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- [00:00]
Dr. Marina Nord
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Ralph Nader
This is ralph nader and you're listening to radio powered by the people, kpfk 90.7 fm los angeles, 98.7 fm santa barbara and across the globe at kpfk.org.
- [00:26]
Dr. Marina Nord
I'm Tom Morello and you're listening to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
- [00:29]
Kemp Harris
Stand up. Stand up. You've been sitting way too long.
- [00:38]
Steve Skrovan
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co host David Feldman. Hello, David.
- [00:43]
David Feldman
Hello.
- [00:44]
Steve Skrovan
And our producer, Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah.
- [00:47]
Hannah Feldman
Hello, Steve.
- [00:49]
Steve Skrovan
And the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
- [00:53]
Ralph Nader
Hello, everybody. This program answers the question why democracy matters. Because it measures its rise and decline among almost 200 countries. And we'll concentrate on our own.
- [01:08]
Steve Skrovan
That's right, Ralph. Our first guest today will be Dr. Marina Nord of the VDEM Institute in Sweden. VDEM stands for Varieties of Democracy. And they produce the largest global data set on democracy with over 32 million data points for 202 countries and territories ranging from the French Revolution to 2025. Involving over 4200 scholars and other country experts, V Dem measures over 600 different attributes of democracy. Dr. Nord is co author of this year's V Dem Democracy Report, which measures democracy around the world. Specifically, the report looks for electoral democracies with well functioning checks and balances on executive power by the legislature and the judiciary, and a strong rule of law that protects equal civil liberties. This year's report found that the Trump administration. Wait for it. Is dismantling democracy at a speed unprecedented in modern history. Ralph has been making this argument for the last year and a half. Now we have the numbers to prove it. Next up, we welcome back Ralph Estes. Mr. Estes is the author of several books including Tyranny of the Bottom Line, why Corporations Make Good People Do Bad Things and Fight the Corpocracy. Take Back Democracy. A Mad As Hell guide for the 99%. We're going to talk to Mr. Estes about corporations and their shady accounting practices. As always, somewhere in the middle. We'll check in with our intrepid corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokiver. But first let's find out how democracy is faring in the Trump era.
- [02:41]
Hannah Feldman
Hannah Marina Nord is a postdoctoral research fellow at the V Dem Institute in Gothenburg, Sweden. She is CO author of VDEM's Democracy Report 2026 Unraveling the Democratic Era. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, Dr. Marina Nord.
- [02:59]
Dr. Marina Nord
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you.
- [03:02]
Ralph Nader
Welcome indeed, Marina. We're quite Impressed by your academic credentials. You've taken a lot of exams in your career. And listeners should know that Marina has not only a degree in Sweden, but she also has degrees from universities in Germany and Russia, which obviously means she is multilingual and very capable in analyzing comparative political and economic systems. Now, your institute, which is at the University of Gothenburg, puts out an annual report comparing levels of democracy among almost 200 countries. To do that, you have to develop yardsticks that have a reliability to them. And the yardsticks that you develop resulted in your concluding that Trump and his administration has dismantled democratic institutions in the United States at a faster rate than any other country has done in the 21st century, comparing it, for example, to Orban's, Hungary and other countries. And you now are ranking the United states as the 51st, with Denmark being first, Sweden second, for what you call the Liberal Democracy Index. And the yardsticks you use are not surprising, and we're going to talk about them. But for the yardsticks that were applied in the United States, one was the dismantling of checks and balances between the three branches of government, concentrating power in the White House. Another one is contempt for the judiciary, belittling the rule of law. Third one is the purge in effect inside the executive branch, demanding only loyalty and undermining the civil service. Then you have undoing civil rights and equality before the law, which was given even greater intensity in a recent Supreme Court decision. And then you have civil and human rights rollbacks weakened, equality before the law. Now, could you tell our listeners a little bit about the institute, how it got started in this rather perilous arena of comparisons, because, you know, the countries that don't do well can take umbrage and criticize what you're doing. So let's start at the beginning. How was this institute started and how many years you've been operating with these annual reports comparing almost 200 countries?
- [05:37]
Dr. Marina Nord
Well, we are a large international research project. It started as a research project, and the data was created for research purposes. Mainly, it's a collaboration of many, many researchers across the world. So it's not only people who sit in Sweden. We have five principal investigators, two of them based in Sweden, two in the United States and one in Norway. We have 23 project managers who are responsible for developing different, like how to measure different aspects of democracy. We have more than 100 country coordinators, and we have more than 4,000 experts who assess different aspects of democracy. So we people who sit in Sweden, we only aggregate the data that we get from experts. And that's done also with measurement model that takes into account uncertainty, biases among experts, disagreements among experts. So it's the most developed and the most sophisticated attempt to measure democracy in the world that we have so far. So that started late 2010, and then it's 2012, if I remember correctly. That's the moment when Institute was formed, and we have headquarters in Sweden. So that's the place where we aggregate the data. So the data that we have for democracy runs up to 1789, the year of the French Revolution, and we have more than 31 million data points in the data set. So we measure almost every single aspect of democracy that you can think of. So one thing that needs to be said is that it's not us, people who sit in Sweden, who decide how democratic each country is. It's experts on countries. And none of them measures the aggregate democracy. So they're experts on specific aspects of democracy, say experts, only on legislative constraints, only on civil society, only on freedom of expression. And then it's all aggregated, using the measurement model, into a composite democracy index.
