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Another word for the corruption you speak of is friendship. The key stakeholders and their vendors are friends. They know each other, they get along, they get

Another word for the corruption you speak of is friendship. The key stakeholders and their vendors are friends. They know each other, they get along, they get the product, and like you said, they've built their clout on the know-how of people and product. To choose another vendor, is to disrupt that friendship, and its ancillary benefits, e.g., a ring of trust and a status quo. I wrote this comment because I've been on the inside. It doesn't feel like corruption when you're in it. It feels like you're getting work done with people you like, just ignoring silly process and distractions that make you think too hard and feel weird. Seeing things differently requires an outside power to intervene, or for the few key insiders to have an ethic that forces them to question their good time and each other. Most groups of people, not just businesses, punish ethics in pursuit of collective self-interest. That is indeed corruption but it exists so systemically and so personally that I would first call it human nature. [1] If you read this far, check out ChuckMcM's view on layoffs at Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38384254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38384254

whatshisface 3y ago
Guess how it works in third world governments!
lelanthran 3y ago
> The key stakeholders and their vendors are friends. They know each other, they get along, they get the product, and like you said, they've built their clout on the know-how of people and product. It's not even a friendship in many cases: This is how CEOs fail upwards, after all. It's better to take on a CEO/vendor with a known incompetence level than take a risk on an unknown. Look at it from this point of view: you're the customer, you have an existing supplier, who frequently fucks up. Due to the frequency, you already have controls in place to mitigate the fuck ups. Do you really want to try someone new with different fuckups that will get past your existing controls?
llamaLord 3y ago
To be clear, I 100% agree. That's why I refer to it as "structural". No individual or even group of individuals is actively doing anything corrupt, but the overall structure creates an environment where self-interested individuals create an outcome that is VERY difficult to distinguish vs the outcome you would get from more obtuse corruption. It's more akin to the Chinese concept of Guangxi (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi). The problem is that where Guangxi ends and corruption begins is a VERY murky question with no clear way of finding an answer.

whatshisface 3y ago

Guess how it works in third world governments!

lelanthran 3y ago

> The key stakeholders and their vendors are friends. They know each other, they get along, they get the product, and like you said, they've built their clout on the know-how of people and product. It's not even a friendship in many cases: This is how CEOs fail upwards, after all. It's better to take on a CEO/vendor with a known incompetence level than take a risk on an unknown. Look at it from this point of view: you're the customer, you have an existing supplier, who frequently fucks up. Due to the frequency, you already have controls in place to mitigate the fuck ups. Do you really want to try someone new with different fuckups that will get past your existing controls?

llamaLord 3y ago

To be clear, I 100% agree. That's why I refer to it as "structural". No individual or even group of individuals is actively doing anything corrupt, but the overall structure creates an environment where self-interested individuals create an outcome that is VERY difficult to distinguish vs the outcome you would get from more obtuse corruption. It's more akin to the Chinese concept of Guangxi (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanxi). The problem is that where Guangxi ends and corruption begins is a VERY murky question with no clear way of finding an answer.