11 ms·

Bribery is largely subject to circumstance: study

74 points by cainxinth 2y ago

Rinzler89 2y ago
>largely subject to circumstance Peoples' entire behavior thought their life is largely influenced by their circumstances in which they grew up in. Corruption is just one of them.
- bilbo0s 2y ago
  Not just the circumstances you grew up in either. You can grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth, or poor as a church mouse. You get imparted the best morals in both cases. And you'll still be prone to participate in corruption given the correct circumstances when you reach that stage. It doesn't surprise me that we find participation in corruption increasing as news of corruption increases. Especially when you feel like people get away with it. One of the factors controlling whether or not people engage in these activities is how pervasive the activity is in society. Another is whether or not a person thinks they'll get away with it? If they believe they will, they're more likely to engage in corruption. And the more they see others get away with corruption, the more they think they themselves can get away with it. I liken it to speeding. To many drivers it appears pervasive, and they often see many other drivers get away with speeding. So the circumstances one grew up in won't have nearly as big an impact on anti-speeding behavior as seeing the flashing blue lights of highway patrol vehicles every few miles.
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    "You get imparted the best morals in both cases." That is simply not true, for the vast majority of the world's cultures and societies. Yes, we all have a conscience (inner moral compass), but few of us are taught how to hone and develop it over one's lifetime, using one's intellect to improve our thought processes to be better, more virtuous, human beings. We are the only creatures that self-evolve, and it is precisely our moral nature that puts this severe responsibility upon us to nurture selfless universal compassion as a personal and societal imperative. Otherwise, we wreak destruction on our blessed Mother Earth and our fellow human beings. We are to use our gifts to create happiness for each other, not misery. We have the free will to ignore this moral imperative. Look at the state of global heating to gauge its prevalence.
    - bilbo0s 2y ago
      I was giving 2 hypothetical examples. If someone grows up rich, or if someone grows up poor. It won't matter what you teach them. Nor will it matter their morals if they go out into a world where corruption is pervasive and corruption is rarely, if ever, punished. Those two hypothetical people, and any other human, would fall into the pattern of engaging in corruption. You can't stop it with upbringing.
      - MrMcCall 2y ago
        "You can't stop it with upbringing." You're right; we all have the choice to be saints or demons, or anywhere in between! We can be one on one day and the other on others. What is important is to teach empathy as the antidote to bullying, and then have those individuals construct their society's laws to prevent and/or punish bullying of all kinds. Same with govt corruption, of course. "any other human, would fall into the pattern of engaging in corruption." I wouldn't, because I honor my sense of honor, of truth. I can raise my voice and say, without hesitation, that I am incorruptible, because I choose to be this way, because it strengthens my inner peace and happiness. I was not always like this, but I have learned to be this way and appreciate feeling the joy of having self-evolved myself in this direction. It is each person's choice. That most are choosing poorly is academic, if one sees what the world is becoming, and knows what the world could be, if only our design was based upon selfless, compassionate cooperation instead of selfish, callous competition.
  - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
    Add to that in some cases, you might get in more "trouble" for not engaging in corruption. To use pier25's example again, someone who does't pay to skip the line might not get a turn if many others do and waste a bunch of time, have to come back the next day, potentially to the same effect. Or if you don't pay the expected bribe at a checkpoint, cops might find something wrong with your car lands you a more expensive fine (actual fine with paper trail + bribe instead of just bribe). You could argue that's extortion and not corruption but same principle to me. During Covid lockdown, a friend needed to pay bribes to get a pass for their family to be able to do their shopping. It was supposed to be one pass per house in their area, but the owner of the neighborhood held them back and kept several for the own family, so no bribe, no trip to the store... Better to pay the bribe to the owner than risk it with the cops checking permits on the street. This is just to say, taking part in corruption may not be optional where it is the norm, regardless of a person's education or morals.
- lapcat 2y ago
  > Peoples' entire behavior thought their life is largely influenced by their circumstances in which they grew up in. From the article: "But what they discovered is that the nationality of the other player was more important than their own and all — New Zealanders, Dutch and British — were willing to offer bribes to those they believed to be corrupt in what they defined as conditional bribery."
MrMcCall 2y ago
