Allowing individuals to hoard enough wealth to corrupt, at will, the system that gave them their wealth - maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all.

But who knew?

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marginalia_nu 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not like the Soviets fared much better with regards to corruption and institutional decay, to the part where the rampant corruption of the Brezhnev-era was a major contributing cause to the eventual collapse of the union.

Institutional longevity is largely an unsolved problem. Seems having checks and balances like the US does helps slow it down to some extent, but is far from a guarantee.

	▲	throwaway132448 42 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Not sure I follow the link to the Soviets, but yes they certainly excelled at letting too few people accumulate too much power too. If only we were able to learn a little more from history.

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verdverm 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

apparently a lot of people knew based on the treasure trove of their communications