- [07:35]
Ralph Nader
As you go into the yardsticks that you use to measure the level of democracy in the United States, could you define democracy? What is the definition of democracy that you use at the institute?
- [07:49]
Dr. Marina Nord
So our abbreviation is vdem, which means Varieties of Democracy. And that's because among the research community, there is no single definition of what democracy is. So a short definition is that democracy is ruled by the people, and then everyone agrees that at the core of democracy are elections. So electoral democracy is the core of any type of democracy, and it exists when elections are free, fair, and recurring. Elected officials wield political power de facto, and then political parties and candidates can compete freely in elections. And there is a reasonably level playing field around elections. But then that's electoral democracy. That's at the core of any democracy. But then on top of that, you can have many different aspects of democracy that's about how democracy functions between elections. And in Democracy Report, we stay with the definition of liberal democracy. And that means that it's not only about elections. It's also about checks and balances on the executive between elections, by the legislative branch and by the judiciary, and strong rule of law, protection of civil rights and human rights, and equality before the law. So that's the definition of liberal democracy with which we go. In the Democracy Report, we have several other definitions of democracy for research purposes, like deliberative democracy, egalitarian democracy, and other things. I will not talk about them today because we Stay with this. What we wrote in the Democracy Report not to confuse the listener. So when we talk about liberal democracy, we usually talk about two aspects that we measure. That is, one is electoral and quality of elections and everything that goes into the elections. And the other thing is what we call liberal component is everything that goes into the separation of power, protection of human rights, civil rights and so on.
- [09:44]
Ralph Nader
Well, let's go to a dimension of what you're talking about. Voter turnout one, voter repression and obstruction two. And in our country, most prominently in the news these days is redistricting decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States that have been accused by their critics as shifting the power where the politicians pick the voters by gerrymandering districts rather rather than the voters select the politicians later in the program. Marina we're having the formidable Ralph Estes, who wrote the classic book Tyranny of the Bottom Line, which deals with yardsticks that are manipulated to effectuate corporate performance apart from the facts and the realities on the ground. And you're not going to deal with yardsticks dealing with corporations, for example. But let's talk about the voters. How do you deal with the complex situation in the United States, low voter turnout, voter suppression and obstruction and the redistricting.
- [10:54]
Dr. Marina Nord
So if I may take one step back and just to explain what we mean by this democratic backsliding in the United States, because I think it will be something that gives the context of what we are talking about, because you started with saying that democratic backsliding in the United States is one of the most rapid declines compared to other countries. And just to exemplify what it means, as only six countries during the 21st century have registered large one year drops on the aggregate liberal democracy index and all of them are coups. If you look at the last almost 250 years for which we have data going back to 1789, there were only 35 instances of more rapid dismantling of democracy. Almost all of them were either military coups or international interventions like during the Second World War German occupation of Norway. And if you remove all of those, there is prominently among those 35 instances, one is Adolf Hitler, who was faster than Trump, dismantling democracy in a country not through a military coup and not through an international intervention. So what we mean by dismantling is that you decline on the aggregate liberal democracy index. And then that decline may happen either in an electoral dimension or in a liberal zero dimension. And that's a very important thing to note is that looking at our data that goes back Only by the end of 2025, because we don't have data for 2026 yet on the electoral component, the United States is still relatively stable. So the only thing in the electoral component that declines substantially in a dramatic way is freedom of expression. The extent to which you can freely express your opinion about the current government, which is part of the electoral component, because it' all the environment that goes around the elections. Partly that explanation why the United States remains stable on electoral component is that we can assess election specific indicators only when you have elections. So in 2025 there were no elections. So we have nothing to assess. So the data that we have for elections is almost entirely based on the data for 2024, which were the elections conducted under the Biden administration. This is why, going back to your question about elections, on elections, the United States is still doing relatively good. And this is the reason why the United States still qualifies as a democracy by the minimal definition of democracy, electoral democracy. Everything else where we see that the United States is declining in terms of different aspects of democracy are the declines in the liberal component. This is the componen that are separation of power, civil rights, human rights, protection of rule of law and all of those things. That's why what we see with attacks on elections that are now happening in the United States is something that we can assess only qualitatively. So we don't have data for that. We are waiting for the midterms to see what happens with quality of elections because we need it to be assessed, you know, so that's why in terms of data, it's very hard for me to assess. We know that it's very serious, the attacks that are happening on the elections. What we know also for sure, looking back at data that attacks on elections were very severe under the first Trump administration. So we saw those declines and we know that if it continues in the same way, then there are risks that something similar might happen with the midterms as well. But in terms of data so far, we see that electoral components of democracy remain relatively stable.
