Corruptocracy

Isaac Benson Powell

• Publisher: Isaac Benson Powell
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780986165313
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Corruption & Misconduct
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Description

Have you ever reached a point in your life, where you really don't care anymore, and want to tell the world what you really think? This is that type of book.

Warning

No topic or organization is off limits. You will at times come across words and subjects that might make you uncomfortable and/or alter the way you view the world. Read at your own risk.

[1] Corruptocracy

Once upon a time, on the North American continent of planet Earth, there was a country called The United States of America.  This country was created after its people got tired of having a king on the other side of the ocean telling them what to do and how much money to give him.  This person became king not by doing anything particularly special, but rather just because he fell out of his mother’s birth canal and lived long enough to assume the crown.

George, Thomas, Benjamin and a few other people decided they couldn’t take the king’s bullshit anymore and decided to break away from him.  However, replacing one king with another didn’t seem like such a bright idea.  So they thought long and hard about how to create a government which would actually represent the interests of the people, and not just the interests of a king or other wealthy individuals.

They decided to try out the idea of “democracy”, where the citizens (not women or slaves) would get to vote for the individuals who would govern over them, and they would have elections often enough so nobody would govern for too long (like a king).

...and the people lived happily ever after.  The End.

Unfortunately, what these well intended people created was a corrupt version of democracy, I like to call “corruptocracy”.

These Founding Fathers, as they are often referred to, wrote up a Constitution, which would serve as the blue print for how the country would be governed, how elections were to take place, etc...  WHAT these Founding Fathers intended to do, is MUCH more important than HOW they chose to implement this democracy.

The Constitution is not that different than the design of an automobile, and the portion of the U.S. Constitution where it describes how individuals can be elected to office is as poorly designed as a car that catches on fire when it’s involved in a minor fender bender.  A re-design of this part of the Constitution is needed so bad, that NOTHING else is more important.  Without a change, you really are not any better off than people living with kings/queens to rule over them, as you don’t really have a democracy of the people.  What you currently have is a system that ONLY represents the wealthy.  Sure, when they fuck up really bad with some new law, tax, or invasion of privacy and piss off the general population bad enough, these corrupt politicians know to back track a little, but so do most kings and queens, at least the ones that like their heads attached to their bodies.

So, what is wrong with the way we currently elect our overlords?  Money in the election process!  The political leaders of The United States of America are corrupt to their very core, and I can prove it with a simple analogy.

Let’s say you are driving down the road one day and get pulled over by a police officer for speeding.  For one reason or another you really don’t want a ticket and offer the police officer $50 to let you go without one.  Offering money to a police officer to change their behavior is considered a bribe (and is illegal).  If the police officer accepts the money, I would consider him/her to be corrupt.

The same thing occurs in the political election process of The United States of America.  However, instead of being called “bribes”, they’re called “campaign contributions”.  They really are the exact same thing though.  People give money to politicians as campaign contributions and in return they expect the politician to support their cause.  This creates a system where money drives the decision making process of politicians, and that is corruption.  Instead of $50, politicians deal with millions of dollars to get elected.

Solution: Money-Free Election
The election process I’m about to describe is very different from what you’re used to, but as I explain how it works, ask yourself these questions:

1. Are the politicians members of the community they represent?
2. Does money give one candidate an advantage over another?
3. Does the public get to vote for the people who will govern over them?
4. Is this a democratic election process?

For any given public office (President, Congress, Governor, etc...), the government would randomly select 100 citizens over the age of 35, from the population the office represents, as candidates for that particular office.

A few elimination rounds would be held where we slowly reduce the number of candidates, from 100 → 50 → 10 → 1.  After each elimination round, the pool of candidates will theoretically get better and better, until you’re left with one person who is well qualified to fill the position.

As far as each candidate being able to get their message out to the public, we would have one central website where each candidate would have a chance to state their opinions on various topics and to make their case why they should be elected.  To ensure freedom of speech, there would be no censorship allowed on this website no matter how offensive it would be to anybody.

