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The general problem is that honest politicians are uncommon. If you have to choose between corrupt politician who is going to do X and corrupt politician who is

The general problem is that honest politicians are uncommon. If you have to choose between corrupt politician who is going to do X and corrupt politician who is going to do Y then you're going to choose on the basis of X and Y rather than corruption because "honest politician" isn't on the ballot. Go ahead and change that if you can figure out how.

ccorcos 2y ago
Hot take: I think it should be legal to offer a bribe and illegal to accept a bribe. For example, I don’t think it’s immoral to offer a crooked cop in Mexico $20 to walk away from a dangerous situation. In your example, it’s not your fault politicians are accepting bribes. So you can either do it or go out of business. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. I think it would do a good job of weeding out bribes too. Because people offering bribes also get a form of blackmail - they don’t go to jail if they come clean but the other side does! I really think it would actually end up net-positive. What do you think?
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  So here's how the corruption under the existing system works. Richard is a US Senator. It's illegal for him to accept bribes and illegal for anyone to offer them, and there may even be some laws prohibiting him and his immediate family from accepting "gifts" over a certain amount. But there is nothing illegal about, say, hiring the Senator's brother-in-law to be a director on some company's board in exchange for a salary with at least six or seven digits in it. After all, the brother-in-law has to work somewhere. So the company offers Richard's brother-in-law the job, and then goes to Richard and asks him to advance the company's position on some bill. If Richard votes the way the company wants, the brother-in-law gets the money. If not, the offer falls through. Nobody actually goes to the Senator and says "do what we want and you'll get the money", it's just understood that it's what will happen, and then the families of government officials become conspicuously wealthy. If you legalize the offer and then someone goes to Richard and offers him a bribe, he declines, because of course he wouldn't accept a bribe, are you crazy? It's a crime to accept a bribe. So then nobody does that even if it's legal for them, anybody who tries is immediately suspected of wearing a wire and any explicit offers of a bribe are emphatically declined. But they still offer his brother-in-law a job, not formally in exchange for anything, but still with the implied understanding that the job is contingent on the votes.
  - Paradigma11 2y ago
    Why bother: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/business/crypto-mogul-trump-coins-civil-fraud-charges/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/business/crypto-mogul-tru...
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      So this is a good example for a different reason than you think. Let's consider the short history of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was invented and a lot of idealists had a lot of hope that it would bank the unbanked, wrest control of the payments system away from the incumbent oligopoly, solve microtransactions for decentralized systems, etc. It also generated a lot of hype, which attracts fraudsters. Fraud has been illegal for a long time and you can prosecute fraud without shutting the whole system down, but wait, what was that thing there on the list of things cryptocurrency was supposed to do? Disrupt the incumbents? Then somehow, for some reason, the rules around cryptocurrency ended up not being the ones narrowly tailored to stamp out fraud, but instead being the ones that swamp ordinary people with paperwork if they try to use it for any of the neat things it was supposed to be good for. Which killed those things before they could become too big to fail, which left only the crimes, which turned public opinion against the concept. Which allowed the government to start really smashing things up. Then you get a candidate who supports the now-hated thing that was once a hope. They put their money where their mouth is and get into the industry, and then once in office they start reforming the laws to not be so harsh and end some of the existing prosecutions, including of people who might have been involved with their previous ventures. Is that corruption or is that just what they're supposed to do when they're supportive of something? You can cast it either way, which is the problem, because then people will want to choose how to characterize it based on whether the target is in their preferred party.
  - ccorcos 2y ago
    Good point — my idea doesn’t really solve the “legal corruption” issue in politics today… That might just be inherent to politics unfortunately. It’s a zero sum game. I just read The Machiavellians by James Burnam and I like how it talks about realities as opposed to ideals. I’m not sure it’s possible to create a set of rules to prevent this. Maybe eunuchs like the Ottomans?
geysersam 2y ago
> problem is that honest politicians are uncommon I don't think that's true at all. My impression is that there are honest and honorable politicians in both parties. But the crazy Machiavellians rise to the top, I don't know why.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  It's because of the two party system. Since there are only two parties, that allows special interests to capture the two party organizations, who control which candidate their party puts on the ballot. You can see this in what happened to Bernie Sanders in the run-up to the 2016 election, or Ron Paul a couple cycles before that. This is also what sets the stage for candidates like Trump, not because Trump doesn't trade favors but because voters get so sick of being force-fed establishment candidates that any opportunity to set the status quo on fire starts to look attractive. STAR voting might help with this, because then you get more than two viable parties/candidates and each one is a chance to put a non-corrupt candidate on the ballot.

