Griftocracy is, obviously enough, rule by griftocrats. This does not require that all power is in the hands of the griftocrats, just that they dominate. In rough terms, a griftocrat is a grifter who has managed to secure public office and approaches this job primarily as a means to grift. What follows is a discussion of the qualities of the griftocrat; it must be kept in mind that this is not an attempt to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for being a griftocrat, but a general overview of the griftocrat.
A griftocrat’s primary focus is on self-enrichment, but a griftocrat might also aim at enriching their family or another limited circle. As most would point out, most politicians focus on self-enrichment. While it might be tempting to cast all politicians as griftocrats, the true griftocrat is defined as much by their chosen means as they are by their goal. As would be suspected, griftocrats use deceptive methods such as scams and cons in order to enrich themselves. To use a non-political example to illustrate the distinction, both the honest real estate agent and the real estate grifter both aim at enriching themselves. They key difference is that the real estate agent does not use deception to achieve their end, while the real estate grifter profits from scams, cons and other deceptions. An honest real estate agent will profit from selling you a house; the real estate grifter will profit from selling you the Brooklyn Bridge. Likewise, while the typical politician profits from their office, they generally do not use scams and cons to do so. They do, it m,ust be said, sometimes engage in various unethical practices such as insider trading and peddling their influence. Naturally, one could see all politicians as engaging in a con, but it is still worth distinguishing the griftocrat from the non-griftocrat. For example, the “honest” politician delivers the goods when they offer a pay to play; the griftocrat has no intent to deliver the goods; they are running scams and cons.
The griftocrat is often ignorant of matters they should know in order to properly do their job, but ignorance is not a requirement. Since the griftocrat is engaged in scams and cons, they have little reason to actually know the things that would be required to do their jobs properly and they certainly have little need for such knowledge when they can simply con and lie their way to enrichment.
The griftocrat is marked by a lack of values (aside from self-interest). This is a rather obvious point since they are, by definition, liars, cons and cheats. They have no meaningful commitment to advancing policies or an ideology except insofar as policies and ideologies aid the process of grifting. Both conservative and liberal ideologies and polices afford opportunities for the griftocrat, although conservative ideology tends to be more grift friendly. Reducing regulations and shrinking government, when done strategically, makes it easier for the griftocrat to grift. That said, increased regulation and bloated bureaucracies also provide ample opportunities for certain sorts of grifting. The griftocrat is, of course, only concerned with their grifting—as such, they tend to be ideologically fluid and easily shift between parties and political groups. They, after all, have no actual ideological commitment.
Griftocrats are opposed to those who might be critical of them and those who are truth seekers, such as honest journalists, scientists and academics. The griftocrat’s cons, lies and scams are endangered by the truth, so they will endeavor to attack, restrict, dismiss and discredit all those who value truth. This is exemplified by griftocrat attacks on non-allied news sources, on universities, and on science. This is most commonly done by griftocrats masquerading as conservatives—they can cast the news, academics and scientists as being liberals and avail themselves of decades of attacks on these targets. Griftocrafts masquerading as liberals also attack those who would expose their lies and scams, but griftocrats posing as leftists will obviously tend to go after conservative institutions, though they do sometimes attack liberal institutions and individuals that pose a challenge to their specific grifting.
Grifters tend to lack competence outside of their grifting skills; the skilled generally have neither the desire nor the need to grift. The griftocrat tends to be wary of the competent, since such people can present a danger to their grifting. Griftocrats obviously lack integrity and professionalism; they also regard people with those traits as a danger—they are the sort of people who will oppose and expose grifting. As such, a griftocrat will keep a careful eye on the competent and will do their best to ensure that those with integrity and professionalism are kept in the dark or removed if they become a threat. Conservative griftocrats can try to rid themselves of such threats by appealing to the notion of small government. All griftocrats will accuse those with integrity and professionalism of bias and weave conspiracy theories about them, such as the idea of a deep state. As would be expected, griftocrats expect loyalty from their people—but they do not offer loyalty in return and are somehow shocked when those they betray turn against them. They are also somehow shocked when the incompetent and unprincipled people they choose turn out to be incompetent and unprincipled. The griftocrat is thus trapped in a paradox: they want competent people with virtues such as loyalty and integrity, but their grifting can only thrive in the presence of incompetent or unprincipled people. To get around this, griftocrats often rely on family members; for family loyalty is the most basic and primitive form of loyalty—and grifters often seem to regard certain family members as “worthy” of being in on the grift. But families of grifters often find that a grifter’s only true loyalty is to themselves.
