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Comment by vintermann | Hacker News Reader

> Its easy - imagine massive, gargantuan corruption.

Well, it's not as if the US military industrial complex has nothing of that?

I think the problem isn't corruption alone, but the combination of corruption and all the corrupt trying hard to put their own eggs elsewhere than Russia's basket. Working with a corrupt authoritarian leader can be profitable, but you really want to have a plan B for when SHtF.

US corrupt elites have the luxury problem that if their wealth and power isn't secure in the US, it probably isn't very secure anywhere else either. So they have to take just a little care not shit where they eat (too much), and maybe sponsor a few museums and stuff, robber baron style.

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I think you underestimate the extent of corruption in Russia. The US doesn't even come remotely close. You can look up corruption indexes, Russia is near most corrupt, US somewhere in the bottom quartile iirc. A quick example from my industry - roughly 1/3 of the ~USD $3 billion spent on the new Russian spaceport is unaccounted for (stolen). I assure you that's many orders of magnitude worse than the contracts in play at Cape Canaveral.

A good (extremely depressing) film to watch is "Leviathan" (2014).

First, I was mostly thinking about historical corruption in the US, i.e. in the age of Robber Barons, which was really incredibly bad.

I agree there's probably less of the "money just unaccounted for" type of corruption in the US (though it does happen, especially in connection with wars and intelligence agencies), and certainly less petty bribes. But that may just be a symptom of more organized corruption, so that it isn't necessary to let to many lower instances have a cut. In short, there may be more legal ways to divert public trust to private gain, so that the petty sort is just pointlessly risky.

If you had lived in a country that is corrupt at all levels of industry, government, and business you would know that the US is practically pure as driven snow. In the US there is relatively plenty money to go around and even the poor typically live better than in a lot of countries "average standard of living) (barring the poorest 5% or so). I have lived in such a country for a few years and it. is. everywhere. -Everyone- wants a bribe or kickback.

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