Why Anti-Corruption Strategies May Backfire
nautil.us
nautil.us
We want a system that is:
1. fair, and Americans immediately suspect that humans tend to favor their friends
2. based on clear, written rules, so everyone can compete on an even playing field
3. good enough to handle any edge case, so that 'exceptions' to rules via human override (and potential corruption) can be avoided
Implementing 1-3 means building a giant, inflexible bureaucracy, where responsibility is widely distributed (so nobody can be corrupt) and an immense book of rules and red tape (so it can handle every edge case).
Unfortunately Americans don't even really get fairness in practice.
The cost of following all the rules to the letter is so incredibly expensive and inefficient that obviously government agencies and their favored contract bidders have back channels with one another so that they know exactly how to structure their bids to win.
This is why conservatives sometimes have a point - many regulations not only do not do anything for the public good, but they actually help entrenched interests.
It seems to me that you claim that there is a trade-off between bureaucracy and corruption. I disagree, to me it seems (although I cannot readily prove it) that these are more often correlated than not.
I think the point was that adding rules and diffusing responsibility appear to be a way to reduce corruption and making things fair for everyone, but that in practice that relationship may not be so simple.
Not so much at the local level where a citizen deals with the bureaucracy, but certainly at the level where lots of money gets allocated and spent, such as military procurement.
Just look at what SpaceX has managed to achieve largely outside the world of government cost-plus contracting at a small fraction of the budget of its competitors.
Large parts of the military-industrial complex are jobs programs for underserved portions of the country disguised as 'defense'. The inefficiency is purposeful. It keeps mounds of people employed in states where there otherwise wouldn't be much investment.
It requires an army of federal bureaucrats who spend years writing detailed waterfall-style calls for bids, then an army of engineers at the large firms that craft bids that are happen to be perfectly suited to the government's needs. A clique of politicians from those states that will provide unwavering support to make sure the jobs remain in their states
A small town worth of lawyers, accountants, inspectors, to make sure that the entire process is 'fair' and 'transparent', and to produce thousands of pages of documentation to a public that will never read (but is always available to defend against charges of corruption).
This is still 'corruption', but legally, done at a massive, industrial scale and with more steps.
But note that much of this is simply make-work, the equivalent of digging holes and filling them again. The country would probably be safer and have a better military if we were just honest with ourselves, made those industries efficient, and then pay off the existing beneficiaries with direct transfers and massive investments in health care and education.
Is this corruption, or is it just a different way of structuring society?
> 1. fair, and Americans immediately suspect that humans tend to favor their friends
> [...]
> Unfortunately Americans don't even really get fairness in practice.
You seem to believe that suspicion is US-specific? Why doesn't this apply to, say, Germany?
There's a saying for this, I believe the English one is: "Every man’s censure is first moulded in his own nature."
> This is why conservatives sometimes have a point - many regulations not only do not do anything for the public good, but they actually help entrenched interests.
They're just appealing to the common man who hates the rules, who doesn't like bureaucracy, or pay their tax even though all these rules within the law serve purposes. Also, if you look at the recent track record of a conservative (Bush) it isn't as if he simplified the books of law by say 1/3 due to removal of laws, or ensure that a law like the Espionage Act of 1917 or the PATRIOT Act aren't unnecessarily broad (oh wait, Bush enacted the PATRIOT Act). Or, they're going after international treaties which don't suit them such as international Co2 emission goals (Trump). In my country, someone like Wilders also abuses the "we're going to lessen the rules". It is empty marketing, nonsense, and populism. Nothing more, nothing less.
I do think that Americans tend to have a much rigid view about corruption, fair dealing, and law than say Chinese people do. In some situations that rigidity is helpful, and in others I think it's actively harmful.
As for your opinion of conservatives: I pretty much agree that their attack on the federal government in particular is motivated by naked self interest, and they are not the ones who can 'fix' the ills of the federal bureaucracy (at least not without enormous amounts of harm along the way).
But that doesn't mean that their criticisms should be completely ignored. The best sort of marketing is that one that mixes lies with truth.
I think when conservatives assail the federal bureaucracy for being huge, unaccountable, and grossly inefficient, they are largely correct, even if their proposed solutions would probably make things even worse.
Unfortunately this has become a political point that those on the left largely don't want to concede because it complicates the argument for expanding health care.