All human moral behavior straddles the line betweeen selflessness and selfishness, at some particular scale, from the personal to the societal/cultural. Racism? Selfishness for the group. Religious bigotry? Selfishness for the group. Misogyny? Need I say? Corruption? Selfishness for one's personal gain at the expense of the system, itself. Goodness? Virtue? Honor? Positive cultural evolution? Selflessness in service to the whole. That is why the world has been tending towards the negative for soooo long. We have been inculcated into belief systems that separate us from each other along some boundary, be it cultural, racial, religious, gender identification, sexual preference, country, neighborhood, ... whatever. We are all one human race, of many ethnicities and cultures, but we will only begin to heal our blessed Earth and end all conflict, by recognizing that we are the only creatures capable of self-evolving a world culture of universal care. The goal must be universal compassion towards one another, selflessly, except when such kind, selfless behavior would contradict the paradox of tolerance. In those instances, we must be unyielding, but as gentle as good outcomes allow. Only a compassionate society can know how and when to prosecute the vermin among us, who come from all walks of life. We must endeavor to teach the ignorant, while protecting the innocent. Just systems of law, enforced fairly, are the bedrock of such a society.
- exe34 2y ago
  I like to phrase it as "people are so utterly selfish that they will even cooperate when it's in their interest" (where their interest includes simply feeling good because that's the training they went through - e.g. somebody gives up his life for his country may sound altruistic, but we might find it abhorrent if that means he kills a bunch of children).
  - MrMcCall 2y ago
    I've never heard that saying before; I like it. Thanks for expanding my horizon. The nature of human life is, however, that we feel good for making others feel good, and vice versa. We truly reap what we sow, but it is sublime and at odds with what most people value in life, namely wealth, pleasure, and power. And, along with our power to choose, we can choose to ignore our conscience's pleadings for better behavior. So, in an odd (but accurate) way, making others happy is the most selfish thing we can do, because it is the only way to earn happiness, which is a mysterious flowing into ourselves from parts unknown. We live in a subtly reflexive, karmic universe. Only we human beings inhabit this plane of existence, because only we have the choice between selfishness and selflessness, with a conscience to orient ourselves, and a mind to evaluate the potentialities of every move we make. And we are each absolutely free to value the horrific (vice-eous) and eschew the virtuous. WWII is a deep example of how societies can go so completely wrong, and yet be so confident in their intentions and self-destructive actions. It is also an example of other folks uniting to do good in the world. Both paths are totally human; the question is which path do each of us choose, and by which moral ethic?
pier25 2y ago
So corruption is cultural. I'm a European currently living in Mexico and this has always been obvious.
- sabellito 2y ago
  When you say it like that it sounds like you're implying that Europeans are honest and Mexicans are corrupt.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    I wonder if it somehow evens out perfectly across all cultures/countries on the planet, and stays even as variables on the ground change.
  - pier25 2y ago
    No country is corruption free but the difference between Europe and Mexico is shocking. At least the European countries I know first hand. In Mexico it's blatant and it's everywhere. In Europe most people would never think of bribing a police man to escape a fine while in Mexico a mordida is business as usual. There are police men whose only job is to get money from all the people they stop. Here's an anecdote from my early years in Mexico. You have to check your car once or twice ever year to get like a govt sticker otherwise the car cannot be used in some places. Well sometimes the queues to do this process are extremely long. I've seen first hand someone from the verification center going to every car in the queue and asking "with jump or without jump?". Meaning, if you want to jump in front of the queue you have to "pay extra". All of this shouldn't be a surprise. https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023
    - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
      is with jump or without jump corruption? Depends if the money goes to the person asking or to the center. If the person is paid to let keep people in line, and keeps the money, it is corruption. If it goes to the center, it's probably called a vip pass or so somewhere. Skip the line doesn't strike me as corruption as much as actually "purchasing" your driving licence, or being let through a checkpoint with fruit you're not supposed to bring from one island onto another to avoid spreading tree disease...
wavemode 2y ago
This article hints at, but doesn't fully dive into, the perspective of personal ethics. Many people who would never steal money from an individual would happily steal money from the government. As humans we tend to view these acts very differently. Relatedly, such people are more likely to steal money from a government they see as evil/corrupt, than a government they see as good. This probably drives a large part of the "contextual" corruption effect the article discusses, where a non-corrupt individual starts working for a corrupt government and suddenly becomes corrupt.
- morkalork 2y ago
  I am not Czech but I did see a quote about life under communist rule that you made me remember: He who does not steal, steals from his family.
  - nickpinkston 2y ago
    I always liked: "We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us" - leading to rampant stealing of course.
- mathgradthrow 2y ago
  the acts are philosophically different. Stealing from a thief who has stolen from you is also pretty different from stealing from a stranger at the level of personal ethics.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Few governments aren’t a massive net surplus for their citizens, just look at any failed state to see the alternative. So calling them a thief is almost always purely self serving nonsense.