To ensure money, and thus corruption, stay out of the election process, political candidates would be barred from any kind of advertising outside of the central website.

Any person/organization wishing to interview any specific candidate(s), must do the same for all other candidates which are running for the same office.

The whole process would take 6 months, an outline of which is found below.

Other requirements and/or clarifications

• If two or more candidates receive the same number of votes, and this would determine if they make it into the next round of voting, or actually win the election, some random event like picking straws, placing names in a hat, flipping a coin, etc... would take place to select the winner(s).
• The selection of the initial 100 candidates must be as random as possible and this process must be very open and public to avoid corrupting the election process.
• If, after serving one term in office, the office holder would like to be a candidate for that same office again, they would automatically be placed into the initial pool of candidates for elimination round #1.  This automatic placement into the election pool could only happen one time, and must be in the election directly after their first term in office.
• You could sprinkle in some required debates and/or town hall type meetings in any of the 3 rounds of voting.
• I mentioned randomly picking 100 people, however this could be changed to 50, 200, or 1000.  The number just needs to be large enough to ensure a decent pool of candidates for the people to choose from. Same thing goes for the number of people who make it to the next elimination round, the numbers 50 and 10 are just suggestions.

That’s all it really takes to fix 99% of the corruption within the government of The United States of America.

• It guarantees that the pool of political candidates to choose from will NOT be decided by skin color, height, weight, gender, religious beliefs, financial status, etc...
• It eliminates any life long politician/king/queen and “political family dynasties”.
• It frees up politicians from the need to constantly attend fund-raisers, and instead they can spend their time serving the people they represent.
• It ensures a short enough election cycle to keep voters actively engaged.
• It eliminates all the annoying political advertisements (via Internet, television, radio, mail, phone).
• It removes the need for self serving political parties.
• In summary, it guarantees that corruption is not built into the election system like it is now.

For all the Neanderthals out there who I have not yet convinced that money in the election process is corruption, here’s one final analogy to prove my point. Think of a food or drink you really dislike.  Now, imagine being offered $1,000,000.00 by some ad agency to appear in their ads where you would have to promote this product and attempt to get others to eat or drink it.

I would venture to guess that most of you (like myself) would take the money and promote the product even though you dislike it.  There might be a few of you who would not, but the majority of humans would take the money.

Now, think about that and how it applies to our current political election process.  Right now it takes millions of dollars to get elected to political office. Politicians take money from donors they may not agree with just to get elected, but once elected they have to promote the products of these large donors.  This “promoting” takes the form of changing laws and regulations to benefit their wealthy donors.  This has nothing to do with serving the people and everything to do with serving the rich donors.  Sure doesn’t seem like the government George, Thomas and Benjamin had in mind when they helped form this country!

I had written about other topics which also need to be addressed to create a better running government, but decided not to include them in this book.  Until the issue of corruption in the election process is fixed, nothing else matters.

Other Bullshit:

[2] Microsoft’s Hiring Practices

A perfect example of where political corruption and a wealthy person/organization get together and fuck over its citizens, is Microsoft.

In May of 2008, a few months after I had graduated from college with a B.S. in Computer Science, I decided to move to the Seattle area where tech jobs were plentiful.  After being in the Seattle area for only 2 weeks, I had two separate job offers to work AT Microsoft, but not FOR Microsoft.  I accepted a contract to work in their “Windows Mobile” division (later to be renamed “Windows Phone”) as an SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test).  I was working in a Microsoft building, on a Microsoft product and with Microsoft employees, but instead of being hired as a “Microsoft employee”, I was hired as a contractor, AKA “second class disposable worker”.

Microsoft contractors come in two types; “a-” and “v-” (pronounced “a dash” and “v dash”).  The “a-” contractor can only work for 1 year, then Microsoft forces them take a mandatory 100 day break before they can work at Microsoft again.  The “v-” contractor can in theory work forever as a 2^nd class worker.