- [14:42]
Ralph Nader
Well, I'm curious to see how you draw the line between political democracy and economic democracy. Years before, economists called themselves political economists Marina and back in the 1910s and 1920s, they didn't draw the line as often drawn here. But can you really have political democracy if you don't have freedom of contract? Basically, contracts are standardized one sided contracts between corporations and consumers. For example, it's take it or leave it. All the companies in the banking industry or in the insurance industry, they have the same contracts, they don't compete. And as a result, when there is a dispute, the access to justice comes into bear as a yardstick, can they go to court? And of course, with contracts that are fine print and have compulsory arbitration, it's very hard to go to court. So you don't have much access to justice. And then there's this phenomena which you're quite familiar with, where the owners of property, the owners of capital, the owners of public lands, the people, that is the owners of the public airwaves, have no control over what they own. It has been seized by corporations. Radio, TV stations decide 24, seven who gets on, who doesn't. The oil, timber, gas industry has huge power overexploiting the public lands and so forth. So you have the commons, which could be a pillar of democracy that is commonly owned property, pension funds that would have power over stock markets, and they have lost any power over stock markets, any stocks of the companies they own. When you have a breakdown, it translates into a deterioration of democracy, as you define it. So do you think you should qualify your criteria to at least recognize these yardsticks that are deteriorating, both economic and political democracy, such as government guaranteed capitalism? If you're a big enough corporation, you get in trouble, you don't go bankrupt, you go to Washington for a bailout, a subsidy, a handout. Is it fair to say that without excessively confusing your readers of your report, which will tell our readers how to get the annual report of the Institute, is that something you should explore?
- [17:16]
Dr. Marina Nord
Well, I think that's the question more about why democracy is declining, honestly in the United States. So it's not about measuring the magnitude of decline, it's about looking for the causes of decline. And there is some research out there also that that explains that part of the reason, for example why democracy is declin globally, it's not only in the United States, it's rising inequality and as you correctly said, that parts of those what has to be equal access in terms of rule by the people. But not everyone has de facto the same ability to influence the elections. Because of course, if you're Elon Musk, of course you can influence elections a lot more than if you're a blue collar worker somewhere in Texas or in any other country. But one of the things that we see in data is that equality before the law is declining, and that's particularly, for example now with the Trump administration, is that the decline that is measured by our index, what's called access to justice, transparent laws with predictable enforcement, impartial public administration, all of those indicators are declining. And that means that there are a lot of now politicization of justices, purges of civil servants. All of those are examples that internal accountability, this dismantling of internal accountability system. So it's basically Trump administration is becoming quite unpredictable now.
- [18:41]
Ralph Nader
What do you do, Marina, when the head of our government admits that he's an autocrat, that he can do whatever he wants? He said it in July 2019. He said with Article 2 of the Constitution, quote, I can do whatever I want as president, end quote. When the New York Times asked him, are there any constraints on what he does, he said only his moral sense. In other words, not the Constitution, not federal law, not federal regulations, not international treaties. How do you affect your index here? When the head of state in effect, admits that he is only a law unto himself, he violates laws every day. He violates our Constitution every day. He boasts, he brags, he doesn't hide anything. He issues illegal executive orders by the dozens which violate federal statutes and the Constitution. How do you crank in what may be called the idiosyncratic self admission as well as execution of a dictatorial mindset that is reflected in the tyrant Donald J. Trump?
- [19:53]
Dr. Marina Nord
Well, we do not measure his words right. So we measure how institutions function de facto. And what for us is a lot more important is not only what he says, but how other institutions, checks and balances, function to constrain him. And one of the things that we see is, for example, is that Congress is not constraining him in any way. And this is very, very serious, because if you have a president who violates the law, who violates the Constitution, you should have the judiciary who stood up the Supreme Court who should stand up to protect the Constitution. You should have the Congress who is not allowed to take over the powers from the Congress. And this is something that is very, very concerning, a lot more concerning than what Trump is saying. What I find a lot more concerning is that there are no checks and balances to constrain him. You know, especially if you look, for example, at how Congress was acting, is one of the things that you will see in our report is that Congress has effectively abdicated its powers to the president. It's not there because, yes, Trump is issuing the executive orders, but look at what Congress is doing. If you look at 2025, there only 49 laws that were passed during 2025. And all of them are some minor issues. Minor issues like renaming something like a national park somewhere, giving a gold medal for some achievements to someone and then at the same time, President Trump signed in 2025, 225 executive orders, and almost all of them on major issues like revaluating U.S. foreign aid or dismantling USAID or some other institutes by the Congress. And at the same time, what we see is that the Supreme Court is not intervening to restrict, and in some ways it's even empowering, kind of contributes to broaden the executive authority to control, for example, federal spending. Democracy is not only about what the President does, it's also about how other institutions are constraining the President when he clearly violates the law.
- [21:57]
Ralph Nader
Well said. Now, I want to bring you down on the ground in the United States where citizen groups are trying to use the tools of democracy to advance justice for workers, consumers, children, the environment, and so forth. Now, when we work on the ground in Washington, D.C. for example, we have to work through Congress to get legislation passed or to block legislation. And the first thing we come up against is campaign contributions by corporations with clear quid pro quo exchange. For example, the banks put a lot of money into the Senate and House banking Committees. They don't bother with the public Lands Interior committees so much. So we have to overcome that anti Democratic obstruction. Another obstruction is the media. The corporate media lives on advertising by corporations. They are licensed by the Federal Communication Commission. They pay nothing for their license, and as I said, they determine who says what and who doesn't 24 hours a day. They are the tenants, but we the people own the airwaves and we're the landlords, but we have no power. So when we're trying to advance consumer or labor or environmental or other political reform legislation, we don't get that much coverage because the corporations are very powerful on the media with their advertising dollars, which are not regulated. A third obstruction is the duality of the Republican Democrats. They're on the same side pushing for a massive bloated military budget. It's extraordinary. The Democrats used to be modest critics of excessive military spending. Since 2011, they have been joining the Republicans in giving the generals more money than they asked for. They actually add to the Pentagon budget that's proposed by the executive branch. Well, that's another obstruction of a democratic society. Then we also are confronted by corporate welfare. So we try, say, to defend a competitive economy, which means defending small business entries and involvements. And we come up against the federal government being influenced to bail out corporations, bail out Wall street, provide all kinds of subsidies, handouts, giveaways. It's huge, hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And that Obstructs trying to work a democratic society and its democratic institutions. We look to your reflections on that and whether this is something the institute is should start expanding in this country as well as other countries.