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      > Few governments aren’t a massive net surplus for their citizens If the baseline is a complete lack of social organization, yes. But that's a terrible baseline. You compare governments to other potential governments, not to anarchy. That would be like calling eating six ounces of oatmeal per day a massive net surplus to starving to death; of course it is, but that's the easiest curve in the world. And the fact that you can only have one government at a time means that your current one is blocking all of the others.
michaelteter 2y ago
One of the core problems with human behavior comes from a lack of thinking. If people would consider their actions in the context of, “what I do, others will do”, then they would realize that many actions they deem as insignificant or harmless (throwing a small piece of trash on the sidewalk, taking two items from the “take 1 free” basket, etc. cause real problems when everyone does it. It may seem insignificant to the individual, but in principle if they do it, others are also doing it, and it has a large scale impact. This applies in the positive direction too, such as when people perform random acts of kindness (which encourages others to do the same).
- Shawnecy 2y ago
  Agree 100%. I recently found that Kant had pretty much introduced this concept as categorical imperative[0]: 'Act as if the maxims of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.' [0] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
foxglacier 2y ago
The article talks about corruption like it's just a clearly bad thing and people either do the bad thing or not, but it's a blurry line between engaging in corruption and the normal ways that organizations work. Examples: If you pay a speeding ticket, isn't that like participating in corruption by buying your way out of punishment for endangering people? Is it really morally any different from paying a bribe to the policeman who catches you speeding in a country where that's the common way? In both cases, you pay for speeding and your money ends up going towards the policeman's income. Forming a personal connection with the interviewer when applying for a government job. Now you're suddenly like his friend and he's more inclined to select you. Maybe he expects to have a good relationship with you in future and gain intangible benefits from that if he hires you. In my country, teacher jobs have to be publicly advertised, presumably to combat nepotism. But schools regularly hire internally and their advertisement includes a statement like "no actual vacancy" telling people not to waste time applying. I guess they're following the law but still corrupting the ideal of not favoring your friends. It seems like you have to have a deep understanding of how and why the systems works the way it does to figure out if a particular action is morally corrupt or not. You can just follow the law but that seems to allow some society-harming corruption and nobody feels guilty about it.
- chollida1 2y ago
  > If you pay a speeding ticket, isn't that like participating in corruption by buying your way out of punishment for endangering people? Is it really morally any different from paying a bribe to the policeman who catches you speeding in a country where that's the common way? In both cases, you pay for speeding and your money ends up going towards the policeman's income. I mean, one goes to the government to help all citizens, one lines the pocket of a corrupt cop and does not benefit society in anyway. So yes, there is a huge gulf of difference between the two. Also an official ticket goes on record so the cop can tell if you've had many and maybe deserve a more severe punishment, the bribe is never recorded so we can't track the bad drives in this instance.
  - foxglacier 2y ago
    > pocket of a corrupt cop and does not benefit society in anyway. It motivates him to stop speeding drivers which is good for society. To your second point, maybe a better system would be the policeman gets paid a commission on the tickets he issues so they're still recorded. But if it's not set up that way, bribery might be more effective than not.
Frieren 2y ago
So, corruption can be fixed. Change the circumstances and people will stop being corrupt. Fairness is intrinsically human. Inequality and in general the perception of an unfair system makes people misbehave (as they try to compensate for injustices). This is very important as corruption is one of the major causes of countries poverty. (Taking as base-line the country natural-resources).
- pwgentleman 2y ago
  > Fairness is intrinsically human Is it though? Survival of the fittest doesn't sound particularly fair to me.
  - esarbe 2y ago
    Survival of the fittest is just the circumstances we find ourselves in. Our strategy to survive is cooperation. Human are amazing at cooperation, second only to eusocial insects. Fairness is an important mechanism in organizing this cooperation. So, yes. Fairness is intrinsically human.
    - pwgentleman 2y ago
      I don't think there's a direct line. "Might makes right" will also force cooperation from those who are less fortunate. I'd argue there was almost never "fairness" in human relationships, from stronger warriors getting the best food to kings forcing their will upon their subjects to filthy rich individuals owning the greatest part of the world wealth today. My point is in no way that this is right. Only that humans are not intrinsically fair.
      - esarbe 2y ago
        Research shows that the willingness to incur personal cost to punish unfairness is prevalent in all cultures. I can dig up the relevant studies if you are interested.
- ljsprague 2y ago

