I disagree with this statement, mostly because we have various examples in history depicting groups and organizations that were, for all intents and purposes, incorruptible.
The most recent and probably also the most well-known example of this is from the Prohibition era, when a federal law enforcement group referred to as The Untouchables brought down Al Capone and his criminal organization.
Each member of The Untouchables was hand-picked by Eliot Ness, the leader, for having an outstanding track record and extraordinarily strong sense of ethics. The result was a stunning success: Capone was simply unable to bribe, intimidate or otherwise blackmail any of the members. The group was instrumental in having him charged and convicted.
Hand-picked out of the rest of the Bureau, who were corruptible? Okay, so you can hand-pick an excellent team out of the bureau. But how is the bureau as a whole?
If you have to hand pick people who are corruption resistant, it means you have low confidence that a random pick from the larger organization could yield you a corruption resistant candidate.
I could pick one Snowden out of 330 million US Americans. It doesn't mean all 330 million of us are patriotic like he is.
>>If you have to hand pick people who are corruption resistant, it means you have low confidence that a random pick from the larger organization could yield you a corruption resistant candidate.
I'm sorry, but is that not what we are discussing here? The person I was originally responding to said that no organization seems to be fully immune to corruption, and I responded saying that it is possible to form such organizations. You just have to hand-pick each and every individual based on the criteria of "untouchableness."
but how does this approach scale? it might be possible to find 10-20 incorruptible people in a reasonable amount of time. how long will it take to make an agency the size of the fbi, with every employee hand chosen using a super strict criteria?
its not just the agents either. I had a neighbor who was a lawyer and was going to be a legal clerk for the dea. I had to do an interview with an fbi agent, as did all of her family and friends. they already have a process in place to pick trustworthy people, and while I guess it isnt perfect, why would you be so confidant you can do it better?
The most recent and probably also the most well-known example of this is from the Prohibition era, when a federal law enforcement group referred to as The Untouchables brought down Al Capone and his criminal organization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untouchables_(law_enforcement)
Each member of The Untouchables was hand-picked by Eliot Ness, the leader, for having an outstanding track record and extraordinarily strong sense of ethics. The result was a stunning success: Capone was simply unable to bribe, intimidate or otherwise blackmail any of the members. The group was instrumental in having him charged and convicted.