungarian ancestry, you see) while the ubiquitous Oxbridge is an ever present in the British hierarchy.
A combination of some or all of these factors allow psychopathic operations to effectively corner their target markets, sectors and territories. These groups exert control on a capitalist system that was specifically designed for the maintenance of control whether it was medieval steeplejacks in England or the American private equity firms of today. When these power operations have achieved their monopolistic control, their prime aims are both to utilise this control for financial gain and to ensure that such control is not relinquished willingly.
If the masses are to be expected to accept this degree of corruption regarding both income inequalities and a hierarchical class system then surely the compromise must be a meritocratic system. Not so. Meritocracy is as much an anathema to the power operators as the dreaded positive discrimination (affirmative action in the US/ quotas in South Africa). Any structure that enhances the opportunities of the systemically disenfranchised groups is regarded as a "manipulation" of the markets by capitalists - totally unlike the masons, catenians, mafia and monopolistic concerns then! There is a simple and blatant duality of reality here. Discrimination in favour of the poor = bad; manipulations and corruptions in favour of the power people = good. The efficiency and productivity of the global economic system is undermined by the widespread and inappropriate corruption and nepotism that exists at the top of the system. It is this lack of meritocracy at the top that results in the First and Second World's employment stresses and pressures and in the Third World's slavery. What sort of meritocracy produces Bush - Clinton - Bush - Clinton presidencies out of a population of 300 million?
Our only leverage is that the power bases may possess the private income, the capital and the contacts but they most certainly lack the charisma and the creativity necessary to achieve their lofty goals. Effectively, within our business structures, these people are upper class but possess no class - their structure is dependent on bribing brains to be acquiescent and obedient.
There are many structural weaknesses to the shareholder capitalist system including it's built-in obsolescence in relation to the finite boundaries of the planet which we share - think climate change. But, an equally major destructive force is education - to maintain the flow of productivity and growth, they must educate a percentage of the masses. It's their problem that we don't all take the bait...