- [24:50]
Dr. Marina Nord
Well, when looking at the data, we looked also at the countries who managed to stop autocrats similar to Trump. Right. And we tried to analyze which factors contributed to stopping democratic backsliding and turning it around. So research shows that of course, there is no single recipe, but there are several combinations of factors that may help. One of them is use whatever institutional safeguards that you still have in the United States. And there are still pretty there are many of them still there. So for example, judicial constraints, maybe not the Supreme Court, but at least at lower levels, the judiciary are still quite willing to fight against the Trump administration. So go to the state level, go to within the judiciary system that is still functioning and challenge them in courts. The second thing that we know that still works quite well is robust societal action. And by that we mean not only say demonstrations similar to no king's protest, but it has to be, you know, sustained protest, mass protest, pro democracy, it may be. And it should be peaceful, of course. So any, I don't know, coordinated civil society resistance against corporations who support the Trump regime, against media who don't allow free speech or something else, just violent coordination within the civil society. Use civil society organizations to coordinate and protest. And then of course, one of the things that still should be a possibility to turn things around is midterm elections, because one of the things that we know why there is quite no resistance within the Congress is that the Congress is now Republican controlled. So of course, if you have at least some resistance restriction from the Congress coming to the presidential power, that might help as well. So whatever checks and balances that are still there in the country, talking about
- [26:51]
Ralph Nader
checks and balances, let's move to the analog, which is a federal state system in this country, about the only structural opposition to the Trump regime are states authority under the Constitution, which includes the state attorney generals, for example, and state legislatures. I didn't see where you cranked that in. Am I missing something?
- [27:13]
Dr. Marina Nord
I think that's the place where you have the highest chance to resist. Now to the Trump administration at the state level, that state governments, state judiciaries, they can function as checks on the federal government and particularly during the midterm elections. So to protect the free, fair elections, you know, not to allow them to be controlled by the federal government, that's where you rely on the federal structures.
- [27:40]
Ralph Nader
Well, it should be said as I'm sure our listeners are wondering, about half the states are called red states, dominated by Republican governors, state legislatures, and often mayors. And they're all supporting Trump. So the real countercheck, what's called the blue states, or about half the country in terms of electoral votes. Now, in the ranking that you provide, and listeners can get this on the website of the institute, the USA is now 51st among almost 200 countries. And higher than the US is South Korea, Canada, Japan, Jamaica, and even Ghana,
- [28:21]
Dr. Marina Nord
Italy, Ghana, and Suriname and South Africa.
- [28:25]
Ralph Nader
So this would really be a surprise to a lot of Americans, given what's happened in the last six months, especially Supreme Court decisions and other executive orders and suppressions by Trump. Do you expect your next year's ranking may be even lower than 51st, just above Greece?
- [28:47]
Dr. Marina Nord
I think it depends on the outcome of the midterm elections. It depends on whether the United States still manages to protect free and fair elections, whether elections will be pretty much circumvented. So what we see in the data is that in terms of checks and balances, for example, the United States has already fallen quite low. It's very hot to fall. I mean, of course, there is always, you know, this threshold. If you aim to become Russia or North Korea, there is still kind of you can fall through there. But in terms of limits, I see that the one component that is still kind of relatively high that is driving the protecting the United States from becoming an autocracy. That's the quality of elections. And if elections are not protected, if there are some violations of the laws that govern the electoral process, if there is no free and fair competition around elections, if there are attacks through the attacks on freedom of expression around elections or any other things that undermine the quality of elections, then, yes, then the United States can fall through that.
- [29:58]
Ralph Nader
Well, a lot of citizen groups in our country consider Trump a dictator, not an autocrat. He may have started out as an autocrat on Jan. 20, 2025, when he was inaugurated, but he rapidly moved into pure dictatorial regime. I mean, he ruled by executive order or simply by the force of raw power, as his ICE agents demonstrated in cities like Minneapolis. If someone asked the Institute, what would they call Trump, would they call him an autocrat? Would they call him a dictator? What would they call him? Or would they avoid such appellations entirely?
- [30:40]
Dr. Marina Nord
Well, we are careful. I mean, I cannot speak for the whole institute, right. So I can only speak in my own capacity. But we are very careful with labeling him as a specific person, like, you know, like giving a specific label to him. But what seems to be very clear, comparing what's happening in the United States to other countries like Hungary, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, that he's wannabe dictator. Whether he is a dictator or not, I think it depends on whether the Congress and whether the Supreme Court allow him to do. But the fact that he aims to become a dictator, that I think is pretty, pretty clear.
