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I think the most interesting aspect of Singapore's government is they pay government officials multimillion dollar salaries. This makes them very hard to bribe

I think the most interesting aspect of Singapore's government is they pay government officials multimillion dollar salaries. This makes them very hard to bribe. If you think about the size of the budgets government officials have authority over compared to their salaries, the temptation to be bribed and thus be dominated by corporate interests is overwhelming. In Singapore the incentives are reversed. Any allegation of corruption risks a lost job. In other countries they would get fired and go to work at the companies that bribed them but in Singapore the private companies will have difficulty competing with their government salary, not to mention the prestige that comes with being a government official. I would be in support of that being tried in the U.S, especially for senior level positions. It would probably save money in the long run.

lifeformed 12y ago
That'd be a hard case to present to the public... "Politicians want a 20x salary raise so they will act more ethically."
- SilasX 12y ago
  Technically, unelected bureaucrats rather than politicians ... but yeah, equally as unappealing.
  - TrainedMonkey 12y ago
    I think if you combine that with IT2000[0], it would be more of a "let's pay technocrats tons of money to build their vision of paradise". [0] As per article, it is a law which mandated annual increases in productivity of 3-4%. So essentially this is officially sustained technology race.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
Bribery/favor system isn't usually for personal gain, its to pay for re-election campaigns. That's why we have this incredibly complex and huge political lobbyist system in the US. Even someone worth millions can't personally pay out their own election campaign or just may not want to waste their personal funds. >I would be in support of that being tried in the U.S, especially for senior level positions Roughly 50% of Congress are millionaires with a median of about $3m. In other words, they're all fairly well off as-is.
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago
  > pay for re-election campaigns In other words, the fact that the foundations of the political process depend heavily on money is what spoils the whole thing. Nothing will get fixed as long as that remains true. Get money out of politics.
  - slacka 12y ago
    > Get money out of politics. The only way to do that now is with a constitutional amendment. The Wolf PAC is working hard to get one passed and has actually succeeded in several states. http://www.wolf-pac.com/effects_of_corporate_lobbying_take_action_against_corporate_lobbying http://www.wolf-pac.com/effects_of_corporate_lobbying_take_a...
    - lmm 12y ago
      The "Wolf PAC"? Aren't they a subbranch of the New World Order?
  - jmccree 12y ago
    So to preserve democracy, we must sacrifice freedom of speech?
    - oliyoung 12y ago
      we're (Australia) doing okay with the democracy thing, no explicit freedom of speech. Plus, it depends if you define speech as "giving money to someone"
      - unabridged 12y ago
        Even if you ban/regulate giving money to candidates, are you willing to ban the ability of citizens to buy ad time and say something political? Who defines what "political" is? Would you ban: An ad that promotes preserving a specific forest while there is a referendum about increasing environmental spending. An ad that says the schools are falling apart and understaffed while an education millage is being voted on. An ad that says you shouldn't be forced to buy healthcare while a candidate/party's platform is strongly tied to that policy.
ErikRogneby 12y ago
In a country with a 16 trillion dollar GDP and a 3.5 trillion dollar budget how big would the salaries need to be to make our government officials incorruptible? It's a bigger stakes game here in the USA.
jpatokal 12y ago
I've heard this theory quite a few times, but the fact that there is virtually zero low-level corruption (eg. cops asking for bribes) despite low-level public salaries being quite low doesn't jibe that well with this. More disturbingly, despite that high pay there are regular reports of corruption in the highest ranks, only a few of which even see the light. Here's one particularly unedifying saga that only made the news because the head honcho of a government-linked charity, paid $600k/year plus stupidly generous expenses (fleet of 8 cars etc), was foolish enough to sue a state-owned newspaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Kidney_Foundation_Singapore_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Kidney_Foundation_Sin...
- narrator 12y ago
  They are ranked 7th best in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index which is just about the most objective measure of relative country corruption out there so you can't really objectively say that they are just as corrupt as everybody else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#20...
  - jpatokal 12y ago
    Uh, I actually said is "there is virtually zero low-level corruption", which is entirely in line with that. I'm just taking exception to the rather glib claim that high salaries eliminate corruption at higher levels, because quite clearly they do not, even in Singapore. But this is not the kind of thing that affects perceptions in day-to-day life, while the Malaysian cop asking for an on-the-spot fine or the Indonesian immigration dude finding a "mistake" in your visa does.
yourapostasy 12y ago
With increasingly-replicated data that increasing seniority levels of leadership and simply the plain wealthy over-represent sociopathic and psychopathic traits when compared to the general population, I doubt the idea of paying government leaders more will move the corruption needle any appreciable amount. Generally, it seems the prevalence and diffusion of these traits is semi-stable depending upon the cohort or even industry (financial services, for example) under observation. Note we're still talking about relatively small groups even so: single digit percentages at most is all I've seen for US population cohorts of various selection criteria. The positive takeaway is that in the US at least, while leadership overrepresents these traits, you are more likely to simply meet well-intentioned and honest leaders (or well-intentioned but ineffective) leaders than those who exhibit the aforementioned traits. What paying government leaders more CAN pave the way clear for however, is for far less "privacy" of their daily lives, and far stricter anti-corruption regulations. Something along the lines of a bodycam streaming straight to a replicated digital vault, accompanied by rules like unexplained gaps in the stream are grounds for instant, unappeal-able, permanent dismissal with revocation of all retirement benefits, with the ability to let third parties also vault the encrypted streams if desired. If they're paid so much out in the open, then it will probably be easy to sell the voting public on keeping such "digital tabs" on the leadership. Still wouldn't prevent the corruption, but I'd be happy to root it out before it rots out the infrastructure from underneath us.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  You could go some way to solving the problem by making all financial transactions public, no exceptions, with extremely severe penalties for attempted non-disclosure. This suggestion often makes heads explodes, but some countries do something similar already.
unabridged 12y ago
The price of bribery/lobbying is related to (price to influence) * (number of officials). Instead of raising the price to influence by paying them more, I recommend raising the number of officials. If congress had 10k members, bribing enough to get something passed would get quite expensive. (6320 would be the current min size of the US House of Representatives by the original method in the Constitution of at least 1 per 50k)
- arebop 12y ago
  I guess that would raise costs to 6320/435 = 14.5x. At $1.6 million per seat [http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/how-much-does-a-house-seat-cost/ http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/how-much-does-...] you could buy congress for $10.1 billion. The federal budget is about $3800 billion, so... this seems like an attractive price if the congress you buy is willing to steer a few percent of the federal budget into your pocket.

