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Comment by narrator | Hacker News Reader

The best way to fix democracy is to adopt the Singapore system and raise politicians salaries so the people can collectively outbid the corporations for power. Trying to say politicians should be indifferent to money is like saying communism works, but was just never implemented properly.

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I up-voted you for the interesting opinion, however, I strongly disagree with you. Why would well paid politicians be less corrupt. Is there some kind of maximum amount of money that a person can gather? In Czechia politicians are extremely well paid, and we have a "founding myth" that states that a "well paid judge cannot be bribed". This has been conclusively proven to not be the case.

Singapore is surrounded by far more corrupt countries yet has one of the least corrupt governments in the world according to Transparency International. A head of a ministry there can earn more than 3 million dollars. They also have one of the most efficient, as a percentage of GDP vs health outcomes, healthcare systems in the world. Think of all the subsidies that go to corporations from the government. If they just paid 1/10th of those subsidies to politicians that regulate them, they'd cut out the middleman and save taxpayers a lot of money due to greater competition and more efficiency among the businesses and industries they oversee. Political rivals would have a huge incentive to point out corruption so they could get their job. If they were expecting to benefit from the corruption, they would instead attack on unrelated issues in order to preserve the corruption cash cow.

> Singapore is surrounded by far more corrupt countries

It's funny you say because I have my favorite counter-example from one of those surrounding countries. I was in Thailand when Thaksin Shinawatra with his ThaiRakThai party was first elected into power. Many people I spoke to had voted for him because "he's the richest man in Thailand, he doesn't need any more money so he cannot be corrupted!". Fast-Forward five years and he changed laws that allowed him to sell a larger share of his own company as well as evade paying taxes for the sale. He was ousted by the military for being too corrupt for Thailand!

He wasn't being paid by the government though. His government salary was probably trivial compared to his other sources of income.

So do we need to pay the US President billions?

If there was a "pay $10 billion to get a law" corruption system in the US, all the big companies would spend that money. Nothing is more valuable

We don't need to reward politicians for not being terrible. Having a strong independent judiciary is good enough.

Sure, in the US there's super PACs and whatnot, but when the bribery is explicit enough, politicians go to jail.

"Sure, in the US there's super PACs and whatnot, but when the bribery is explicit enough, politicians go to jail."

Most of them are not that stupid. Why risk jail when there are countless ways to be compensated and not get caught.

Sure I agree with you. But that still leaves a pretty big hole in the system.

Here's a thought: give people the right to vote for the public execution of their immediate representatives.

If you represent people faithfully you prosper, if not you get a foot shorter.

Interestingly, many people (including Trump) said the same thing about Trump in the States. He's so independently wealthy, he can finance his entire campaign himself and not be controlled by anyone because he doesn't owe them anything. Turns out that couldn't be further from the truth.

True or not. What we've learned is its not a positive either. Someone with no strings attached will act as such. That is, unteathered.

What magnitudes are you taking about? The Czech Republic has much lower wages and costs of living than its developed European neighbors. Are the judges paid well-for-Czechia, or well-for-Germany? And are the bribes large by Czech standards or German ones?

Well, the average top male manager in CZ in 2015 made 67 769 CZK monthy [1] or $3,080USD.

The average person in parliament in 2016 made around 100 000 CZK or $4,545USD. The head of parliament made 200 000 CZK or $9,091USD a month.[2]

The judges are paid by years on the bench. A judge started with 78 500CZK a month and after 18 years on the bench made 104 900CZK in 2015. And the judges also get money on the side for all sorts of things, so you can think of their pay as being like "spending money", their basic living expenses are already paid by the state. It's not an extreme amount of money, but it is generally true that politicians and judges are the best paid professions in the country. [3]

[1] http://www.statistikaamy.cz/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Hol%C...

[2] https://www.novinky.cz/domaci/423136-poslanci-si-pristi-rok-...

[3] http://www.ceska-justice.cz/blog/ustavni-soud-o-platech-soud...

Larry Lessig backs both net neutrality and democracy. See his plan for restoring democracy to the United States: https://youtu.be/PJy8vTu66tE

The main points are:

1) Citizen funded campaigns

2) Equal representation (ie, Proportional Representation)

3) Equal freedom to vote

I would like to see a combination of:

* Objective civil service exam which establishes competency in the position the person is applying for

* Once a person demonstrates basic competency, they can be entered into a pool and the final candidate chosen using sortition : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

* The selected person can only serve in that position once

* The person will be well compensated above average

Sortition seems to be a good idea, however it still puzzles me how the Athenians managed to sentence poor Socrates to death (with all their clever notions) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology_(Plato)

Also i wonder there were any other trials in Athens similar to the trial of Socrates.

Corporate lobbying is essentially bribery and should be illegal. Any attempt at corporate lobbying needs to be backed up by mandatory double digit jail sentences for the CEO and anyone else complicit in order for any law banning it to be effective. We're a long way from that becoming a reality.

Yes. But those who make the laws are the direct beneficiaries of the system. The odds of them changing - especially at the disconnect Federal level - are about as good as a cat barking.

I'm not yet sure of the solution. I do know our collective belief in barking cats doesn't help.

We need more competition. What we have now are two parties that act as one. Candidates outside that cartel are squashed. Sure we get to vote, but for what? Another cookie cutter?

We need more and better choice.

It would be interesting to go the other way: a politician must give up all property upon entering office, is given a stipend during service, and then is given a reasonably generous "retirement" package upon leaving. Assume obvious loopholes have been accounted for.

That's the Tibet model. I've thought that it might be a good one, especially if made more democratic and if the burden of theocracy was removed. However, it shouldn't be taken to the extreme of the Janeist model where the monk/leaders deprive themselves of all personal comfort. I've tried doing that myself, and I now know that my thinking is far more rational when I'm well fed and warm.

What we need is a undercover police unit, that is allowed to inpersonate any cooperate persona and trying to bribe politicians. If caught in the act- the career of both sides end instantly.

We have that. The problem is the bribery is much more subtle, much more institutionalized.

Look at Obama. He got $400,000 to speak on Wall Street. That was for one day. His salary as POTUS for a year isn't that much.

I'm not picking on Obama. He's just the example. The point is no one cared that it happened. Why? Because both parties, as well as The Fourth Estate are complicit in the scam.

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