> They're just appealing to the common man who hates the rules
Actually, the urban poor vote strongly Democratic. It's small business owners who are the target of this rhetoric, and it's because there's a lot of truth there: the cost of regulatory compliance often falls most heavily on small businesses that have just over 10 workers.
They are too small to achieve scale and amortize compliance costs over many people. Small businesses and entrepreneurs are definitely people Democrats should support and help, but I have literally never seen anything on the platform that would make their lives easier.
It seems the US is #18 on the Corruptions Perception Index [1] behind New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong (in contrast to China who are #74) and a whole slew of European countries. Note # doesn't say much about absolute numbers.
> Actually, the urban poor vote strongly Democratic
Not sure what urban poor exactly means but I've seen a documentary series [2] about certain groups and why they voted for Trump. Because he's anti-establishment. They see him as a potential savior whereas Clinton was seen as the status quo. It would not surprise me if these people would normally vote Dems but this time they did not. Anyway, if they vote Dems, then they're a potential target for this rhetoric by the Reps.
> It's small business owners who are the target of this rhetoric, and it's because there's a lot of truth there: the cost of regulatory compliance often falls most heavily on small businesses that have just over 10 workers.
Them as well, but not solely.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
I'm European, for me practically all politicians in the US are extreme far right. Its just that generally the Democrats are slightly less extreme, and perhaps slightly less authoritarian (following politicalcompass.org theory of x-axis and y-axis [1])
I do agree that one should never dismiss a party, especially not in the United States of America which is practically a two party system where you pick Red or Blue. Because you never know which candidate is put forth. Less short-term wise we've also seen shifts in party politics, for example the neo-conservatives taking over the Reps.
And mechanical decision models have another benefit. Obviously, USG makes real decisions all the time. Somewhere inside the great machine, there are real people with real power. But, since they exert that power by massaging a mechanical decision process - by disguising their personal whims, which are just as personal as anyone's, in the trackless bureaucratic wastes of law or science or the like - they get to rule in secret. Power without responsibility. What fun!
Mechanical decision processes perform a kind of power laundering. Because all these processes can be gamed and hacked and massaged, they are not truly mechanical at all. But since the machine is so complex as to be incomprehensible to outsiders, no one can see the true power structures of the Beltway."
It would seem to result from over litigiousness. That one time someone made the wrong call and it ended up in something major. Like for example, 'three strikes laws' or any number of other over rigid interpretations leading to unfair outcomes.
In society when corruption is not punished and you combine that with full transparency, what you get is open crime. Prohibition comes to mind, and I am pretty sure no one has thought since then that prohibition would have worked if we just shone enough sunlight on the lawbreakers. That said, more transparency on the bribery and political corruption could have led to further reduced trust in the police and political system until the breaking point where civil war breaks out and the system gets replaced.
The researchers' experiment did not allow for total replacement of the system and leaders. It can show the obvious that transparency can reduce trust when it demonstrates corruption and a failure to punish it, but what happens next is left unanswered.
I work with one of the big consultancy corps which got hired by one of the indian state governments to help put in place the eGovernance initiative. Well it turns out a lot of the civil servants involved have made it their goal to make sure that the system is as incompetent as possible so that people are forced to fall-back to the old systems where it'll be easier for them take bribes.
It infuriates me to no end that progress (which is supported by the elected government) in a country is being blocked by corrupt numbskulls who just wish to make sure they can fill their pockets.
> What we call “corruption” is a smaller scale of cooperation undermining a larger-scale.
The vast majority of people don't work for some abstract social good. They work for specific concrete goods: helping themselves, helping their loved ones, helping their friends first and foremost.
People also believe in reciprocity and fairness. Sometimes that means that if someone 'helps you out', you do the same back... even if that interaction wasn't completely 100% sanctioned by the rest of society.
Corruption is not people ignoring their moral instincts and choosing to be evil. It is them weighing one set of moral instincts more strongly than another set of moral instincts (egalitarianism, not breaking rules).
The struggle is to align the incentives properly so that 'helping yourself' also means to help society. Unlike what many libertarians and pure free-marketeers seem to believe, this doesn't just happen magically, but requires careful thought and planning.
It's not uncommon that small companies bribe employees of large companies so they award them contracts for services.
Bribes are whenever person has decision power larger then income from making correct decissions. Then he can be bribed to make incorrect ones but beneficial to the one who bribes.