lifeformed 12y ago

That'd be a hard case to present to the public... "Politicians want a 20x salary raise so they will act more ethically."

SilasX 12y ago
Technically, unelected bureaucrats rather than politicians ... but yeah, equally as unappealing.
- TrainedMonkey 12y ago
  I think if you combine that with IT2000[0], it would be more of a "let's pay technocrats tons of money to build their vision of paradise". [0] As per article, it is a law which mandated annual increases in productivity of 3-4%. So essentially this is officially sustained technology race.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

Bribery/favor system isn't usually for personal gain, its to pay for re-election campaigns. That's why we have this incredibly complex and huge political lobbyist system in the US. Even someone worth millions can't personally pay out their own election campaign or just may not want to waste their personal funds. >I would be in support of that being tried in the U.S, especially for senior level positions Roughly 50% of Congress are millionaires with a median of about $3m. In other words, they're all fairly well off as-is.

Florin_Andrei 12y ago
> pay for re-election campaigns In other words, the fact that the foundations of the political process depend heavily on money is what spoils the whole thing. Nothing will get fixed as long as that remains true. Get money out of politics.
- slacka 12y ago
  > Get money out of politics. The only way to do that now is with a constitutional amendment. The Wolf PAC is working hard to get one passed and has actually succeeded in several states. http://www.wolf-pac.com/effects_of_corporate_lobbying_take_action_against_corporate_lobbying http://www.wolf-pac.com/effects_of_corporate_lobbying_take_a...
  - lmm 12y ago
    The "Wolf PAC"? Aren't they a subbranch of the New World Order?
- jmccree 12y ago
  So to preserve democracy, we must sacrifice freedom of speech?
  - oliyoung 12y ago
    we're (Australia) doing okay with the democracy thing, no explicit freedom of speech. Plus, it depends if you define speech as "giving money to someone"
    - unabridged 12y ago
      Even if you ban/regulate giving money to candidates, are you willing to ban the ability of citizens to buy ad time and say something political? Who defines what "political" is? Would you ban: An ad that promotes preserving a specific forest while there is a referendum about increasing environmental spending. An ad that says the schools are falling apart and understaffed while an education millage is being voted on. An ad that says you shouldn't be forced to buy healthcare while a candidate/party's platform is strongly tied to that policy.

