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It's actually kind of disturbing how there are basically only a handful of countries on the planet without systematic corruption. Maybe there are none. Perhaps

It's actually kind of disturbing how there are basically only a handful of countries on the planet without systematic corruption. Maybe there are none. Perhaps it's a human trait.

arlcode 4y ago
Some types corruption are worse than others. With the typical Western "overpay for a modern tank/gun/piece of equipment by a factor of 2" style you still get a modern tank/gun/piece of equipment in the end. From what I heard, for example, in Russia you do that but then the quartermaster goes and sells half of your equipment off on the black market and the grunts sell off the other half and replace it with something much inferior. The first kind of corruption is bad and should be rooted out, but the second type is much more destructive as can be seen in Ukraine right now. Secrecy at all levels and for minor details, as well as "encouragement" from the highest levels of politics for this kind of theft are core ingredients.
- riskable 4y ago
  > With the typical Western "overpay for a modern tank/gun/piece of equipment by a factor of 2" style you still get a modern tank/gun/piece of equipment in the end. Many studies have been done and this isn't really a thing. The government isn't paying 2x (or 100-1000x as is often the rumor) for a given thing. What they're paying is the price of certification and guarantees. If the law requires that a procured item be guaranteed to NOT catch fire in an oxygen-rich environment (because it could be used in space) then the price of that product--no matter how seemingly mundane--is going to be more expensive than if you "just bought it from the store". Because someone had to setup a complicated bureaucracy and certification testing process to cover that product and actually carry out the testing. There's also product availability guarantees that add to the price of government-procured things: A lot of stuff the government buys must continue to be manufactured for the effective life of the product in the government. This means that companies supplying stuff need to stock and maintain replacement parts for lifespans that would normally be vastly longer that a typical product cycle. They may even need to keep people trained at making and repairing these goods. That costs a lot of money! If you're looking for corruption in Western governments it's in the form of paying political campaigns (or entire parties) to get specific laws passed or not passed. That's the big one that causes basically all the major problems in Western politics. To a lesser extent there's also corruption involving decision-making bureaucrats getting hired by the industries they regulated after their time in office is over (this should be illegal) and politicians with insider information trading stocks. Taking direct bribes also does happen but it's rare because it's too easy to get caught and the consequences are high (high risk, low reward most of the time).
  - throwaway2037 4y ago
    If you look at the required operating range (temperature and humidity) for most mudane item sold to the US military... it is INSANE. Plus, the amount of "QA" done on the final product ensures very low failure rates. All of this costs a LOT of money. I see the same issue with nuclear power plants built in highly industrialised countries with strong environmental protection laws.
- FredPret 4y ago
  100%, I’m originally from a really corrupt country. They steal the money, and then still refuse to do the work. Result: no money, nothing works. Here in the West, there is much less corruption to begin with, but the work gets done for the most part. Result: things work
otikik 4y ago
I would go as far as to say that a little bit of corruption is healthy. It adds flexibility. For example: you don't want to register your neighbor's daughter for taxes just so that she can babysit your child once or twice. That is crazytalk. And yes, a lot of countries make sure that small payments don't require registration or taxes. This was just a quick example to make the point, sometimes the general law is just not applicable to a local event and it is better that everyone ignores it. But this is like cholesterol. The right amount in your body makes everything better. Too much and you are in deep trouble.
- eastbound 4y ago
  Well for small payments we need a simple tax box, no country is doing that, all countries require a ton of paperwork for each new “employee”.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    The problem is that the revenue leakage for babysitters and other under the table services is lower than the scaled grifts that an “easy box” would generate.
  - riskable 4y ago
    Why not just have one payment system to rule them all run by the government that is required by law for all payment of employee-driven services? Businesses could save a TON of money on payroll systems and HR. A government-run system--presumably--would take care of withholding the correct amount of taxes and also making sure the business/person paying a salary never has to worry about running afoul of the law (having the IRS or equivalent) come after them.
    - eastbound 4y ago
      In France there are more than a hundred mandatory numbers on the paysheet. Each class of worker has its own retirement/health/subhealth/old-age-health/unemployment/family benefits. Each has a different rate.
- 4y ago
throwaway2037 4y ago
I agree. Look at the map on this page. Plenty of orange and red! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
MikePlacid 4y ago
