7 ms·

Comparing Soviet corruption to US corruption is like comparing a decapitation to a papercut.

by snakeyjake 3y ago

pfdietz 3y ago
In a way, the Soviet economic system only worked as well as it did because of corruption.
- ta_1138 3y ago
  It's a common problem in all kinds of low-perforing governments: You get extremely tough regulation that makes it very difficult to do any economic activity legally, and then you can bypass said regulation with corruption. The high barriers to entrepreneurship, or just constructing a building or buying materials are a feature, as it means more advantages to those that can ignore the regulations. We can see this even in relatively well functioning states: Say, when you make infill development expensive, but provide tax abatements to compensate, but said abatements must be approved by a board of aldermen or something like that. Being able to control who builds more cheaply is valuable, an then you just make sure that you only vote yes to good friends that patronize your cousin's consulting business. The less discretion the bureaucrat has, the harder it is for them to be corrupt. And in the soviet union, they had a lof of discretion.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    > The less discretion the bureaucrat has, the harder it is for them to be corrupt. This is what pisses me off about the SF planning commission. They shouldn't get to make case-by-case decisions about what building projects go through. This should be handled by career employees that consult a checklist of items that need to be completed, and codes that need to be followed, and when all those boxes are checked, that's what approval looks like. It's not even relevant whether the planning commission is corrupt or not. The fact that they get to make arbitrary value judgments is a problem.
underlipton 3y ago
Only if you consider what Americans tend to consider corruption. If you, instead, get a little creative and include things like segregation (essentially a massive state-sponsored in-group grift that cost the country an untold fortune in the lost proceeds of misallocated capital, primary among that being the very concept of the modern suburb and the automobile-based infrastructure required to head off its ever-imminent lack of sustainability) and a great deal of our foreign policy (meant to direct funds into the coffers of the MIC and the politicians directly invested in it, at the cost of untold blood and treasure)... well, we've been pretty damn corrupt.
- _pi 3y ago
  yeah the funny thing about these comments you have a bunch of people conflating a lot of stuff. For people who think the USSR was "more corrupt" they're often talking about a narrow conception of corruption that is defined by the US on technical terms. Or they're simply talking about the behavioral differences between rich vs poor countries. Boeing's quality issues are a great example because it's very obviously corruption, but not in the US technical sense. But the reality is that Boeing and the US government basically said yeah fuck it, do your own QA for the 737 Max and then after the fuckups turned around and said okay we won't charge you the full fine. And that would have just gone away if the 787 fuckups didn't happen. Now suddnely people look really bad giving Boeing sweetheart enforcement deals. Americans think corruption is a cop pocketing $ on the side of the highway, but it's not corruption when the cop confiscates $ on the side of the highway without trial, gives it to his police department, which pays out the confiscated funds as bonuses, new equipment, and other various frivolities. At least the Soviets spit in your face when and how they wanted to and were limited by physicality. Americans make a Rube Golberg machine where saliva of their oligarchs is collected throughout the day in massive quantities and piped out of the building where it happens to land on your face 80% of the time. Then they will tell you it's your fault for being in the way of the spit pipes. We cannot recognize corruption in the US because our corruption is mechanical, and we've precluded that mechanical things cannot be a form of corruption. USSR corruption was more visceral and obvious, that's pretty much it. This makes a lot more sense if you understand that all measures of "corruption" don't define corruption but use the perception of corruption. Another example. Ukraine is a corrupt country, no doubt about it. But the "anti-corruption" NGO complex in Ukraine essentially prevents certain laws from passing like sourcing laws which exist in all major developed countries. They see these laws as a form of corruption, which in and of themselves they're not. The other reality is that a lot of the anti-corruption NGO's are corrupt. The reason they argue against sourcing laws is because foreign entities stand to lose money if Ukraine has to buy a certain percentage of goods from Ukrainian factories. Foreign money buys NGO's easily there, so NGO's don't' want their funding to dry up. So everything is in stasis. But by Western standards none of the above is "corruption" because while the people making these deals can likely speak freely, by Western standards it's really easy to hide this corruption as coincidental and unrelated business decisions. In reality corruption itself is an industry because it's a way to make money and a tool to make money with. Corruption is not a really simple thing to adjudicate