- [31:17]
Ralph Nader
He has some jokingly stated he wants to be a dictator. During his campaign, for example, he would compare himself with others. Like he would mention Orban in Hungary and how directly Orban governs and how he envies that in trying to do what he wants to do. The one thing about Trump, he's unlike Nixon, he doesn't hide anything. He brags about his power and his authority. We've been speaking with Dr. Marina Nord, who is the co author of the annual report on democracy around the world issued by the V Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. And please give our listeners the website again. And then we'll go to Steve.
- [32:02]
Dr. Marina Nord
It's Widom.net, just Google for Widom Institute.
- [32:06]
Ralph Nader
Steve.
- [32:07]
Steve Skrovan
Marina, a lot of demagogues come to power. Autocrats come to power because people think that they can fix the problems and make their lives better. How does the democracy ranking correlate with all the quality of life indexes we see? Where the ones where mostly the Scandinavian countries come out on top and the happiness indexes and quality of life indexes. Is there a correlation between democracy and quality of life?
- [32:37]
Dr. Marina Nord
Not that I'm aware of. I'm afraid what we know for sure is that usually populist leaders like Trump come to power because there is some kind of dissatisfaction with some societal problem that has not been fixed by the government. And that's not necessarily the quality of life it might be. Sometimes it's some economic problems arising, inequality. Sometimes it's unhappiness about migration, you know, sometimes it's unhappiness about security that's not fully provided by the government. So it's something over there. And then populist leaders like Trump come to power, usually by making this claim that they know that there is an easy solution to this problem. They know how to fix all of that, like let's make America great again, you know, and the truth is that they usually don't know because those societal problems are not that easy to fix, and that's the reason why they have not been fixed. But for an average person who does not understand, you know, the complexity of the societal issues, that's something that they pick up and that's why they vote for populist leaders like that.
- [33:41]
Ralph Nader
But you're not denying the link between a vibrant, comparatively vibrant, democratic society and a better quality of life in terms of the mass of the people, health care and income and public services and the like. You're not denying that, are you?
- [34:01]
Dr. Marina Nord
Well, I'm trying to be careful with that because if you look, for example, on average income, that would be also high in Saudi Arabia, you know, so it's kind of good economic performance, makes any regime relatively stable. So it's not necessarily something that drives, you know, this change towards becoming a democracy or towards an autocracy. And that's also a claim that whenever you have economic problems that any regime becomes less stable, which applies both to democracies and to autocracies. So that's why it's something that we need to be very, very careful. Because again, countries in the Gulf region, for example, they are all doing relatively well.
- [34:43]
Ralph Nader
Yeah, that is an extraordinary exception that you just cited. But if you look at the top countries on your index in terms of the liberal democracy index, as you call it, you have Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Estonia, Ireland, Costa Rica, Finland, France, Belgium, I mean those have quality of life levels that are leading the world. So there's got to be some correlation here. Even though there are aberrations such as the Gulf states and other places in the world. At any rate, it's interesting to explore. We try to justify democracy not just on moral grounds and justice grounds, but economic well being grounds by saying, you know, democracy works for average people and their standards of living.
- [35:32]
Dr. Marina Nord
One of the things that we did at the Whitham Institute is something that is called Case for Democracy report. That's when we looked at everything that is over there in the research community published on the link between democracy, autocracy and sustainable development goals and how different countries perform in terms of those. And what we know from the literature, from review of the literature on those topics, is that democracy outperforms autocracy on almost all of those aspects. Not on all of them, but on the majority of them. And that's one of those, for example, is economic growth. If you become more democratic, it also means that you grow economically faster and that you are better protected from economic crisis. Right. It doesn't mean that you cannot grow economically as an autocracy because China is one example, but for an autocracy it's rather the deviation is high. So it's kind of you can grow like China, but you can be in an absolute economic collapse. Like Zimbabwe for many, many decades. So it's less predictable. For democracies, it's more predictable. One of the things that we know for sure is that democracy does not solve the problem of inequality. Autocracy doesn't solve it either, you know, so it's not that autocracies are performing better in this way, it's that only that the solution to the problem of inequality is somewhere else. It's not whether you are democratic or autocratic, it's somewhere else in the way how your economic system functions. And one of the things that we know also from the literature on democratic backsliding, that inequality makes any regime less stable. If you don't solve the problem of inequality, then that's risky both for democracies and autocracies. And if you look at the top of the countries that we have in democracy report, the more stable countries are the one that are the most equal as well, like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, where Gini coefficient is not that high. If you compare to the United States, Gini coefficient is insane. And that's what also we brought up with this discussion where you have this super rich people, corporations that capture the whole political system, countries that are more equal, where more people have more or less equal rights, economic rights, you know, that typically more stable.
- [37:46]
Ralph Nader
Well, you know, you can endlessly probe your rankings. For example, this is an eyebrow razor here. You have China ranked 175 first. And you have Cuba ranked 161. But you have Yemen ranked 169. It's very difficult to do the kinds of analysis that you do because of it just puzzles people in terms of rankings from what they know about countries at a more superficial level than you do. Let's go to David.
- [38:16]
David Feldman
How does Saudi Arabia compare to Iran? We're fighting a war against Iran. How does our ally Saudi Arabia compare when it comes to democracy?