74 points by cainxinth 2y ago

>largely subject to circumstance Peoples' entire behavior thought their life is largely influenced by their circumstances in which they grew up in. Corruption is just one of them.

bilbo0s 2y ago
Not just the circumstances you grew up in either. You can grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth, or poor as a church mouse. You get imparted the best morals in both cases. And you'll still be prone to participate in corruption given the correct circumstances when you reach that stage. It doesn't surprise me that we find participation in corruption increasing as news of corruption increases. Especially when you feel like people get away with it. One of the factors controlling whether or not people engage in these activities is how pervasive the activity is in society. Another is whether or not a person thinks they'll get away with it? If they believe they will, they're more likely to engage in corruption. And the more they see others get away with corruption, the more they think they themselves can get away with it. I liken it to speeding. To many drivers it appears pervasive, and they often see many other drivers get away with speeding. So the circumstances one grew up in won't have nearly as big an impact on anti-speeding behavior as seeing the flashing blue lights of highway patrol vehicles every few miles.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  "You get imparted the best morals in both cases." That is simply not true, for the vast majority of the world's cultures and societies. Yes, we all have a conscience (inner moral compass), but few of us are taught how to hone and develop it over one's lifetime, using one's intellect to improve our thought processes to be better, more virtuous, human beings. We are the only creatures that self-evolve, and it is precisely our moral nature that puts this severe responsibility upon us to nurture selfless universal compassion as a personal and societal imperative. Otherwise, we wreak destruction on our blessed Mother Earth and our fellow human beings. We are to use our gifts to create happiness for each other, not misery. We have the free will to ignore this moral imperative. Look at the state of global heating to gauge its prevalence.
  - bilbo0s 2y ago
    I was giving 2 hypothetical examples. If someone grows up rich, or if someone grows up poor. It won't matter what you teach them. Nor will it matter their morals if they go out into a world where corruption is pervasive and corruption is rarely, if ever, punished. Those two hypothetical people, and any other human, would fall into the pattern of engaging in corruption. You can't stop it with upbringing.
    - MrMcCall 2y ago
      "You can't stop it with upbringing." You're right; we all have the choice to be saints or demons, or anywhere in between! We can be one on one day and the other on others. What is important is to teach empathy as the antidote to bullying, and then have those individuals construct their society's laws to prevent and/or punish bullying of all kinds. Same with govt corruption, of course. "any other human, would fall into the pattern of engaging in corruption." I wouldn't, because I honor my sense of honor, of truth. I can raise my voice and say, without hesitation, that I am incorruptible, because I choose to be this way, because it strengthens my inner peace and happiness. I was not always like this, but I have learned to be this way and appreciate feeling the joy of having self-evolved myself in this direction. It is each person's choice. That most are choosing poorly is academic, if one sees what the world is becoming, and knows what the world could be, if only our design was based upon selfless, compassionate cooperation instead of selfish, callous competition.
- BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
  Add to that in some cases, you might get in more "trouble" for not engaging in corruption. To use pier25's example again, someone who does't pay to skip the line might not get a turn if many others do and waste a bunch of time, have to come back the next day, potentially to the same effect. Or if you don't pay the expected bribe at a checkpoint, cops might find something wrong with your car lands you a more expensive fine (actual fine with paper trail + bribe instead of just bribe). You could argue that's extortion and not corruption but same principle to me. During Covid lockdown, a friend needed to pay bribes to get a pass for their family to be able to do their shopping. It was supposed to be one pass per house in their area, but the owner of the neighborhood held them back and kept several for the own family, so no bribe, no trip to the store... Better to pay the bribe to the owner than risk it with the cops checking permits on the street. This is just to say, taking part in corruption may not be optional where it is the norm, regardless of a person's education or morals.
lapcat 2y ago
> Peoples' entire behavior thought their life is largely influenced by their circumstances in which they grew up in. From the article: "But what they discovered is that the nationality of the other player was more important than their own and all — New Zealanders, Dutch and British — were willing to offer bribes to those they believed to be corrupt in what they defined as conditional bribery."

