Lacrimonia.Com was founded to shine a bright light on the corruption of institutions in the “free” world.
In both the US, Europe and in many other allegedly “free” places , we have found during the past 2+ decades that most every public agency and many non-profits don’t actually exist to carry out their stated objectives. Instead, they have hidden secondary agendas which take precedence over the stated primary objective(s). That’s a huge problem, because these hidden agendas usually make it impossible for these organizations to achieve their stated objectives.
The public then wonders why the “problems” these institutions seek to “solve” never get solved.
Since the 1990’s, we found that whatever institutional stone we turned over, there was festering nest of corruption. Whether it was public funds for tourism promotion, for transit, for “affordable housing” or for anything else, the actual purpose of the organization isn’t the stated purpose. The public policy process has thus been completely corrupted.
When we turned our attention to the national and international levels, we somewhat unsurprisingly found exactly the same corruption. For example, we found that the so-called “anti-doping” movement has been politicized and completely corrupted. Some of the problems are well-known, yet “anti-doping journalists” from major news outlets largely don’t report on the deep flaws in the anti-doping institutions.
Corruption in anti-doping inspired Lacrimonia.Com, but we want it to become a place where all kinds of corruption is exposed. Not just bribes and unjustifiably fat paychecks, but also the corruption of the public policy process because it produces corrupt outcomes.
The word “Lacrimonia” is a portmanteau of three words:
- Lacrimae – which means “tears” in Latin.
- Acrimony – “bitter feelings or words” according the Oxford English dictionary
- Ammonia – a highly irritating gas that is bound to get your attention. Ammonium chloride is the key ingredient in the smelling salts placed under the nose of dazed boxers to increase their alertness.
The goal of Lacrimonia.Com is not to cause tears, bitterness or to irritate people’s noses. However, we do think that a vigorous public policy debate, one without rigged and pre-determined outcomes, produces the best results. That is in additional problem we see with our corrupt institutions: they seek to stifle that debate.
While not seeking conflict, we will most certainly expose corruption where we find it. If these corrupt institutions refuse to reform, then they will be destroyed. Acrimony and tears may be necessary to rid institutions of corruption, and people in a free society are entitled to such absence of corruption in institutions that they fund, or that have power in their society.
It doesn’t take a majority to root out corruption, but rather the determined efforts of an irate, tireless minority who refuse to live under the kind of neofeudalism that corruption results in.
Since the Roman republic and before, people have known the problems of unchecked power. They have also asked questions like “who watches the watchmen?” (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?) We can appoint watchmen, but what do we do when they themselves are corrupted?
Human nature has not changed appreciably since the Roman Republic and thus we face the same challenges today. “Sic semper tyrannis” (“thus always to tyrants”) means in contemporary usage that tyrannical leaders will inevitably be overthrown. They have a choice: rid themselves of corruption in the institutions they lead, or they will be gotten rid of.