- [38:27]
Dr. Marina Nord
Well, Saudi Arabia is quite low at the ranking. So it's one of the most autocratic countries in the world. And one of the things that we also see indeed is that they are relatively stable. So there is not much that we can say about how powerful they are because it's something that you need to assess in terms of economic power, military power, but in terms of political regime, it's a very, very stable country. Iran is ranking a little bit higher than Saudi Arabia again by the end of 2025. We don't have data for 2026. So we don't know what happens now after all the events of 2026. But by the end of 2025. It was slightly higher. But again, it's still an autocratic regime. It's this marginal improvement compared to Saudi Arabia, I think. It's not something to take serious. But just to give an example, Iran is ranking quite close to say, Vietnam or Burkina Faso in terms of quality.
- [39:29]
Ralph Nader
Thank you very much, Dr. Marina Nord and your colleagues.
- [39:34]
Dr. Marina Nord
Thank you for having me.
- [39:36]
Steve Skrovan
We've been speaking with Dr. Marina Nord. We will link to the VDIM Institute's report@ralphnaderradiohour.com When we come back. We're going to talk about corporations and their accounting practices. Guess what? They may not all be on the up and up. But first let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber.
- [39:55]
Russell Mokhiber
From the National Press building in Washington, D.C. this is your corporate Crime Reporter Morning minute for Friday, May 15, 2026. I'm Russell Mulcaiber. A unanimous jury in Colorado last month assessed a 17.4 million dollar verdict on behalf of Tyler Jordan against Cambria and Hyundai. It was the the first artificial stone silicosis case ever filed at Colorado and only the third artificial stone case to reach verdict in the country. Tyler Jordan was diagnosed with silica caused chronic kidney disease and artificial stone silicosis at age 28 after working at Jordan Marble and Granite, his parents countertop fabrication shop for only 10 years. The Jordan verdict is the second jury to find that crystalline silica artificial intelligence stone manufacturers and distributors failed to adequately warn or misrepresented the hazards to countertop fabricators of the extreme toxicity of their products. For the corporate crime Reporter, I'm Russell Molciver.
- [40:55]
Steve Skrovan
Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio. I'm Steve Scrovan along with David Feldman, Hannah and Ralph, let's talk about some shady corporate accounting, shall we?
- [41:04]
Hannah Feldman
Hannah Dr. Ralph Estes is emeritus professor of business and accounting at American University in Washington, D.C. co founder and Vice president of the center for Advancement of Public Policy and emeritus Trustee at the Washington D.C. institute for Policy Studies. He is the author of several books including Tyranny of the Bottom why Corporations Make Good People Do Bad Things and Fight the Corpocracy. Take Back Democracy, A Mad As Hell guide for the 99%. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Dr. Ralph Estes, thank you.
- [41:41]
Ralph Nader
Yeah, welcome back indeed. Ralph I can't tell listeners how important his book was when it came out and how relevant it is now. Tyranny, the Bottom Line, why Corporations Make Good People Do Bad Things. And the reason why it's so important because it attacks the issue from yardsticks. Corporations create their own yardsticks. If we accept it, they can get away with what they don't have yardsticks for. And if we have people yardsticks for corporations that have the force of law and other democratic pressures and enlightenments, they're going to have to measure up in ways that their own self controlled power has escaped. So the book is more broadly seen as the cost benefits of major corporate activity. And what they cost us in terms of illness, for example, from pollution, what they cost us an inefficient use of public resources which they control and so forth. And where the corporations just ballyhoo the benefits, they don't include the costs as proper balance sheet would have us do. And so Ralph, let me ask you this. If corporations adopted the kind of yardsticks you wanted, both accounting yardsticks which they have abused, even standard accounting yardsticks they have abused to cover up or inflate their profits and losses, how would the public be able to evaluate them using your yardsticks and your analysis?
- [43:15]
Ralph Estes
Well, using my yardsticks they'd be able to evaluate them much better. But let me go back to what we have now. The public has no way of fairly evaluating a corporation except through the press. What it sees in corporate press releases and their claims about being, for example, environmentally responsible and very favorable to customers and there are no measures on that corporation doesn't give us. Any corporation produces a set of financial statements. You will know how relevant those financial statements are to you and me. They're not relevant at all. They're not even very relevant to investors. Investors pick out a few items here and there, but they go farther than than the financial statements to evaluate a corporation for investing in terms of social performance. There's nothing in the corporate reports, the formal reports, that is reliable. Again, you're stuck with what the corporation claims or the politicians who are lobbying for contributions where they will admit corporations do what they. We've got Facebook here in New Mexico, for example, and it's got this massive data acreage and they're wanting to build more and the state is doing them or that. But this is a problem if the corporation doesn't report it, if the citizens don't know about it, the politicians can try to do something, but they have to start from scratch. So going back to the corporate reports, they started in 1494 with an Italian author named Luca Pacioli. And the reason I mention that is because they aren't much changed today. You still have a general ledger and you still have a private loss statement of the balance sheet. And they don't tell the private laws for the corporation, even though that's the name of it. They just tell the excess of debits over credits. And that's no use of no use to anybody. So they not only need to report more, they need to be required to report in accordance with the accountability report in my book. State legislatures need to look at their role in chartering corporations. And every corporation they've chartered, they bear, if you will, the blood from the corporation's actions. If they don't act to control the corporation and make them be accountable to their public.
