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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

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.
    - Retric 2y ago
      > But that's a terrible baseline. Fair but it’s such a massive difference there’s steps up the ladder which are still worse. I’d still be careful when suggesting anything but success is theft, because as you say internal transitions are risky. Migration however has improved the living standards of billions throughout history. Meanwhile just about anywhere today is still better for the average person than living in say medieval Europe or antiquity etc. Falling birth rates provide a significant opportunity for improvement. China isn’t a great place to live, but it’s also now the 2nd most populous country.
      - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
        I feel like you’re defending terrible governments for no particular reason. Of course it might be better to live in modern china than medieval europe, but this doesn’t defeat the notion that modern china could be made much better for its people if the structure of its government were altered. The point of the argument isn’t, or doesn’t have to be, technicality (“bad governance constitutes theft”) but a statement about what one believes the people deserve. Implicit in the argument is a belief in a social contract being voided by one party, wherein the government makes lacking effort to provide “the best possible governance” and the people respond with disobedience. I’d personally disagree with the notion of a social contract, and argue only from the idea that an alteration to the government could produce better outcomes, but that argument would produce the same sentiment as the one they’re expressing, so in what way would you disagree with their sentiment?
  - comex 2y ago
    Define “net”. An especially corrupt government might be a net surplus compared to anarchy, yet simultaneously a significant net loss compared to a more typical government. Put another way, the government is failing to give its citizens what it owes them. By analogy, suppose your employer pays you half the wage they agreed to pay. That’s still a form of theft, even if you are still at a surplus compared to the alternative of being unemployed.
    - Retric 2y ago
      Ed: When exactly did these governments agree to do better? A restaurant consistently providing bad food isn’t theft, it’s just a poor place to go. I have a great deal of sympathy for people living in areas captured by Russia or locked into North Korea etc, but in general it’s decades to generations of poor performance at this point. > Define “net”. All personal costs vs all personal benefits. Militaries and public roads etc may be basic functions of government but someone needs to pay for them and your personal contribution isn’t enough to completely cover such expenses.
      - lupire 2y ago
        You might do well to read about the fundamentals of political philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
        lazide 2y ago
        I doubt very much they don’t know the potential philosophy. Personally though, at some point theoretical vs practical takes precedence yeah. Or are we going to start going around ‘fixing’ everyone else’s political systems? Because historically, that hasn’t exactly helped has it?
        Retric 2y ago
        That’s not the fundamentals of political philosophy. It’s a western take on political philosophy, there’s many others both from the west and elsewhere.
        2y ago
  - kazinator 2y ago
    If I rob Peter, but give every penny to Paul, I'm a thief from Peter's perspective.
    - Retric 2y ago
      The question is if I rob Peter, then give him twice as much in return am I still a thief?
      - kazinator 2y ago
        Obviously yes; the surplus had to be taken from someone else.
        Retric 2y ago
        Not when economies of scale provide an ever larger surplus. Guarding one house in a lawless environment takes less total manpower than guarding a town but not on a per property basis. Enforcing law and order in a country is even more efficient.
        kazinator 2y ago
        Governments don't produce anything. Taxing is only redistribution, not production. You can't tax your way into wealth. Economies of scale are a facet of capitalism. If you rob me but then give me back twice as much, the only way this action is not unfair to someone else is if it has the effect of undoing a robbery. I e the surplus I received in the end is actually restitution. Furthermore, it was taken back from the correctly identified robbers. That's how your Bolsheviks and Leninists justified their ideas and actions: monarchs and capitalists are just parasites who have taken from the people, so if you take it away from them, it's just restitution.
        Retric 2y ago
        > Economies of scale are a facet of capitalism Animal flocking behavior exists from what amounts to economies of scale. Each animal can spend less effort watching their surroundings when there exists a large group with similar motivations. > the only way this action is not unfair to someone else is if it has the effect of undoing a robbery The benefit of a road network grows with the total size of a road network and can therefore quickly exceed the cost of creating and maintaining it. That’s a surplus which has nothing to do with moving money from individual A to individual B. It’s a surplus derived from scale not the efficiency of construing individual segments of road.
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    People tend to judge their government by the standard of what it could be if it just exercised common decency and honesty, not by comparison to failed states or anarchy. Personally I think this is the correct standard.
- kazinator 2y ago
  It's not stealing until you've recovered what was taken from you plus some discretionary punitive amount. Beyond that it swings into theft.
lifeisstillgood 2y ago
As Roger Moore said “Just because a man cheats his government does not mean he will betray his country” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_Athena https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_Athena
pessimizer 2y ago
> Many people who would never steal money from an individual would happily steal money from the government. It's always said something to me that most people who wouldn't dream of making a profit selling something to a member of their family will spend all day trying to profit off of strangers. It may just be a matter of proximity, with a instinctual heuristic of shared interests. Rather than people making a division of governments between "good" and "evil", it's more like a government that's with me or against me. I don't want to hurt what's helping me. Which honestly takes it completely out of the range of morality, and back into realpolitik and pragmatism.
- Teever 2y ago
  'To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.' -- Abbie Hoffman
- lupire 2y ago
  What is morality but a simplified approximation of realpolitik?
  - blitzar 2y ago
    Your morals are my profit.
naveen99 2y ago
Some government employees even feel the need of a union for collective bargaining against the government.
venkat223 2y ago
In India it is systemic variable in every system the legal structure is made in such a way there is always provision for corruption and bribery at various levels the political system encourages it in large quantity when is the local small time system and official them takes it in in small quantities