MrMcCall 2y ago

All human moral behavior straddles the line betweeen selflessness and selfishness, at some particular scale, from the personal to the societal/cultural. Racism? Selfishness for the group. Religious bigotry? Selfishness for the group. Misogyny? Need I say? Corruption? Selfishness for one's personal gain at the expense of the system, itself. Goodness? Virtue? Honor? Positive cultural evolution? Selflessness in service to the whole. That is why the world has been tending towards the negative for soooo long. We have been inculcated into belief systems that separate us from each other along some boundary, be it cultural, racial, religious, gender identification, sexual preference, country, neighborhood, ... whatever. We are all one human race, of many ethnicities and cultures, but we will only begin to heal our blessed Earth and end all conflict, by recognizing that we are the only creatures capable of self-evolving a world culture of universal care. The goal must be universal compassion towards one another, selflessly, except when such kind, selfless behavior would contradict the paradox of tolerance. In those instances, we must be unyielding, but as gentle as good outcomes allow. Only a compassionate society can know how and when to prosecute the vermin among us, who come from all walks of life. We must endeavor to teach the ignorant, while protecting the innocent. Just systems of law, enforced fairly, are the bedrock of such a society.

exe34 2y ago
I like to phrase it as "people are so utterly selfish that they will even cooperate when it's in their interest" (where their interest includes simply feeling good because that's the training they went through - e.g. somebody gives up his life for his country may sound altruistic, but we might find it abhorrent if that means he kills a bunch of children).
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  I've never heard that saying before; I like it. Thanks for expanding my horizon. The nature of human life is, however, that we feel good for making others feel good, and vice versa. We truly reap what we sow, but it is sublime and at odds with what most people value in life, namely wealth, pleasure, and power. And, along with our power to choose, we can choose to ignore our conscience's pleadings for better behavior. So, in an odd (but accurate) way, making others happy is the most selfish thing we can do, because it is the only way to earn happiness, which is a mysterious flowing into ourselves from parts unknown. We live in a subtly reflexive, karmic universe. Only we human beings inhabit this plane of existence, because only we have the choice between selfishness and selflessness, with a conscience to orient ourselves, and a mind to evaluate the potentialities of every move we make. And we are each absolutely free to value the horrific (vice-eous) and eschew the virtuous. WWII is a deep example of how societies can go so completely wrong, and yet be so confident in their intentions and self-destructive actions. It is also an example of other folks uniting to do good in the world. Both paths are totally human; the question is which path do each of us choose, and by which moral ethic?

pier25 2y ago

So corruption is cultural. I'm a European currently living in Mexico and this has always been obvious.

sabellito 2y ago
When you say it like that it sounds like you're implying that Europeans are honest and Mexicans are corrupt.
- mistermann 2y ago
  I wonder if it somehow evens out perfectly across all cultures/countries on the planet, and stays even as variables on the ground change.
- pier25 2y ago
  No country is corruption free but the difference between Europe and Mexico is shocking. At least the European countries I know first hand. In Mexico it's blatant and it's everywhere. In Europe most people would never think of bribing a police man to escape a fine while in Mexico a mordida is business as usual. There are police men whose only job is to get money from all the people they stop. Here's an anecdote from my early years in Mexico. You have to check your car once or twice ever year to get like a govt sticker otherwise the car cannot be used in some places. Well sometimes the queues to do this process are extremely long. I've seen first hand someone from the verification center going to every car in the queue and asking "with jump or without jump?". Meaning, if you want to jump in front of the queue you have to "pay extra". All of this shouldn't be a surprise. https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023 https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023
  - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
    is with jump or without jump corruption? Depends if the money goes to the person asking or to the center. If the person is paid to let keep people in line, and keeps the money, it is corruption. If it goes to the center, it's probably called a vip pass or so somewhere. Skip the line doesn't strike me as corruption as much as actually "purchasing" your driving licence, or being let through a checkpoint with fruit you're not supposed to bring from one island onto another to avoid spreading tree disease...

wavemode 2y ago

This article hints at, but doesn't fully dive into, the perspective of personal ethics. Many people who would never steal money from an individual would happily steal money from the government. As humans we tend to view these acts very differently. Relatedly, such people are more likely to steal money from a government they see as evil/corrupt, than a government they see as good. This probably drives a large part of the "contextual" corruption effect the article discusses, where a non-corrupt individual starts working for a corrupt government and suddenly becomes corrupt.

