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You're being downvoted because network effects aren't the same as corruption. Although it is certainly unpleasant to consider that government officials might be

You're being downvoted because network effects aren't the same as corruption. Although it is certainly unpleasant to consider that government officials might be making decisions more favorable to one company than another in the hope or expectation that that they will get a board seat five years hence, it is worth noting that if they upset one company now, they may get the board seat on the other company. And since anything can happen in five years, it may in many cases make better sense to make the right decision, rather than the self-interested decision. Moreover, quite independent of any decisions they make, they remain valuable since they have contacts and know government processes. So cash in hand is a bazillion times worse than a board seat.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
You might have a point if one of the reliable features of privatisations in the UK over the last few decades hadn't been a steady stream of ministers pushing through privatisation - often at significant public cost - and then parachuting straight into the board of the privatised company. This is a bazillion times worse than cash in an envelope, because it's straightforward larceny of public resources, papered over with some thin PR nonsense about "efficiency". This current government isn't even pretending to do anything else. There have been so many no-bid contracts for "PPE supply" handed out to cronies with no PPE experience - and no PPE delivered, while lethal shortages continue - that there are are now formal legal challenges working their way through the courts.
- jen20 6y ago
  > This current government isn't even pretending to do anything else. The current government in the UK is uniquely poor compared to every UK government that has come before it. The situation there does not extend to "western nations" in general - just those run by incompetent/malignant (take your pick) populists.
  - AndrewBissell 6y ago
    The populists may have dispensed with the pretense of claiming not to be corrupt, but the corruption the parent describes was certainly there long before they came on the scene.
raincom 6y ago
Network effects is value-free description. Corruption is how network effects are judged.
j7ake 6y ago
The amount of public money you can funnel out or funnel in by cash in hand is limited to actual cash in hand. The level of corruption at the highest levels are on the order of a billion euros. I am not sure if you can get even close to billions of euros in corruption using only cash.
csharptwdec19 6y ago
I think your core statement highlights the bigger problem with our progression as a society overall; We don't eliminate corruption as we 'advance', but instead we just keep abstracting it away until the less observant don't see it as corruption but instead some form of 'networking'.
literallycancer 6y ago
Good job rationalizing it. All cash bribes put together might be about as much as one fat government subsidy.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

You might have a point if one of the reliable features of privatisations in the UK over the last few decades hadn't been a steady stream of ministers pushing through privatisation - often at significant public cost - and then parachuting straight into the board of the privatised company. This is a bazillion times worse than cash in an envelope, because it's straightforward larceny of public resources, papered over with some thin PR nonsense about "efficiency". This current government isn't even pretending to do anything else. There have been so many no-bid contracts for "PPE supply" handed out to cronies with no PPE experience - and no PPE delivered, while lethal shortages continue - that there are are now formal legal challenges working their way through the courts.

jen20 6y ago
> This current government isn't even pretending to do anything else. The current government in the UK is uniquely poor compared to every UK government that has come before it. The situation there does not extend to "western nations" in general - just those run by incompetent/malignant (take your pick) populists.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  The populists may have dispensed with the pretense of claiming not to be corrupt, but the corruption the parent describes was certainly there long before they came on the scene.

raincom 6y ago

Network effects is value-free description. Corruption is how network effects are judged.

j7ake 6y ago

The amount of public money you can funnel out or funnel in by cash in hand is limited to actual cash in hand. The level of corruption at the highest levels are on the order of a billion euros. I am not sure if you can get even close to billions of euros in corruption using only cash.

csharptwdec19 6y ago

I think your core statement highlights the bigger problem with our progression as a society overall; We don't eliminate corruption as we 'advance', but instead we just keep abstracting it away until the less observant don't see it as corruption but instead some form of 'networking'.

literallycancer 6y ago

Good job rationalizing it. All cash bribes put together might be about as much as one fat government subsidy.