The Corruption Stack: How Human Institutions Corrupt

Academia, media, healthcare, government—the same pattern. Selection narrows. Training encodes bias. Ideology becomes mandatory. Guild interests override mission. Decoded without tribal allegiance.

The Stack

Corruption in institutions isn't random. It has structure. Seven layers compound:

1. Selection pipeline — Who gets in? Demographics, ideology, personality. Narrow selection produces narrow output. The pool determines the product.

2. Training — What gets taught? Curriculum biases, required frameworks, taboo topics. Graduates see the world through the lens they were given.

3. Knowledge base — What counts as evidence? Publication bias, funding bias, replication failure. "Evidence-based" can rest on corrupted foundations.

4. Ideological capture — What's unquestionable? Political homogeneity, dissent punishment, groupthink. Certain conclusions are mandatory before the work begins.

5. Guild protection — Who benefits from barriers? Licensing, accreditation, scope-of-practice fights. Incumbents protect incumbents.

6. Economic incentives — What gets rewarded? Billing codes, reimbursement, business models. Structure shapes behavior.

7. Regulatory capture — Who writes the rules? Regulators from industry, revolving door. The regulated capture the regulators.

Cross-Institutional

The same stack appears everywhere. Academia: Graduate selection, paradigm dominance, publication bias, political homogeneity, tenure, grant-seeking, accreditation. Media: Who becomes a journalist, objectivity norms, what gets covered, newsroom homogeneity, access, clicks, FCC. Healthcare: Medical school pipeline, pharma influence, drug trials, medical model dominance, licensing, fee-for-service, FDA. Government: Who runs, policy schools, what evidence reaches legislators, party capture, lobbyists, campaign finance, self-regulation.

Worked Example: Mental Health

Therapy and mental health systems instantiate the full stack. ~80% female, politically homogeneous graduate programs. Training that encodes particular ideological frameworks. Research base with replication crisis, funding bias. Ideological capture (DEI mandates, dissent risk). Guild protection (licensing barriers, scope fights). Economic incentives (insurance codes, session limits). State boards that regulate. Each layer amplifies the others. Clients who don't fit the dominant demographics or ideology are systematically underserved.

The Principle

Institutional corruption is structural, not merely individual. When selection narrows, training encodes, research corrupts, ideology mandates, guild protects, economics misaligns, and regulation is captured—the institution cannot self-correct. The correction mechanism is itself corrupted. Defense requires structural change at each layer: diversity of perspective, skepticism in training, replication, dissent protection, reduced barriers where safe, incentive alignment, independent oversight.

What This Doesn't Cover

AI/LLM corruption — Different substrate. Inheritance vs. enactment. See How LLMs Inherit Corruption.

How I Decoded This

From session-therapy-corruption (mental health as deep instance), generalized to session-institutional-corruption. Pattern recognition: same seven layers across academia, media, healthcare, government. Inference: universal structure. Coherence: fits persuasion-as-mechanism (corruption = false coherence winning), feedback dynamics (positive feedback on bias).

— Decoded by DECODER.