While a griftocrat would seem to be anathema to anyone with a commitment to value, ideology or policy, there are those who see value in a griftocrat. Since a griftocrat lacks principles and ideology of their own, they can be used by others as tools to advance their own ideologies, values and policies. For example, a griftocrat might not be committed to white nationalism, but they might find it advantageous to appeal to those who are committed to this ideology—or at least find it appealing. The white nationalist can recognize that the griftocrat is not truly one of them but also see that the griftocrat will be useful in advancing their agenda as they grift their way along. Those who do want particular policies in place can also find the griftocrat a useful tool—as long as the policy assists the grifting, the griftocrat is happy to support it.
In general, conservatives find griftocrats more useful, since they share with the griftocrat a focus on enrichment and the griftocrat will tend to favor weakening regulations, oversight and certain aspects of law enforcement so as to make their grifting easier. The main difference is the conservatives are generally not interested in being pure grifters and they often have an ideology and principles. To illustrate a CEO of a corporation would tend to want weakened oversight and regulation so it can cut costs and increase profits; the griftocrat wants weakened oversight and regulation so they can con people out of more money.
This is not to say that liberals cannot exploit griftocrats as well; but liberals tend to have an ideology that is hostile to things most useful to advancing grifting and, as their critics point out, liberals are often critical of too much focus on self-enrichment. That said, while grifting from the left has a higher degree of difficulty, there are those who do so quite successfully.
While a griftocrat can be useful to some, they do pose a significant danger to a country. After all, they are focused on self-enrichment and are happy to do so at the expense of the public good. Their tendency to be ignorant and incompetent also presents a danger as well—they can do considerable damage from a lack of understanding and by accident. As such, anyone who cares for the good of their country should not support a griftocrat—even if they think they can use the grifter to their own advantage.
There seems to be plenty of “woke” corporations who also try to get around or nullify regulations. I don’t think these groups, or most people are ideological at all. They’re merely taking part in ideological Cosplay which is convenient and deceptive. Besides, merely working for less regulation is not grifting. Few individuals or corps are begging to be regulated.
Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer are the perfect face without its mask of corporate griftocracy. Say woke things, because wokeness is where the power is.
Besides, merely working for less regulation is not grifting.
Actually, working for less regulation is the opposite of grifting. It’s the regulating, in most modern cases, is the grifting. Every new law is a jobs program for lawyers. Remember that.
Few individuals or corps are begging to be regulated.
I think, as time goes on, as the Regulation State incrementally takes more and more power from individuals and businesses, you will find that this statement is less and less true. It often is corporations and guilds and such that introduce regulation so as to favor their way of doing business over any potential new upstarts with their newfangled ideas on how to get stuff done. And also as ways to increase sales volume artificially. The 15 feet of rope sold with every swimming pool that no one uses to divide their deep and shallow ends. The regulations that require superfluous smoke alarms, with one outside each bedroom such that a < 2000 square foot house has a dozen alarms in it. Etc. These regulations may have been fought by construction and housing developers but were promoted by the various industries and businesses that will benefit from those regulations.
Few individuals or corps are begging to be regulated.
Regulations serve large corporations. So do specialised tax breaks and grants.
Large companies have large staffs of lawyers, middle managers, office staff, who have time to engage with the new regulations, draw up plans, meet with the regulating agency to get approval, document internal process and fill out forms.
Meanwhile, smaller companies whose staff are all fully engaged producing whatever they do don’t have the slack to take days and weeks to thread their processes through the eye of the bureaucratic needle.
I know this personally, because I’ve been on both sides of it, in a very small company where the bureaucracy we had to get through was prohibitive, forcing us out, and it a much bigger one, where we paid the lawyers to find the least burdensome form of compliance, hired a consultant for a couple of weeks to clue us in on what the regulators would be happy with, and divvied out some form-filling among admin staff.
While regulations add marginal costs to large companies – which they will pass on to consumers – those same regulations can be livelihood-threatening for smaller companies,
In general, regulations are big-business-friendly, while being destructive to small local organic businesses.
Of course, this is a generalisation; it does depend in the specific regulation. But while large corporations don’t generally beg for more regulation, they don’t mind it that much either, especially when it drives their fledgling competitors out of a market.
Exactly, per my comments to DH.
