Hacker News Reader

By the volume of money involved and the impact on the rest of the planet, the USA is the single one country most characterized by corruption and opportunism by a wide margin.

View on HN

The U.S. is pretty corrupt but China is plainly more corrupt by the generally agreed standard:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

It's pretty neat that Hong Kong is perceived as right after the U.S., though!

Have you considered the possibility that low corruption in the U.S. is partly attributed to the widespread practice of lobbying and political donations, which serve essentially the same purpose as corruption but not counted as corruption? (Thanks Russia)

That's certainly possible. I am not denying that the U.S. has corruption. I'm just saying that it's much easier to characterize a newly-developed nation such as China, which went through rapid modernization in the last half century (and much in the last three decades alone), as marked by corruption, because that's often characteristic of a newly booming country. The Chinese civilization is ancient, but the PRC is a relatively new country. The sort of corruption the U.S. experience has is been baked in, over time. One generally does not compare corruption in long-modernized first world countries with countries that have either gone through drastic government changes recently, or decolonized countries. They simply exist in different scales.

Perceptions can be distorted, Facts not so much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com