Comparing Soviet corruption to US corruption is like comparing a decapitation to a papercut.

pfdietz 3y ago

In a way, the Soviet economic system only worked as well as it did because of corruption.

ta_1138 3y ago
It's a common problem in all kinds of low-perforing governments: You get extremely tough regulation that makes it very difficult to do any economic activity legally, and then you can bypass said regulation with corruption. The high barriers to entrepreneurship, or just constructing a building or buying materials are a feature, as it means more advantages to those that can ignore the regulations. We can see this even in relatively well functioning states: Say, when you make infill development expensive, but provide tax abatements to compensate, but said abatements must be approved by a board of aldermen or something like that. Being able to control who builds more cheaply is valuable, an then you just make sure that you only vote yes to good friends that patronize your cousin's consulting business. The less discretion the bureaucrat has, the harder it is for them to be corrupt. And in the soviet union, they had a lof of discretion.
- kelnos 3y ago
  > The less discretion the bureaucrat has, the harder it is for them to be corrupt. This is what pisses me off about the SF planning commission. They shouldn't get to make case-by-case decisions about what building projects go through. This should be handled by career employees that consult a checklist of items that need to be completed, and codes that need to be followed, and when all those boxes are checked, that's what approval looks like. It's not even relevant whether the planning commission is corrupt or not. The fact that they get to make arbitrary value judgments is a problem.

underlipton 3y ago

Only if you consider what Americans tend to consider corruption. If you, instead, get a little creative and include things like segregation (essentially a massive state-sponsored in-group grift that cost the country an untold fortune in the lost proceeds of misallocated capital, primary among that being the very concept of the modern suburb and the automobile-based infrastructure required to head off its ever-imminent lack of sustainability) and a great deal of our foreign policy (meant to direct funds into the coffers of the MIC and the politicians directly invested in it, at the cost of untold blood and treasure)... well, we've been pretty damn corrupt.

_pi 3y ago
yeah the funny thing about these comments you have a bunch of people conflating a lot of stuff. For people who think the USSR was "more corrupt" they're often talking about a narrow conception of corruption that is defined by the US on technical terms. Or they're simply talking about the behavioral differences between rich vs poor countries. Boeing's quality issues are a great example because it's very obviously corruption, but not in the US technical sense. But the reality is that Boeing and the US government basically said yeah fuck it, do your own QA for the 737 Max and then after the fuckups turned around and said okay we won't charge you the full fine. And that would have just gone away if the 787 fuckups didn't happen. Now suddnely people look really bad giving Boeing sweetheart enforcement deals. Americans think corruption is a cop pocketing $ on the side of the highway, but it's not corruption when the cop confiscates $ on the side of the highway without trial, gives it to his police department, which pays out the confiscated funds as bonuses, new equipment, and other various frivolities. At least the Soviets spit in your face when and how they wanted to and were limited by physicality. Americans make a Rube Golberg machine where saliva of their oligarchs is collected throughout the day in massive quantities and piped out of the building where it happens to land on your face 80% of the time. Then they will tell you it's your fault for being in the way of the spit pipes. We cannot recognize corruption in the US because our corruption is mechanical, and we've precluded that mechanical things cannot be a form of corruption. USSR corruption was more visceral and obvious, that's pretty much it. This makes a lot more sense if you understand that all measures of "corruption" don't define corruption but use the perception of corruption. Another example. Ukraine is a corrupt country, no doubt about it. But the "anti-corruption" NGO complex in Ukraine essentially prevents certain laws from passing like sourcing laws which exist in all major developed countries. They see these laws as a form of corruption, which in and of themselves they're not. The other reality is that a lot of the anti-corruption NGO's are corrupt. The reason they argue against sourcing laws is because foreign entities stand to lose money if Ukraine has to buy a certain percentage of goods from Ukrainian factories. Foreign money buys NGO's easily there, so NGO's don't' want their funding to dry up. So everything is in stasis. But by Western standards none of the above is "corruption" because while the people making these deals can likely speak freely, by Western standards it's really easy to hide this corruption as coincidental and unrelated business decisions. In reality corruption itself is an industry because it's a way to make money and a tool to make money with. Corruption is not a really simple thing to adjudicate