> It's actually kind of disturbing how there are basically only a handful of countries on the planet without systematic corruption. Maybe there are none. Perhaps it's a human trait. More disturbing (to me) is how easy it is to eliminate corruption in any given area - without any brutality or anything else extraordinary. Just setup the process correctly, incentivize workforce - and the same people who were building roadblocks to milk money will switch to earning money by helping you get your task done. There was a “widely known in narrow circles” libertarian setup in Troitsk, Russia - of all places. The setup was related to the topic of the original post - registration of businesses. The post-Soviet business registration law was rather liberal. The amount of documents needed was not zero, but doable. But there was a catch - businesses should have been registered locally, and each locality was allowed to add their own requirements on top of federal ones. You can imagine what followed. Our own city, the I was a counsel member was: just prove to us (“us” in reality means -a clerk) that your business will be useful to the city - and we will register you. But there was a small city named Troitsk, home to some physics scientific institutions, which elected a libertarian mayor, Gennady Lebedev. The city council decided not to ask for any additional documents and just register any business that complied with federal guidelines. But - any clerk has any good intention in his own hands, right? Mayor said: register everyone? but I am too busy, come tomorrow, and by the way go to… uhm police station, do a background check on yourself for me, I feel a sudden need to be extra cautious in your case. Why not? Seen it everywhere, like you’ve said. Here comes handy a proper construction of checks and balances: 1. Salary for registration office clerks was paid from a percentage of the (federally fixed) registration fee, nothing else, no safety cushion. If you delay an application- your salary will be delayed too. In the starving Russia that percentage created a - potentially - extremely well paying job. 2. The clerk will be fired if he asked - not just for any unnecessary documents, but just for asking any legally unnecessary question. 3. The clerk will be also fired if he accepts a registration that does not confirm to federal guidelines. So clerks have the incentive to work fast, help people correct their documents to comply with the federal law and the opportunity for any additional “milking” was too risky and simply not worth it. In short time - small Troitsk had more businesses registered than any other small city in Russia, and comparable to Moscow. Imagine a tax base they’ve got? First-hand account by Gennadi himself here (in Russian): http://www.sapov.ru/g_v_lebedev/texts/gvl1992_12_troitsk01.htm http://www.sapov.ru/g_v_lebedev/texts/gvl1992_12_troitsk01.h...
imtringued 4y ago
It is not a human trait. It is a property of money. Interest is a bribe to keep money in circulation. There is an incentive to pass this bribe onto someone else. Why is it a property of money? Because money has a liquidity premium versus any other asset and no holding costs. It is rational to ask to be compensated for giving up this liquidity for the face value of money. Money is a payment network that introduces costs for businesses that accept it. Businesses must be close to consumers and open whenever consumers want to spend their money. They must also have a variety of uniform products and if it has to store them it will have to pay for storage costs. Think about it like being an on call employee. You must be ready to respond at any moment and this flexibility is worth a certain amount of money. Now, you could call the national money system to be a public service provided by the government (and indirectly by private businesses). If you were to issue your own money what would it's liquidity premium be? It would be very low to be sure because barely anyone accepts it. So, the holders of money effectively own a free subscription to this public service. If they lend out money, they will obviously charge a fee in proportion to the liquidity premium. This fee is included in the interest rate. The borrower is now paying for the liquidity premium, the cost has been fully internalized and the problem is gone right? The problem is that the liquidity premium that is part of the interest rate is erroneously calculated as the cost of capital. It is not, it is the cost of liquidity. Now, things will get very strange. When the borrower spends his money, he will be obligated to pay the subscription fee, the cost of liquidity, even though he no longer has the money and he is no longer benefiting from the liquidity services. What this means is that the money system constantly screws over people who use money as a medium of exchange and rewards those who sabotage it. It will look as if those who "save" money will be rewarded for their frugality and "moral" behaviour and those who are in debt are being rightly punished for their unsustainable and and "sinful" behaviour. Now imagine if private households all follow this strategy of selling more than they buy and saving and lending the rest. There must be another sector that earns less than they spend and accumulates debt though borrowing. The government is forced to avoid austerity at all costs. It must become the "immoral sinner" that spends in excess to shield the private sector. If you want to solve the problem you would have to make buying and lending symmetric. Lending passes the cost of liquidity onto someone else which is in theory ok but only if buying also passes the cost of liquidity onto the seller so that no liquidity premium accrues to the lender. He will pay a liquidity premium and earn liquidity premium which then zeroes. The only one who then collects the liquidity premium is the central bank that issues the money. The problem with this is that the interest rate on cash would be negative and paper technology isn't advanced enough to calculate and display a dynamically changing face value. It isn't some conspiracy by a cabal, it is actually an engineering problem that originates from our historical and cultural attachment to cash. Humans aren't evil bribe collecting monsters, they are just in a rationality trap that is difficult to escape.