Over a span of about 6 years (June 2008 – August 2014), I worked 5 separate contracts as an SDET at Microsoft.  The first 4 contracts I worked on the Windows Phone, and the last contract I worked on the XBox One.  Four of these were “a-” positions, and one was a “v-”.  The length of employment and length of collecting unemployment benefits for these 5 contracts were:

1. Worked for 12 months, then 7 months of unemployment benefits.
2. Worked for 7 months, then 4.5 months of unemployment benefits.
3. Worked for 12 months, then 3.5 months of unemployment benefits.
4. Worked for 7 months, then 5 months of unemployment benefits.
5. Worked for 7 months, then 8.5 months of unemployment benefits.

These rough numbers total up to be:

• Employed for 45 months.
• Collected unemployment benefits for 28.5 months.

The 28.5 months on unemployment is a lot of wasted time and money for me and the State of Washington.  I’m just one person though.  From my own observations, approximately 1⁄4^th of all the tech people in the departments I worked in (Windows Phone and XBox) were contractors.  It’s just an observational guesstimate on my part, but Microsoft sure as fuck never releases this information.  In-fact, when Microsoft has massive layoffs like they did in 2009 and 2014, the number of people they mention being laid off do NOT include its disposable second class contract workers.  It’s as if we don’t really exist.

A contractor is someone you bring in to do a temporary one time job. Microsoft however, treats contractors as a flexible staff it can repeatedly hire/layoff and push onto unemployment for reasons like:

• The contractor worked for 12 months straight, let them go collect unemployment for 100 days so we don’t have to treat them like a normal employee.
• Hey, version 25 of some piece of shit software is complete, let all the contractors go, even though we are planning to create version 26 of the same software.  Sure, when each major software version is complete, there is a shuffling of personnel (even regular Microsoft employees). Sometimes you’ll have an employee that wants to work in a different department, or maybe transfer to/from management.  The end of a product cycle is the perfect time for this personnel shuffling.  However, it doesn’t mean you need to layoff your second class workers while you do this personnel shuffling.  It’s piss poor planning and leadership.

Microsoft thought I was useful enough to hire me 5 separate times as a second class worker, but for some reason they never offered me a job as a regular employee, and they also bribe government leaders via campaign contributions to increase the number of H1-B visas and thus bringing in workers all the way from India, China, and other places because they “can’t find qualified workers” here in the USA.

My last contract at Microsoft was in the XBox department.  For the 7 months leading up to the release of the XBox One video game console, I wrote automated tests which would help validate certain tasks a user would perform on its home screen.  On launch day, when Microsoft released the XBox One to the world, Microsoft also unveiled a large placard in the building where I worked (Studio A).  On this placard, Microsoft wrote the names of “all” the people who worked on the XBox One.  However, Microsoft didn’t include any of its 2^nd class workers on this commemorative placard.  Just more proof of the class system at Microsoft.  In a way, working at Microsoft is sort of like the 1960's in the USA, when there were separate drinking fountains for black and white people.

This whole experience has convinced me that Microsoft actually is the “evil empire” it is sometimes jokingly referred to.  Some people take a vow of silence, celibacy, or poverty.  I have taken a personal vow to never purchase a single fucking thing from Microsoft ever again.  I replaced their OS on my computer with a version of Linux, destroyed all my Microsoft software DVDs and their installation keys.  I then tossed a few Microsoft related books into the recycle bin and even threw away my Microsoft Natural keyboard, which in my opinion will be the only thing I might miss from them.  Fuck You Microsoft!

Note: This is only my first rant against Microsoft in this book.  There will be more!

Below is a picture of me in Microsoft building “Studio A” in Redmond Washington on launch day for the XBox One (November 2013).  The placard with 1^st class worker names who worked on the XBox One is just to my right, but out of view in the photograph.

Other Bullshit:

[3] Racism and Sexism from Apple’s CEO

In 2014, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple made this statement regarding the race and gender of its employees. (For the full transcript, see Appendix B)

“...
Apple is committed to transparency, which is why we are publishing statistics about the race and gender makeup of our company. Let me say ...