ErikRogneby 12y ago

In a country with a 16 trillion dollar GDP and a 3.5 trillion dollar budget how big would the salaries need to be to make our government officials incorruptible? It's a bigger stakes game here in the USA.

jpatokal 12y ago

I've heard this theory quite a few times, but the fact that there is virtually zero low-level corruption (eg. cops asking for bribes) despite low-level public salaries being quite low doesn't jibe that well with this. More disturbingly, despite that high pay there are regular reports of corruption in the highest ranks, only a few of which even see the light. Here's one particularly unedifying saga that only made the news because the head honcho of a government-linked charity, paid $600k/year plus stupidly generous expenses (fleet of 8 cars etc), was foolish enough to sue a state-owned newspaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Kidney_Foundation_Singapore_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Kidney_Foundation_Sin...

narrator 12y ago
They are ranked 7th best in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index which is just about the most objective measure of relative country corruption out there so you can't really objectively say that they are just as corrupt as everybody else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#2014 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index#20...
- jpatokal 12y ago
  Uh, I actually said is "there is virtually zero low-level corruption", which is entirely in line with that. I'm just taking exception to the rather glib claim that high salaries eliminate corruption at higher levels, because quite clearly they do not, even in Singapore. But this is not the kind of thing that affects perceptions in day-to-day life, while the Malaysian cop asking for an on-the-spot fine or the Indonesian immigration dude finding a "mistake" in your visa does.

yourapostasy 12y ago

With increasingly-replicated data that increasing seniority levels of leadership and simply the plain wealthy over-represent sociopathic and psychopathic traits when compared to the general population, I doubt the idea of paying government leaders more will move the corruption needle any appreciable amount. Generally, it seems the prevalence and diffusion of these traits is semi-stable depending upon the cohort or even industry (financial services, for example) under observation. Note we're still talking about relatively small groups even so: single digit percentages at most is all I've seen for US population cohorts of various selection criteria. The positive takeaway is that in the US at least, while leadership overrepresents these traits, you are more likely to simply meet well-intentioned and honest leaders (or well-intentioned but ineffective) leaders than those who exhibit the aforementioned traits. What paying government leaders more CAN pave the way clear for however, is for far less "privacy" of their daily lives, and far stricter anti-corruption regulations. Something along the lines of a bodycam streaming straight to a replicated digital vault, accompanied by rules like unexplained gaps in the stream are grounds for instant, unappeal-able, permanent dismissal with revocation of all retirement benefits, with the ability to let third parties also vault the encrypted streams if desired. If they're paid so much out in the open, then it will probably be easy to sell the voting public on keeping such "digital tabs" on the leadership. Still wouldn't prevent the corruption, but I'd be happy to root it out before it rots out the infrastructure from underneath us.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
You could go some way to solving the problem by making all financial transactions public, no exceptions, with extremely severe penalties for attempted non-disclosure. This suggestion often makes heads explodes, but some countries do something similar already.

unabridged 12y ago

The price of bribery/lobbying is related to (price to influence) * (number of officials). Instead of raising the price to influence by paying them more, I recommend raising the number of officials. If congress had 10k members, bribing enough to get something passed would get quite expensive. (6320 would be the current min size of the US House of Representatives by the original method in the Constitution of at least 1 per 50k)

arebop 12y ago
I guess that would raise costs to 6320/435 = 14.5x. At $1.6 million per seat [http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/how-much-does-a-house-seat-cost/ http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/how-much-does-...] you could buy congress for $10.1 billion. The federal budget is about $3800 billion, so... this seems like an attractive price if the congress you buy is willing to steer a few percent of the federal budget into your pocket.