- [45:29]
Ralph Nader
And as you pointed out, Ralph Estes, maybe the first artificial intelligence is a corporation which is not a human being, but which the courts have given equal rights with human beings to this artificial entity. And to point this out, I just want to read for a benefit of our listeners a few lines from page 30 and 31 of your book, and I'm quoting you. Corporations were chartered and their charters are allowed to continue by the state to promote the general welfare, to serve the broad interests of the state and its people. That was the original when the modern corporation started being chartered by the state legislature of Massachusetts in the textile industry in the very early 1800s. That's my comments. Back to your quote. The public interest may be served in several ways. Providing needed products and services at fair prices, creating jobs and paying taxes. The public interest can also be harmed in a variety of ways, such as through discrimination, adulterated products, pollution, congestion, bribery, and other legal activities. This, then, is how corporations should be evaluated, how their performance should be measured and reported. We should ask how well in what ways the corporation has served and how it was harmed. The public interest. Because there's no other reason for us to charter corporations and to grant them special business privileges. To begin to restore corporations to their public purpose, we need a new corporate scorecard that will measure the corporation's performance. Against this standard, as long as the scorecard is incomplete and counts the wrong things, corporate managers will direct their behavior and decisions so they look well on that irrelevant scorecard. End quote. How would you describe the present accounting yardsticks that corporations use and that regulators rely on? How would you describe that? Do they give an accurate quantitative measurement of what these corporations are doing?
- [47:40]
Ralph Estes
It's hard to describe them. I'm tempted to say, like a big nothing. They don't serve their managers. They don't serve the public. They don't serve the lawyers. It's a system inherited, as I noted, from 600 years ago. And, and it doesn't serve anyone now. If you want to achieve corporate accountability, there are two ways to go in my judgment. One is for the states to act. They charter corporations, they can uncharter them. Nobody does. Then they can hold them accountable for the harm to the public. That's one way. The other way is to focus on corporations directly, as you and your companions have done so well in the D.C. area and surrounding states. And that is through boycotts, through demonstrations in front of the factories, in front of the corporate offices. And those two ways, getting in the states to act and moving directly on the corporations at the local level throughout the country are the only two ways I can see to move the football in the yardage.
- [48:43]
Ralph Nader
Actually, in the late 1800s, as you know, Ralph Estes, there are states that actually pulled the charter of the oil companies. Ohio pulled the charter for Standard Oil of Ohio. But in recent decades, it's almost unheard of for any state to de charter a corporation. They'll take away the license of a crooked auto repair garage at that level, but they won't touch the larger corporations. Senator Elizabeth Warren has adopted our suggestion that there should be federal chartering of these large corporations taken away from Delaware and Nevada. That's cornered the business for the race to the bottom and have federal charters where they can upgrade to the 21st century. This compact between our government representing people and the corporations. These are now global corporations. They can switch their profits around in tax havens, escape taxation, reduce their profits, inflate their costs to adjust to the particular taxing jurisdiction. They're completely out of control here. So coming back to 2026, Ralph Estes, what is your appraisal of a. The expansion of corporate power since your book came out. And second, the seemingly reduced resistance, organized resistance in government, federal, state and even among citizen groups. They're not growing and expanding in resistance the way they should. So labor unions are weaker than ever. The religious organizations that used to deal with restraints on gambling, for example, have abandoned that role. Give us your updates.
- [50:31]
Ralph Estes
I don't know if I can describe it any more sadly than that, but I kind of come back to one thing. You talk about federal chartering. That would give us a focus, one organization that we could focus our attention on and our lobbying on. Right now we have 50 plus and that's hard to get your hands around. On the other hand, in states like New Mexico, it might be better to have the power localized because we can get to our local politicians better than we might get to the senators and the Representatives in Washington. I don't think that's true in Texas, for example, but it would be true in a number of other states. So do we want a single concentrated federal power or do we want to take citizen action to increase the power of citizens at the local level?
- [51:22]
Ralph Nader
I couldn't agree more with that. That's what's called the double header. Accountability from the bottom and accountability from the top, reinforcing each other. Let's go to Hannah.
- [51:32]
Hannah Feldman
Ralph Estes, my research indicates you also have written a great deal about the Old West. Is that correct?
- [51:40]
Ralph Estes
How so? Books.
- [51:42]
Hannah Feldman
Okay, cool. I wanted to make sure it was the same Ralph Estes. So as an accountant, an accounting expert, do you see any similarities between gambling in the Old west and modern accounting?
- [51:55]
Ralph Estes
I'm not going to answer that question. I want to answer a different question. I see similarities all over the place every day to the Old west. Although we're worse today than then. Everywhere I go, everybody is armed. In the Old west, when you rode into Wichita, they said you take your gun to the sheriff and leave it there until you leave town. The same thing happened in Dodge City and in other western towns today. You can walk into church, you can walk into the a governor's office, you walk into the state legislature, you walk into a school in many places, not all with the gun gun hidden in your person. So coming back to poker, Poker is not the power that it was in the Old West. That's why you don't you no longer getting towns named show low in Arizona clearly came from a poker game. So I don't play poker anymore just from my own interest. I was using it as a hobby and it got to the point where I could continue to win. I did win overall, I could continue, but I was going to have to work harder at it and harder and harder because these kids were staying up all night playing 50, 60 tournaments at a time and they were getting so much experience it's almost like artificial intelligence. So I just hung it up about 2018. So I don't play poker anymore.