It's actually kind of disturbing how there are basically only a handful of countries on the planet without systematic corruption. Maybe there are none. Perhaps it's a human trait.

arlcode 4y ago

Some types corruption are worse than others. With the typical Western "overpay for a modern tank/gun/piece of equipment by a factor of 2" style you still get a modern tank/gun/piece of equipment in the end. From what I heard, for example, in Russia you do that but then the quartermaster goes and sells half of your equipment off on the black market and the grunts sell off the other half and replace it with something much inferior. The first kind of corruption is bad and should be rooted out, but the second type is much more destructive as can be seen in Ukraine right now. Secrecy at all levels and for minor details, as well as "encouragement" from the highest levels of politics for this kind of theft are core ingredients.

riskable 4y ago
> With the typical Western "overpay for a modern tank/gun/piece of equipment by a factor of 2" style you still get a modern tank/gun/piece of equipment in the end. Many studies have been done and this isn't really a thing. The government isn't paying 2x (or 100-1000x as is often the rumor) for a given thing. What they're paying is the price of certification and guarantees. If the law requires that a procured item be guaranteed to NOT catch fire in an oxygen-rich environment (because it could be used in space) then the price of that product--no matter how seemingly mundane--is going to be more expensive than if you "just bought it from the store". Because someone had to setup a complicated bureaucracy and certification testing process to cover that product and actually carry out the testing. There's also product availability guarantees that add to the price of government-procured things: A lot of stuff the government buys must continue to be manufactured for the effective life of the product in the government. This means that companies supplying stuff need to stock and maintain replacement parts for lifespans that would normally be vastly longer that a typical product cycle. They may even need to keep people trained at making and repairing these goods. That costs a lot of money! If you're looking for corruption in Western governments it's in the form of paying political campaigns (or entire parties) to get specific laws passed or not passed. That's the big one that causes basically all the major problems in Western politics. To a lesser extent there's also corruption involving decision-making bureaucrats getting hired by the industries they regulated after their time in office is over (this should be illegal) and politicians with insider information trading stocks. Taking direct bribes also does happen but it's rare because it's too easy to get caught and the consequences are high (high risk, low reward most of the time).
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  If you look at the required operating range (temperature and humidity) for most mudane item sold to the US military... it is INSANE. Plus, the amount of "QA" done on the final product ensures very low failure rates. All of this costs a LOT of money. I see the same issue with nuclear power plants built in highly industrialised countries with strong environmental protection laws.
FredPret 4y ago
100%, I’m originally from a really corrupt country. They steal the money, and then still refuse to do the work. Result: no money, nothing works. Here in the West, there is much less corruption to begin with, but the work gets done for the most part. Result: things work

otikik 4y ago

I would go as far as to say that a little bit of corruption is healthy. It adds flexibility. For example: you don't want to register your neighbor's daughter for taxes just so that she can babysit your child once or twice. That is crazytalk. And yes, a lot of countries make sure that small payments don't require registration or taxes. This was just a quick example to make the point, sometimes the general law is just not applicable to a local event and it is better that everyone ignores it. But this is like cholesterol. The right amount in your body makes everything better. Too much and you are in deep trouble.

eastbound 4y ago
Well for small payments we need a simple tax box, no country is doing that, all countries require a ton of paperwork for each new “employee”.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  The problem is that the revenue leakage for babysitters and other under the table services is lower than the scaled grifts that an “easy box” would generate.
- riskable 4y ago
  Why not just have one payment system to rule them all run by the government that is required by law for all payment of employee-driven services? Businesses could save a TON of money on payroll systems and HR. A government-run system--presumably--would take care of withholding the correct amount of taxes and also making sure the business/person paying a salary never has to worry about running afoul of the law (having the IRS or equivalent) come after them.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    In France there are more than a hundred mandatory numbers on the paysheet. Each class of worker has its own retirement/health/subhealth/old-age-health/unemployment/family benefits. Each has a different rate.
4y ago

throwaway2037 4y ago

I agree. Look at the map on this page. Plenty of orange and red! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

