Without getting too deep into the intricacies of morality, I'd disagree. (Who am I kidding? We're already deep :D ) Your premise is that acting on the desire o

Without getting too deep into the intricacies of morality, I'd disagree. (Who am I kidding? We're already deep :D ) Your premise is that acting on the desire of an unfair advantage is the greater immoral act, and the act of accepting the payment for an unfair advantage is less morally bankrupt. In each of these scenarios, the person being bribed has the power. They have nothing to lose if they reject the bribe. Yet, if they have nothing to lose when _accepting_ the bribe, that is how corrupt regimes start. Of course, one could argue that it depends on the corruption. In your case of a building authority, imagine one that always says no regardless of the request. Maybe they let through the odd high-profile project where someone in the project is chummy with the director of the authority. Arguably, this building authority is already corrupt, and merely hiding behind the excuse of bureaucracy. (We don't tend to think about social capital as a form of bribery, but it very much is) In the case of the driving inspector, they are potentially licensing an individual who will get others killed. Morally speaking, any future deaths are at least partially attributable to the driving inspector. I suspect part of your position hinges on a malicious intent in the initiator. However, power and responsibility are not separable - and cases where there are possible consequences, morality must be judged in part on the basis of that responsibility. As I say, we're getting into the weeds - these hypothetical situations are in many ways divorced from the original question, so let's look at that: - A person is kicked off an online communications platform. Nobody is quite sure why, but there are some pretty likely conclusions. - The platform is known for bending the rules for high-profile accounts - The person can prove that they are not breaking any consistently-applied rules (assuming valid interpretation of vague rules should be judged on whether their peers are allowed to post similar - and in this case, she pointed out that her content is well within moral norms for the platform) - The platform offers no accessible recourse (except for those with social capital) and not just bureaucracy, but hidden bureaucracy dependant on the whims of a hidden adjudicator who has nothing to lose for interpreting the rules harshly. - Very limited harms if accepted, potential loss of revenue, personal content, position in a (digital) society, freedom of expression etc if rejected. In this case, I'd say the briber has, at the point their account was terminated, already lost a lot to the corruption of the platform, and yet the bribe was still over-paid. Saying that theirs was the more immoral act seems intensely unfair, when they did the only thing they felt they could to re-gain justice.