- [53:13]
Hannah Feldman
Well, I was just curious when you talk about your old colleagues, Arthur Anderson, that, you know, it used to be reputable and I imagine you might have some hot takes on the maybe chaotic decline of the accounting profession.
- [53:30]
Ralph Estes
You have a very good raising the chaotic decline of the accounting profession. Since I was a member of it back in the 60s, it has been pretty much continually downhill. Eventually the government decided to said we've got to stop these abuses. They are selling their clients on illegal arrangements to make a case for avoiding taxes. And then if they get caught, they pay some of the taxes, but they try another one. And finally they decided they looked at the big eight, and we're going to make an example of somebody. And I think they looked at Price Forde House and they looked at Arthur Anderson, and they chose Arthur Anderson. And so they took him to court, won the case. Anderson properly went out of business. Three years later, the case was overturned, the verdict was overturned, but by then, Arthur Anderson was long gone. I think that Anderson deserved everything they got, but so did all the other big eight, the other seven and the other national accounting firms. They were all doing it. And if you look at them now, they're still doing it. They're still working on the construction of subsidiaries and islands where you report all the costs in the United States and all the revenue in that island because it has very low taxes and you avoid paying any taxes in the United States. They're still doing it. Congress should do something. You think we're going to get a Congress anytime soon?
- [54:48]
Ralph Nader
I think we'll get a better Congress after November. But how better remains to be seen by the people back home as to whether they're going to pick up the cudgels here and reclaim some of the sovereign power that they've surrendered under our constitution to 535 men and women, many of whom are indentured to corporate campaign donors and other corporate lobbyists. Ralph Estes, it's easy to call you a national treasure, but I want to call you a national measure because you are putting forth yardsticks by which our society can be measured that have never been put forward before. Or you evoke yardsticks that exist, but they're being violated right and left like standard accounting procedures by corporate accountants who have lost any sense of professional responsibility and independence as an accounting profession. So is there anything you'd like to say or elaborate before we close?
- [55:48]
Ralph Estes
Yes, I'm glad my video is not working and you can't see my face because it's turned real, real red.
- [55:57]
Ralph Nader
There you are. You haven't lost your sense of humor, that's for sure. We've been speaking with Ralph Estes, CPA and scholar, about corporate power extraordinaire. Thank you very much. Ralph Estes.
- [56:12]
Ralph Estes
Thank you.
- [56:13]
Steve Skrovan
We've been speaking with Dr. Ralph Estes. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com I want to thank our guests again, Dr. Marina Nord and Dr. Ralph Estes. For those of you listening on the radio, that's our show for you. Podcast listeners, stay tuned for some bonus material we call the Wrap up featuring Francesco DeSantis with in case youe Haven't Heard. A transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted.
- [56:39]
David Feldman
Subscribe to us on our Ralph Nader Radio Hour YouTube channel and for Ralph's weekly column. It's free@nader.org for more from Russell Mokhyber, it's at Corpus
- [56:52]
Steve Skrovan
the American Museum of Tort Law has gone virtual. You can visit tortmuseum.org to explore the exhibits, take a virtual tour and learn about iconic tort cases from history.
- [57:02]
David Feldman
To order your copy of the Capitol Hill Citizen Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight. It's@capitol hillcitizen.com and remember to continue the
- [57:11]
Steve Skrovan
conversation after each show. You can go to the comments section at Ralph Nader RadioHour and post a comment or question on this week's episode.
- [57:19]
David Feldman
The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman and Matthew Marin. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.
- [57:28]
Steve Skrovan
Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon.
- [57:34]
David Feldman
Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.
- [57:39]
Ralph Nader
Thank you everybody.
- [57:41]
Kemp Harris
Stand up.
- [57:42]
Dr. Marina Nord
Step up.
- [57:43]
Kemp Harris
Step up. You ought to step up. Rise up. Arise up. I know you ought to rise up. I think you step up. Step up. I think that you should step up. Rise up.
- [58:03]
Ralph Nader
Don't laugh.
- [58:04]
Kemp Harris
The system holds you down.
- [58:06]
Ralph Nader
Stand up.
- [58:26]
Greg Palast
Let me tell you a story. On June 23, 1967, the LAPD beat anti war drop demonstrators bloody. Only one radio station in the Southland covered the beatings KPFK. And that was a day a young kid in Pacoima broke open his piggy bank and joined kpfk. This is Greg Palace. I was that Kid, and for 55 years I've been a member of KPFK and Pacifica stations. Why? Because the courageous reporting continues and when other media covers up the news, KPFK uncovers it. Won't you join me? This is Greg palace asking you to go to kpfk.org and you got one of those telephone things. 818-9855-73581, 8985kpfk this is Greg Pal.
- [59:29]
Joe Ayala
Please join us on Mondays at 5am for working voices with News and views on what's happening within the labor community here in Southern California. Whether it's striking TV writers organizing successes at your local Starbucks or Justice for hotel workers. Working Voices with hosts Joe Ayala and an Enrique Sanchez is all about dignity and respect for all workers. Join us and be a part of the Solution. Mondays at 5am on KPFK, 90.7 FM in Los Angeles and online for the world at kpfk.