MikePlacid 4y ago

> It's actually kind of disturbing how there are basically only a handful of countries on the planet without systematic corruption. Maybe there are none. Perhaps it's a human trait. More disturbing (to me) is how easy it is to eliminate corruption in any given area - without any brutality or anything else extraordinary. Just setup the process correctly, incentivize workforce - and the same people who were building roadblocks to milk money will switch to earning money by helping you get your task done. There was a “widely known in narrow circles” libertarian setup in Troitsk, Russia - of all places. The setup was related to the topic of the original post - registration of businesses. The post-Soviet business registration law was rather liberal. The amount of documents needed was not zero, but doable. But there was a catch - businesses should have been registered locally, and each locality was allowed to add their own requirements on top of federal ones. You can imagine what followed. Our own city, the I was a counsel member was: just prove to us (“us” in reality means -a clerk) that your business will be useful to the city - and we will register you. But there was a small city named Troitsk, home to some physics scientific institutions, which elected a libertarian mayor, Gennady Lebedev. The city council decided not to ask for any additional documents and just register any business that complied with federal guidelines. But - any clerk has any good intention in his own hands, right? Mayor said: register everyone? but I am too busy, come tomorrow, and by the way go to… uhm police station, do a background check on yourself for me, I feel a sudden need to be extra cautious in your case. Why not? Seen it everywhere, like you’ve said. Here comes handy a proper construction of checks and balances: 1. Salary for registration office clerks was paid from a percentage of the (federally fixed) registration fee, nothing else, no safety cushion. If you delay an application- your salary will be delayed too. In the starving Russia that percentage created a - potentially - extremely well paying job. 2. The clerk will be fired if he asked - not just for any unnecessary documents, but just for asking any legally unnecessary question. 3. The clerk will be also fired if he accepts a registration that does not confirm to federal guidelines. So clerks have the incentive to work fast, help people correct their documents to comply with the federal law and the opportunity for any additional “milking” was too risky and simply not worth it. In short time - small Troitsk had more businesses registered than any other small city in Russia, and comparable to Moscow. Imagine a tax base they’ve got? First-hand account by Gennadi himself here (in Russian): http://www.sapov.ru/g_v_lebedev/texts/gvl1992_12_troitsk01.htm http://www.sapov.ru/g_v_lebedev/texts/gvl1992_12_troitsk01.h...

imtringued 4y ago

It is not a human trait. It is a property of money. Interest is a bribe to keep money in circulation. There is an incentive to pass this bribe onto someone else. Why is it a property of money? Because money has a liquidity premium versus any other asset and no holding costs. It is rational to ask to be compensated for giving up this liquidity for the face value of money. Money is a payment network that introduces costs for businesses that accept it. Businesses must be close to consumers and open whenever consumers want to spend their money. They must also have a variety of uniform products and if it has to store them it will have to pay for storage costs. Think about it like being an on call employee. You must be ready to respond at any moment and this flexibility is worth a certain amount of money. Now, you could call the national money system to be a public service provided by the government (and indirectly by private businesses). If you were to issue your own money what would it's liquidity premium be? It would be very low to be sure because barely anyone accepts it. So, the holders of money effectively own a free subscription to this public service. If they lend out money, they will obviously charge a fee in proportion to the liquidity premium. This fee is included in the interest rate. The borrower is now paying for the liquidity premium, the cost has been fully internalized and the problem is gone right? The problem is that the liquidity premium that is part of the interest rate is erroneously calculated as the cost of capital. It is not, it is the cost of liquidity. Now, things will get very strange. When the borrower spends his money, he will be obligated to pay the subscription fee, the cost of liquidity, even though he no longer has the money and he is no longer benefiting from the liquidity services. What this means is that the money system constantly screws over people who use money as a medium of exchange and rewards those who sabotage it. It will look as if those who "save" money will be rewarded for their frugality and "moral" behaviour and those who are in debt are being rightly punished for their unsustainable and and "sinful" behaviour. Now imagine if private households all follow this strategy of selling more than they buy and saving and lending the rest. There must be another sector that earns less than they spend and accumulates debt though borrowing. The government is forced to avoid austerity at all costs. It must become the "immoral sinner" that spends in excess to shield the private sector. If you want to solve the problem you would have to make buying and lending symmetric. Lending passes the cost of liquidity onto someone else which is in theory ok but only if buying also passes the cost of liquidity onto the seller so that no liquidity premium accrues to the lender. He will pay a liquidity premium and earn liquidity premium which then zeroes. The only one who then collects the liquidity premium is the central bank that issues the money. The problem with this is that the interest rate on cash would be negative and paper technology isn't advanced enough to calculate and display a dynamically changing face value. It isn't some conspiracy by a cabal, it is actually an engineering problem that originates from our historical and cultural attachment to cash. Humans aren't evil bribe collecting monsters, they are just in a rationality trap that is difficult to escape.