ccorcos 2y ago

Hot take: I think it should be legal to offer a bribe and illegal to accept a bribe. For example, I don’t think it’s immoral to offer a crooked cop in Mexico $20 to walk away from a dangerous situation. In your example, it’s not your fault politicians are accepting bribes. So you can either do it or go out of business. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. I think it would do a good job of weeding out bribes too. Because people offering bribes also get a form of blackmail - they don’t go to jail if they come clean but the other side does! I really think it would actually end up net-positive. What do you think?

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
So here's how the corruption under the existing system works. Richard is a US Senator. It's illegal for him to accept bribes and illegal for anyone to offer them, and there may even be some laws prohibiting him and his immediate family from accepting "gifts" over a certain amount. But there is nothing illegal about, say, hiring the Senator's brother-in-law to be a director on some company's board in exchange for a salary with at least six or seven digits in it. After all, the brother-in-law has to work somewhere. So the company offers Richard's brother-in-law the job, and then goes to Richard and asks him to advance the company's position on some bill. If Richard votes the way the company wants, the brother-in-law gets the money. If not, the offer falls through. Nobody actually goes to the Senator and says "do what we want and you'll get the money", it's just understood that it's what will happen, and then the families of government officials become conspicuously wealthy. If you legalize the offer and then someone goes to Richard and offers him a bribe, he declines, because of course he wouldn't accept a bribe, are you crazy? It's a crime to accept a bribe. So then nobody does that even if it's legal for them, anybody who tries is immediately suspected of wearing a wire and any explicit offers of a bribe are emphatically declined. But they still offer his brother-in-law a job, not formally in exchange for anything, but still with the implied understanding that the job is contingent on the votes.
- Paradigma11 2y ago
  Why bother: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/business/crypto-mogul-trump-coins-civil-fraud-charges/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/business/crypto-mogul-tru...
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    So this is a good example for a different reason than you think. Let's consider the short history of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was invented and a lot of idealists had a lot of hope that it would bank the unbanked, wrest control of the payments system away from the incumbent oligopoly, solve microtransactions for decentralized systems, etc. It also generated a lot of hype, which attracts fraudsters. Fraud has been illegal for a long time and you can prosecute fraud without shutting the whole system down, but wait, what was that thing there on the list of things cryptocurrency was supposed to do? Disrupt the incumbents? Then somehow, for some reason, the rules around cryptocurrency ended up not being the ones narrowly tailored to stamp out fraud, but instead being the ones that swamp ordinary people with paperwork if they try to use it for any of the neat things it was supposed to be good for. Which killed those things before they could become too big to fail, which left only the crimes, which turned public opinion against the concept. Which allowed the government to start really smashing things up. Then you get a candidate who supports the now-hated thing that was once a hope. They put their money where their mouth is and get into the industry, and then once in office they start reforming the laws to not be so harsh and end some of the existing prosecutions, including of people who might have been involved with their previous ventures. Is that corruption or is that just what they're supposed to do when they're supportive of something? You can cast it either way, which is the problem, because then people will want to choose how to characterize it based on whether the target is in their preferred party.
- ccorcos 2y ago
  Good point — my idea doesn’t really solve the “legal corruption” issue in politics today… That might just be inherent to politics unfortunately. It’s a zero sum game. I just read The Machiavellians by James Burnam and I like how it talks about realities as opposed to ideals. I’m not sure it’s possible to create a set of rules to prevent this. Maybe eunuchs like the Ottomans?

geysersam 2y ago

> problem is that honest politicians are uncommon I don't think that's true at all. My impression is that there are honest and honorable politicians in both parties. But the crazy Machiavellians rise to the top, I don't know why.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
It's because of the two party system. Since there are only two parties, that allows special interests to capture the two party organizations, who control which candidate their party puts on the ballot. You can see this in what happened to Bernie Sanders in the run-up to the 2016 election, or Ron Paul a couple cycles before that. This is also what sets the stage for candidates like Trump, not because Trump doesn't trade favors but because voters get so sick of being force-fed establishment candidates that any opportunity to set the status quo on fire starts to look attractive. STAR voting might help with this, because then you get more than two viable parties/candidates and each one is a chance to put a non-corrupt candidate on the ballot.