Corruption

Concentrated gains, diffused losses.

“Corruption” conjures images of bags of cash changing hands in deserted parking garages, but I’d like to propose a simple and concrete definition that goes beyond that: “Corruption” is when something bad happens because its harms are diffused and its gains are concentrated.

Here’s what I mean. West Virginia is known as coal country, but coal is actually a small, dwindling industry in WV; WV’s biggest industry is chemical processing, dominated by Dow — chem processing, like many industries, is heavily concentrated into a few global monopolies.

WV has a water crisis, with frequent “boil water” advisories. Its origins are in the chemical industry — specifically, in a regulatory proceeding where state regulators sought comment on whether to relax the EPA’s national guidelines on chemical runoff into drinking water.

Dow, acting through the manufacturers’ association it controls, argued the people of WV could absorb more poison than the national average because they were much fatter than the median American, and when they drank, it was mostly beer, not water.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/14/the-real-elitists-looking-down-on-trump-voters/

No, really.