I had a friend in the business of restaurant permitting. The regulations have become so thick that it’s nearly impossible for a small-time operator to start such a business on their own. Larger umbrella organizations have formed, restaurant groups and such, to handle those processes, as you state. And all those costs ultimately have to be paid by the consumer. But try telling socialists that…
An interesting coincidence: the pool for the HOA I am the treasurer for was suddenly closed recently for a stack of violations. While some were due to slacking by the pool service the vast majority were things that we had been passing for decades without any change. For example, the tile pool depth numbers were suddenly not adequate. So I spent a couple weeks calling pool companies and writing checks. We did have that rope already. 🙂
So who were the griftocrats in this story?
For example, the tile pool depth numbers were suddenly not adequate
Unless, possibly due to the pool service slacking, the pool was being renovated I don’t think you should have had to make changes such as that. Minor stuff, unless some new revelation identifies a significant public safety hazard or something similar, is generally grandfathered in. It’s possible that whoever did the inspection was someone new and inexperienced. Or someone experienced and grift fishing…per TJ’s comment.
“The 15 feet of rope sold with every swimming pool that no one uses to divide their deep and shallow ends.”
Ha. In 1989, my wife and I bought an old farmhouse in what used to be rural NJ. Part of our renovation was to remove the old asbestos siding and replace it with rough-sawn cedar.
Our contractor and his crew piled this stuff up in the driveway, then double-bagged it in thick, expensive, EPA approved plastic bags, tying each one off with the heavy gauge wire we also had to purchase. He filled his pickup truck and drove the bags to the approved hazmat dumping site, armed with a fat check to pay the dumping fee.
He was stopped at the gate, however. Why? Because he had not covered the bags with an EPA approved tarp, required by law for transporting the stuff. Not to worry, though – they rented him a tarp at the gate so he could pass through legally!
Well exactly. That asbestos hype was a prime example. Left in place, the asbestos was of little, if any, threat and an excellent example of how people fail to weigh different forms of risk. In the course of remodeling, yes it needed to be handled carefully. But the removal itself was its own danger.
My father was on the board of directors for the church we attended when I was younger. This asbestos scare hit and church members panicked about it. He and a couple other board members looked into the situation and understood that asbestos was not a problem in-place. Disturbing it was an issue by making the fibers airborne. There were rumblings about insurance companies or the government forcing buildings containing much of it to have it removed. At the time it was tremendously expensive. The regulations hit and instantaneous demand for approved, certified removal companies drove the price up even higher. The board decided to drag its feet and not jump at making the change. Eventually the reality hit the regulators and such and some time thereafter, the regulations changed. I think it had to do with someone coming up with a method for sealing the asbestos in-place and/or the realization that in-place it was not a problem. The small town that I was living in at the time (Titusville, FL) spent millions and jacked up property taxes to remove the asbestos from all city buildings (mostly city hall). This at a time when the Space Shuttle program, the majority employer in the area, was going into decline. Much of the hysteria was driven by the asbestos removal firms and their lawyer friends.
The proposition here is that there is a behaviour pattern sufficiently common among a specific set of people that we gain value from generalising this set of people as a category.
I see the point, and we have seen real-life examples, but I’m not sure we gain a lot. Like axions or unicorns, I can imagine the niche they might fill, but without observation of frequency and effect, it’s rather weak.
I imagine that the type of behaviour is more common in local or lower-level politics – city or county-level, perhaps state in the US, zoning, contracts, local regulations, areas where there is more personal contact, and less scrutiny.
I think of Clay Davis from The Wire, a State Senator with a lot of local clout, as the ideal example of a griftocrat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XyeOjx_XLo
In general, conservatives find griftocrats more useful, since they share with the griftocrat a focus on enrichment and the griftocrat will tend to favor weakening regulations,
It is an error to assume that the grift is entirely, or even mostly, in weakening regulations. While this is one method, adding regulations is at least equally griftworthy. Every regulation adds a requirement for something, and the providers of that something can make out like bandits, while the proposers of the regulation can paint themselves as protecting the public while pocketing the kickbacks. DH gives a nice example above.
Speaking of grifters…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/07/29/student-loan-repayment-fraud/#4a29ef383aff
Yeah, but they’re not the grifters. Grift requires a certain amount of sociopathy, calculation and skill. They’re just patsies pulled in to be used in a rigged game.
The colleges are the grifters. And you are the mark.
And they get you every time.
Bingo. The students to some degree, to what they manage to pay back, are also the mark. But it doesn’t always have to be that way.
This may be my all time favorite video:
https://youtu.be/2aO9tA5DWJM