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> Very little of the corruption I've seen involves bags of money. As I said, that's precisely because the world works the way it does, rather than the way you

> Very little of the corruption I've seen involves bags of money. As I said, that's precisely because the world works the way it does, rather than the way you wish it did. The bottleneck for lots of otherwise extremely profitable criminal endeavors is their reliance on traditional financial intermediaries. > That touches on one form of corruption. I'm talking about the type of corruption that keeps entire countries from developing economically. I don't know what you're on about. And no, your series of suggestions, which amount to saying make the current regulations stronger, doesn't come close to closing a huge loophole created by giving blanket immunity to financial intermediaries. Edit: honestly it sounds like you ran into some unfortunate situation somewhere and hold a personal grudge. But that's not a particularly meaningful basis for policy recommendation, especially given that it's quite clear that you don't understand the domain particularly well. > Most corruption involves things like (not directly financial) preferential treatment. If I give you a raise you don't deserve, give your child preferential treatment at my school, or cut a sweet deal for your company, that doesn't show up in a Paypal transaction. Most corruption is like this when you live in a country where corruption isn't much of a problem.

blagie 4y ago
With all due respect, you have no idea who I am, what my background is, where I lived, or what I know. If you wanted to argue facts, that'd be one thing. I could pull up citations. Personal attacks, I just don't feel like engaging with. I'm done here.
- candybar 4y ago
  It's not that hard to infer that you know very little about the topic at hand, but you think you know, because reasons. Your comments remind me of the other time I had to engage with complete nonsense from someone who was oddly confident about their position, despite clearly having no idea they are talking about (to be fair, you're not nearly as bad as the other person, who was unironically arguing for freezing the entire global credit market to avoid the coming COVID apocalypse of small business failures) - just because you can put together some words that appear to make sense if you don't think deeply enough or have no context, doesn't mean the resulting output makes any sense. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22680687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22680687
  - blagie 4y ago
    Oh no! Someone's wrong on the internet! No, you can't infer how much someone knows about a topic, at least from the discussion here. You can infer they know something different than you do. That happens when you get a modern-day Republican and Democrat in the same room, and each believes the other to be an idiot. The same happens if people are from different countries, cultures, or hold different values. Groups develop groupthink, with a common set of information, logic, and conclusions. It's natural to assume anyone who doesn't share those is an idiot. My own experience is that they're often not idiots, and if I go in with an open mind, I often learn something (and quite often, we both do), although that's been harder with recent political polarization. Nowadays, discussions usually shift to people calling me an idiot if I don't line up 100% with their worldview. It's been rarer and rarer to have intelligent discussions. Perhaps my conclusions were wrong. They often are; on average, we're right about half the time in discussions, and that's fine. Perhaps yours are too. Perhaps we're right in different contexts (we might live in different countries, for example). However, where you took this discussion, neither of us has any chance of discovering what the other's opinions were informed by. If you doubt something I'm saying, you can ask for evidence, rather than assuming and insulting. Perhaps each of us might have learned something. In either case, that's as far as I'm willing to take this discussion. I nerd on topics like these for fun. Getting insulted is tiring and draining rather than fun. You're welcome to believe I'm an idiot. I propose we terminate this discussion. People are welcome to be wrong on the internet.
    - candybar 4y ago
      This has nothing to do with worldviews. It's just that a statement like this: > If I were to make a list of my top-10 problems, corruption would be near the top. None of the cases I've seen involved money laundering. rather clearly reveals your lack of understanding of the topic at hand. The fact that you think this has anything to do with political polarization is another clue that you have no idea what you're talking about. Your repeated attempts to anchor all of this to your personal experience are also quite revealing with respect to both your bias and lack of grounding in the subject. And this isn't about your conclusions being wrong - it's just that you (and people like you) seem to form absurdly strong opinions when you don't even have the slightest clue regarding why things are the way they are. Btw, since you are now pretending that you were this intellectually eager person just trying to have an honest discussion and I somehow poisoned the exchange, let me remind you that this was your first contribution: > If I were to list my top 10 problems in life, money laundering would not make the list. Which, of course, is combative, dismissive and arrogant. Why on earth is your personal list of "top 10 problems in life" relevant to any discussion? Who the hell do you think you are? It's the type of response that immediately signals lack of interest in learning anything, which you have since confirmed. > I'm done here. > I propose we terminate this discussion You can do whatever you want - is your next reply also going to mention how you're really done this time?

blagie 4y ago

With all due respect, you have no idea who I am, what my background is, where I lived, or what I know. If you wanted to argue facts, that'd be one thing. I could pull up citations. Personal attacks, I just don't feel like engaging with. I'm done here.

candybar 4y ago
It's not that hard to infer that you know very little about the topic at hand, but you think you know, because reasons. Your comments remind me of the other time I had to engage with complete nonsense from someone who was oddly confident about their position, despite clearly having no idea they are talking about (to be fair, you're not nearly as bad as the other person, who was unironically arguing for freezing the entire global credit market to avoid the coming COVID apocalypse of small business failures) - just because you can put together some words that appear to make sense if you don't think deeply enough or have no context, doesn't mean the resulting output makes any sense. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22680687 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22680687
- blagie 4y ago
  Oh no! Someone's wrong on the internet! No, you can't infer how much someone knows about a topic, at least from the discussion here. You can infer they know something different than you do. That happens when you get a modern-day Republican and Democrat in the same room, and each believes the other to be an idiot. The same happens if people are from different countries, cultures, or hold different values. Groups develop groupthink, with a common set of information, logic, and conclusions. It's natural to assume anyone who doesn't share those is an idiot. My own experience is that they're often not idiots, and if I go in with an open mind, I often learn something (and quite often, we both do), although that's been harder with recent political polarization. Nowadays, discussions usually shift to people calling me an idiot if I don't line up 100% with their worldview. It's been rarer and rarer to have intelligent discussions. Perhaps my conclusions were wrong. They often are; on average, we're right about half the time in discussions, and that's fine. Perhaps yours are too. Perhaps we're right in different contexts (we might live in different countries, for example). However, where you took this discussion, neither of us has any chance of discovering what the other's opinions were informed by. If you doubt something I'm saying, you can ask for evidence, rather than assuming and insulting. Perhaps each of us might have learned something. In either case, that's as far as I'm willing to take this discussion. I nerd on topics like these for fun. Getting insulted is tiring and draining rather than fun. You're welcome to believe I'm an idiot. I propose we terminate this discussion. People are welcome to be wrong on the internet.
  - candybar 4y ago
    This has nothing to do with worldviews. It's just that a statement like this: > If I were to make a list of my top-10 problems, corruption would be near the top. None of the cases I've seen involved money laundering. rather clearly reveals your lack of understanding of the topic at hand. The fact that you think this has anything to do with political polarization is another clue that you have no idea what you're talking about. Your repeated attempts to anchor all of this to your personal experience are also quite revealing with respect to both your bias and lack of grounding in the subject. And this isn't about your conclusions being wrong - it's just that you (and people like you) seem to form absurdly strong opinions when you don't even have the slightest clue regarding why things are the way they are. Btw, since you are now pretending that you were this intellectually eager person just trying to have an honest discussion and I somehow poisoned the exchange, let me remind you that this was your first contribution: > If I were to list my top 10 problems in life, money laundering would not make the list. Which, of course, is combative, dismissive and arrogant. Why on earth is your personal list of "top 10 problems in life" relevant to any discussion? Who the hell do you think you are? It's the type of response that immediately signals lack of interest in learning anything, which you have since confirmed. > I'm done here. > I propose we terminate this discussion You can do whatever you want - is your next reply also going to mention how you're really done this time?