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.
  - Retric 2y ago
    > But that's a terrible baseline. Fair but it’s such a massive difference there’s steps up the ladder which are still worse. I’d still be careful when suggesting anything but success is theft, because as you say internal transitions are risky. Migration however has improved the living standards of billions throughout history. Meanwhile just about anywhere today is still better for the average person than living in say medieval Europe or antiquity etc. Falling birth rates provide a significant opportunity for improvement. China isn’t a great place to live, but it’s also now the 2nd most populous country.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
      I feel like you’re defending terrible governments for no particular reason. Of course it might be better to live in modern china than medieval europe, but this doesn’t defeat the notion that modern china could be made much better for its people if the structure of its government were altered. The point of the argument isn’t, or doesn’t have to be, technicality (“bad governance constitutes theft”) but a statement about what one believes the people deserve. Implicit in the argument is a belief in a social contract being voided by one party, wherein the government makes lacking effort to provide “the best possible governance” and the people respond with disobedience. I’d personally disagree with the notion of a social contract, and argue only from the idea that an alteration to the government could produce better outcomes, but that argument would produce the same sentiment as the one they’re expressing, so in what way would you disagree with their sentiment?
- comex 2y ago
  Define “net”. An especially corrupt government might be a net surplus compared to anarchy, yet simultaneously a significant net loss compared to a more typical government. Put another way, the government is failing to give its citizens what it owes them. By analogy, suppose your employer pays you half the wage they agreed to pay. That’s still a form of theft, even if you are still at a surplus compared to the alternative of being unemployed.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Ed: When exactly did these governments agree to do better? A restaurant consistently providing bad food isn’t theft, it’s just a poor place to go. I have a great deal of sympathy for people living in areas captured by Russia or locked into North Korea etc, but in general it’s decades to generations of poor performance at this point. > Define “net”. All personal costs vs all personal benefits. Militaries and public roads etc may be basic functions of government but someone needs to pay for them and your personal contribution isn’t enough to completely cover such expenses.
    - lupire 2y ago
      You might do well to read about the fundamentals of political philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
      - lazide 2y ago
        I doubt very much they don’t know the potential philosophy. Personally though, at some point theoretical vs practical takes precedence yeah. Or are we going to start going around ‘fixing’ everyone else’s political systems? Because historically, that hasn’t exactly helped has it?
      - Retric 2y ago
        That’s not the fundamentals of political philosophy. It’s a western take on political philosophy, there’s many others both from the west and elsewhere.
      - 2y ago
- kazinator 2y ago
  If I rob Peter, but give every penny to Paul, I'm a thief from Peter's perspective.
  - Retric 2y ago
    The question is if I rob Peter, then give him twice as much in return am I still a thief?
    - kazinator 2y ago
      Obviously yes; the surplus had to be taken from someone else.
      - Retric 2y ago
        Not when economies of scale provide an ever larger surplus. Guarding one house in a lawless environment takes less total manpower than guarding a town but not on a per property basis. Enforcing law and order in a country is even more efficient.
        kazinator 2y ago
        Governments don't produce anything. Taxing is only redistribution, not production. You can't tax your way into wealth. Economies of scale are a facet of capitalism. If you rob me but then give me back twice as much, the only way this action is not unfair to someone else is if it has the effect of undoing a robbery. I e the surplus I received in the end is actually restitution. Furthermore, it was taken back from the correctly identified robbers. That's how your Bolsheviks and Leninists justified their ideas and actions: monarchs and capitalists are just parasites who have taken from the people, so if you take it away from them, it's just restitution.
        Retric 2y ago
        > Economies of scale are a facet of capitalism Animal flocking behavior exists from what amounts to economies of scale. Each animal can spend less effort watching their surroundings when there exists a large group with similar motivations. > the only way this action is not unfair to someone else is if it has the effect of undoing a robbery The benefit of a road network grows with the total size of a road network and can therefore quickly exceed the cost of creating and maintaining it. That’s a surplus which has nothing to do with moving money from individual A to individual B. It’s a surplus derived from scale not the efficiency of construing individual segments of road.
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  People tend to judge their government by the standard of what it could be if it just exercised common decency and honesty, not by comparison to failed states or anarchy. Personally I think this is the correct standard.
kazinator 2y ago
It's not stealing until you've recovered what was taken from you plus some discretionary punitive amount. Beyond that it swings into theft.

lifeisstillgood 2y ago

As Roger Moore said “Just because a man cheats his government does not mean he will betray his country” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_Athena https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_Athena

pessimizer 2y ago

> Many people who would never steal money from an individual would happily steal money from the government. It's always said something to me that most people who wouldn't dream of making a profit selling something to a member of their family will spend all day trying to profit off of strangers. It may just be a matter of proximity, with a instinctual heuristic of shared interests. Rather than people making a division of governments between "good" and "evil", it's more like a government that's with me or against me. I don't want to hurt what's helping me. Which honestly takes it completely out of the range of morality, and back into realpolitik and pragmatism.

Teever 2y ago
'To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.' -- Abbie Hoffman
lupire 2y ago
What is morality but a simplified approximation of realpolitik?
- blitzar 2y ago
  Your morals are my profit.

naveen99 2y ago

Some government employees even feel the need of a union for collective bargaining against the government.

venkat223 2y ago

In India it is systemic variable in every system the legal structure is made in such a way there is always provision for corruption and bribery at various levels the political system encourages it in large quantity when is the local small time system and official them takes it in in small quantities