Personally I cannot imagine how corruption makes the world any better?
It’s gotta be related to what’s mentioned in the article: people valuing a larger-scale cooperation higher than a smaller-scale/immediate one. By why? Ideas/hints anyone?
> How come that many western states fare better than other countries
Because Western societies are by and large the product of 19th-century nationalism. The ideal has always been: one nation, one people, one language, one state. If you steal from the public, you are also stealing from members of your own 'group'.
If you don't view other members of your country to be part if your own social group, then of course it's much easier to be corrupt. You can see this happening in India in particular -- everything is drawn along lines of religion, ethnicity, and caste. The same thing is happening to the US.
In Christianity, this is the commandment: Thou shall not steal. In Buddhism, the precept is more explicit: Do not take that which has not been freely given.
If we live in a society where the majority of people are willing to violate this rule by directing the state to steal from those who have more and redistribute to those who have less, those who are being robbed will naturally seek to find a means to defend themselves and their families from the predation of the majority.
Being outnumbered, they do not have the votes to defend themselves at the polls. Naturally, they will use the resources they do have. They can bribe those who are tasked with committing the theft. This is entirely rational. No matter how many prohibitions against corruption are erected, those who are being preyed upon will seek to defend themselves and there will always be people willing to help them, especially in exchange for cash.
The origin of corruption lies in the decision to violate the prohibition against theft. The violation of the prohibition against theft creates a need for bribery which would not otherwise exist. When a need is created, market forces will move to ensure the need is met.
One way to create a society free of corruption is for the majority to voluntarily commit to the prohibition against theft and to enforce the prohibition against those who choose to violate it.
I would further propose that this could lead to a more general replacement of zero sum games with positive sum games. This, in turn, would serve to further accelerate the rate of innovation and thus speed the rate at which all,human needs are met. When trust is strengthened, instead of seeking to meet our needs at the expense of each other, we are naturally more willing to work together to solve the larger problems which afflict us all.
It is not. Even civil servants who are not being taxed disproportionately would accept bribes, and even the poor would give them (as the benefit of the bribe outweighs the cost).
Unless your argument that it's the perception of being stolen from that would cause someone to be willing to engage in corruption. This feels nearly like a tautology. Everyone can find some way in which they feel victimized/punished by society (or rationalize their way into feeling such).
I suspect that you are absolutely correct that the perception of victimhood is the trigger which compels individuals to feel morally justified in violating moral systems.
My intuition is that once the moral foundations of an institution have been corrupted, then the corruption tends to spread like a disease until the entire system collapses.
The question that interests me is: How do we build a system which is resilient to corruption?
I don't know about your ancestors, but we've lived the past millennia in societies where the regents rule over the masses in various forms. Mostly, those in power over those lacking that power, and who want to keep it that way. Money grants power. Therefore, the rich are powerful. More powerful than the poor. An example where you can see all of this in practice is Europe's colonial history. Furthermore, wealth is currently vastly unfair distributed. So what I quote from you, those tax laws you're likely referring to, don't make up for that. They don't fix that, not in the slightest; it isn't their goal either.
> Being outnumbered, they do not have the votes to defend themselves at the polls.
Outnumbered? Where exactly? On the contrary, right-wing Christians & liberals (European definition, not United States definition) together apparently defined as conservatives are steadily in control in the United States, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Germany. Occasionally a party like the Democrats (US), Labour (UK), PvdA (NL), or SPD (DE) get in control but they're quite on the right end of the left-wing spectrum. The only exception is the far right-wing nationalism which is on the rise. Examples are Trump (US), UKIP (UK), PVV (NL), AfD (DE). You can draw many examples for other countries & parties, such as France, Austria, Belgium, and many, many more.
If you speak about absolute numbers then see my comment about unfair distribution of wealth.
My explanation of corruption is far more simple: it is white collar crime. With crime in general, if people get away with being selfish (risk of getting caught), get no or low punishment when caught (lack of repercussions), and they're unhappy with their possessions & wage (equality, happiness) then it will occur more often. White collar crime, or corruption are no exception to this.
It is true, that amongst the looters some are significantly more successful in their looting than others. They attain power and use that power to further their looting. There is no disputing that. I agree with you.
I am simply suggesting that generalized looting is not a solution which will ever yield a corruption free system because looting itself is the problem. There is plenty of evidence from the past hundred years to support that conclusion.