morkalork 2y ago
I am not Czech but I did see a quote about life under communist rule that you made me remember: He who does not steal, steals from his family.
- nickpinkston 2y ago
  I always liked: "We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us" - leading to rampant stealing of course.
mathgradthrow 2y ago
the acts are philosophically different. Stealing from a thief who has stolen from you is also pretty different from stealing from a stranger at the level of personal ethics.
- Retric 2y ago
  Few governments aren’t a massive net surplus for their citizens, just look at any failed state to see the alternative. So calling them a thief is almost always purely self serving nonsense.
  - pessimizer 2y ago
    > Few governments aren’t a massive net surplus for their citizens If the baseline is a complete lack of social organization, yes. But that's a terrible baseline. You compare governments to other potential governments, not to anarchy. That would be like calling eating six ounces of oatmeal per day a massive net surplus to starving to death; of course it is, but that's the easiest curve in the world. And the fact that you can only have one government at a time means that your current one is blocking all of the others.

michaelteter 2y ago

One of the core problems with human behavior comes from a lack of thinking. If people would consider their actions in the context of, “what I do, others will do”, then they would realize that many actions they deem as insignificant or harmless (throwing a small piece of trash on the sidewalk, taking two items from the “take 1 free” basket, etc. cause real problems when everyone does it. It may seem insignificant to the individual, but in principle if they do it, others are also doing it, and it has a large scale impact. This applies in the positive direction too, such as when people perform random acts of kindness (which encourages others to do the same).

Shawnecy 2y ago
Agree 100%. I recently found that Kant had pretty much introduced this concept as categorical imperative[0]: 'Act as if the maxims of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.' [0] = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

foxglacier 2y ago

The article talks about corruption like it's just a clearly bad thing and people either do the bad thing or not, but it's a blurry line between engaging in corruption and the normal ways that organizations work. Examples: If you pay a speeding ticket, isn't that like participating in corruption by buying your way out of punishment for endangering people? Is it really morally any different from paying a bribe to the policeman who catches you speeding in a country where that's the common way? In both cases, you pay for speeding and your money ends up going towards the policeman's income. Forming a personal connection with the interviewer when applying for a government job. Now you're suddenly like his friend and he's more inclined to select you. Maybe he expects to have a good relationship with you in future and gain intangible benefits from that if he hires you. In my country, teacher jobs have to be publicly advertised, presumably to combat nepotism. But schools regularly hire internally and their advertisement includes a statement like "no actual vacancy" telling people not to waste time applying. I guess they're following the law but still corrupting the ideal of not favoring your friends. It seems like you have to have a deep understanding of how and why the systems works the way it does to figure out if a particular action is morally corrupt or not. You can just follow the law but that seems to allow some society-harming corruption and nobody feels guilty about it.

chollida1 2y ago
> If you pay a speeding ticket, isn't that like participating in corruption by buying your way out of punishment for endangering people? Is it really morally any different from paying a bribe to the policeman who catches you speeding in a country where that's the common way? In both cases, you pay for speeding and your money ends up going towards the policeman's income. I mean, one goes to the government to help all citizens, one lines the pocket of a corrupt cop and does not benefit society in anyway. So yes, there is a huge gulf of difference between the two. Also an official ticket goes on record so the cop can tell if you've had many and maybe deserve a more severe punishment, the bribe is never recorded so we can't track the bad drives in this instance.
- foxglacier 2y ago
  > pocket of a corrupt cop and does not benefit society in anyway. It motivates him to stop speeding drivers which is good for society. To your second point, maybe a better system would be the policeman gets paid a commission on the tickets he issues so they're still recorded. But if it's not set up that way, bribery might be more effective than not.

Frieren 2y ago

So, corruption can be fixed. Change the circumstances and people will stop being corrupt. Fairness is intrinsically human. Inequality and in general the perception of an unfair system makes people misbehave (as they try to compensate for injustices). This is very important as corruption is one of the major causes of countries poverty. (Taking as base-line the country natural-resources).

pwgentleman 2y ago
> Fairness is intrinsically human Is it though? Survival of the fittest doesn't sound particularly fair to me.
- esarbe 2y ago
  Survival of the fittest is just the circumstances we find ourselves in. Our strategy to survive is cooperation. Human are amazing at cooperation, second only to eusocial insects. Fairness is an important mechanism in organizing this cooperation. So, yes. Fairness is intrinsically human.
  - pwgentleman 2y ago
    I don't think there's a direct line. "Might makes right" will also force cooperation from those who are less fortunate. I'd argue there was almost never "fairness" in human relationships, from stronger warriors getting the best food to kings forcing their will upon their subjects to filthy rich individuals owning the greatest part of the world wealth today. My point is in no way that this is right. Only that humans are not intrinsically fair.
    - esarbe 2y ago
      Research shows that the willingness to incur personal cost to punish unfairness is prevalent in all cultures. I can dig up the relevant studies if you are interested.
ljsprague 2y ago