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A filmmaker and a crooked lawyer shattered Denmark's self-image

(www.theguardian.com)
196 points RapperWhoMadeIt | 1 comments | 27 Mar 25 13:01 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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frantathefranta ◴[27 Mar 25 13:36 UTC] No.43493499[source]▶
I'm fully aware that Sweden and Denmark are different countries (I lived in Denmark for 3 years), but this reminded me of the reel of Swedes playing every time I visit IKEA, where they talk about how corruption is absolutely unthinkable in Swedish society.

And there's also this tidbit from the article:

> Other Scandinavian nations also reeled upon watching The Black Swan. After the series premiered in Sweden, a criminologist at Lund University warned: “There’s a lot of evidence that it’s probably even worse here.”

replies(6): >>43494046 #>>43494122 #>>43494474 #>>43495852 #>>43496530 #>>43497153 #
1. munificent ◴[27 Mar 25 19:28 UTC] No.43497153[source]▶
Here's an interesting question: If most people in a society believe corruption is at level X when it's actually at X+N, is it better to expose the reality or not?

Being a member of a society that you believe has low corruption disincentivizes you from being corrupt yourself because people generally want to follow the surrounding norms. So it's probably good for people to believe that corruption is better than it is.

But exposing corruption is also necessary to root it out and actually punish the people involved.

How does one make the trade-off for when disclosure is net helpful for reducing overall corruption? Does it depend on X and N?