I might be missing sarcasm, but Glencore is a corrupt company operating in corrupt countries.
They bribe officials and have decent fines to pay as a result of their practices when setting up cobalt and copper mines.
No sarcasm. It’s easy to poke holes in the thing. The holes are largely a reflection that it’s not been regulated. There’ve been attempts and even successful regulation in certain markets across time, but the current economy has warts. Teddy Roosevelt comes to mind as an upswell of regulation. I think it wasn’t until 1938 or 1939 that someone actually went to prison for the 1929 crash. Then much of the bank reforms introduced following 1929 were repealed. Buybacks were illegal used as part of them. Etc
The current push to onshore production actually feels a little regulatory. It’s a system that does need some “light” steering from time to time.
(I could go on that if a company publishes ads they’re operating market power that should be countered. The reason to the counter is market power means the supply side isn’t producing the market clearing amount of product and instead of selling what they produce there is always waste. But this particular point in time is very anti-progress.)
... which is valid for every single similar multinational corporation, if you don't hear it in the news it just means they are a bit better in hiding it. In another news, water is wet. It literally doesn't matter what resources you pick and 3rd world country location, its the same story for last 70 years at least.
That's not what this thread discusses, and OP didn't need to be sarcastic. I've lived in centrally planned economy, and it was a failure on every single meaningful level, just like any other centrally planned economy. There were frequent shortages of basic items, some stuff like exotic fruits were literally impossible for common people to buy, or it took 3 hours of standing in the queue. I think some of the western spoiled kids argumenting for some form of communism would be a bit smarter if they actually grew up in systems they push so hard for (of course this time the pipe dream would actually work because XYZ, but these things keep failing because of basic nature of people, good luck fixing that).
Its just like if people generally needed to fear the failure a bit, and society needs to let some people fail in order for the rest to thrive now and in the future. Remove this thread, and next generation will be significantly weaker.
Corruption is a very relevant topic if you consider stability to be a necessary aspect of economies.
Yes, there will be some corruption in practically any large economy. But certain ay promote more or less, and there is always a tipping point where the economy becomes less stable due to excess corruption.
