Comment by wqtz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wqtz | Hacker News Reader

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Corruption is one of the fun things I enjoy thinking about.

People have to take a step back and realize this can NEVER be beat. Because corruption is a philosophical construct. We saw virtually incorruptible countries tied up in the financial recession that was fueled by greed. But it wasn't greed until it all came crashing down, before that it was a smart move.

So preachiness aside let me tell you story. So a friend of mine works in supply chain operations in a certain country. Surprisingly local supply chain professionals are paid comparatively low than their peers with similar skill and education. Yet supply chain type work are always the most deemed jobs in any industry. I asked him, what's the deal. So he just told me, people just makes up the "opportunity" cost by over invoicing and charging commissions to their favored vendors. I said what kind monitoring mechanism do the bosses have. They said usually none, but if they even have monitoring mechanism and get this, corrupt people will use the monitoring mechanism itself to weed out the ones who are honest! So, for the owners the cost corruption is just part of the cost production. They include the cost without much care.

Anyway, I am trying to convince him to open a startup with me to address this problem and apply to YC S22.

Just because corruption cannot be "beat" doesn't mean it cannot be reduced. Having lived both in India and the west, believe me people who haven't experienced the former don't know what real corruption is. And on the other end, if you have lived your entire life in a country in the bottom half of the corruption index you may think of corruption to be normal and a necessary way of life, but it is absolutely possible to make a meaningful difference through activism and laws.

This is true.

In India, from the lowest level of administration- from ward (a few blocks of town/city) councillor and village board members to governor's of states to prime minister and cabinet minister- corruption exists at every level. Every level.

Most people are corrupt.

People are corrupt, too. People regularly lie about income and property to avail government benefits.

In India, if you are not nepotistic, you are perceived badly in society. You will become an outcast and invite anger if you do not abuse Power to help people in your relational vicinity.

I know many people who seek government jobs just so they can earn through bribes.

I’ve lived in the EU, USA, and Asia. The primary distinction is that developing countries have corruption starting at lower levels.

However, what this simplistic conclusion fails because the developed countries have huge amounts of corruption at all other levels. Everything is still impacted by lobbying and back channels, in huge multi-billion dollar amounts…

I watched the rules for rulers CGP Grey video [YouTube] again recently.

One takeaway is that corruption is a tool of power. If there are a lot of "keys", chances are that you are a key and if a bribe demand is so bad that it is likely to be your top priority, you will switch your allegiance to a different leader.

The thing that others me is how we can have very unpopular things but I don't care enough to get rid of those things.

Take the second amendment (2A), for example. I don't want people to own guns and carry them on their person flaunting it at gas stations. However, I don't care about it enough to make it my single issue. So my understanding is there can be 5% of the voters really care about something stupid to ignore everything else and vote based on 2A for example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

I agree with your sentiment and it’s a great video, but your 2A estimate is way off. Over 30% of all Americans personally own a firearm [1], so the overall level of 2A support is at least that.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own...

it may be higher than 5%, but definitely not all 30% of those make 2A their only issue. plus there's a good fraction who have the mindset "I'd rather nobody have a gun, but if he gets a gun then I want one too".

I think there are cultural-political affinities that make people who want an absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment vote together with people who might prefer something like an assault weapons ban or less “carry,” but still want to prevent the government from controlling their gun ownership.

They share a basket of political goals and within that basket, the more extreme version of each tends to win out, at least for those goals that are not broad, cross-party American priorities.

But not having corruption at a lower level makes a lot of difference (in my opinion)

I agree that as a normal citizen, it feels ickier and annoying. I definitely do not appreciate it myself.

However, I feel like the focus on small-time corruption distracts us from the bigger institutionalised corruption that is ever prevalent. By deciding that the lower levels of gov are going to be both underpaid and devoid of other “benefits”, we still end up with gov employees that hate their job and have no motivation. It changes nothing other than convenience for the citizens and results in near-poverty for the gov employees. Meanwhile, the higher-ups are living in mansions in both situations. It’s effectively a classist gate keeping - wherein the powerful always get what they want, and have the opportunity to hide it enough that IME the average citizen in the West still truly believes that their gov is fair and not corrupt.

Does it make a difference who is actually expected to pay the bribe?

For example, corrupt traffic officers' bribes are often regressive (as nobody's threatening the rich and powerful), leave people with less money in their pocket, and requires the creation of direct injustices like wrongful imprisonment or even violence.

Whereas a defence contractor who has a bunch of retired generals and senators as "advisers" merely steals from tax revenue, which is collected progressively; the average citizen has no less money in their pocket; and no direct threats are needed at all. It's still corruption, certainly, but it doesn't put innocent people in jail.

That’s a great question, I do see your viewpoint.

I agree that low-end corruption is more regressive for the common person, both in that they are more forced to pay up, but also that it comes from a smaller wealth pool.

High-end corruption is lobbying and think-tanks. While low-level bribing is for pettier things like paperwork, the rich and powerful aim to influence public policy to their benefit.

While the common person might not have to visibly participate, these changes affect their lives. Taxes are only progressive by design, but in reality are disproportionately paid by those who can’t afford to evade/game the system. Moreover, the non-rich people are the ones who actually really need the outcomes of tax money.

As more and more of it that is siphoned away by high-level corruption, you end up with decaying infrastructure. This outcome is quite visible in a lot of developed countries now. Another great example are defence budgets that dominate the entire national budget, but primarily funnel money to the rich military-industrial oligarchs, while being used to murder people in “faraway lands”.

» I know many people who seek government jobs just so they can earn through bribes.

» In India, from the lowest level of administration- from ward (a few blocks of town/city) councillor and village board members to governor's of states to prime minister and cabinet minister- corruption exists at every level. Every level.

My understanding is the people I to don't need to personally demand bribes from the public at all. If you expect to make a lot of money with your government job, the people with the power to put you in the job will demand you pay to get that job, right?

Oh yes.

Scandals in recruitment is huge in India.

Interview panels are regularly challenged in court and sometimes overthrown and cancelled.

Some people even get their salary stopped, deducted, and fired for getting hired through illegal channels.

And not only in jobs where you stand to gain bribes, but also in jobs that are tenured from day one. Like High School teachers or elementary school teachers. Their salary is also much higher than their American counterparts when PPP is considered.

People bribe and get into all sorts of tenured posts.

People even get called to (already fixed) interviews even though their score in written test was lower than people who did not get the call.

As I said, challenging recruitment panels in court is really common.

Airtight systems can be created and are in place (e.g. in central state-owned bank recruitments) where no corruption happens. Where there is corruption it is because the people in power want it that way. The ruling parties want to recruit loyalists and their relatives in government ranks. They also have to pay high bribe, but being a member of the parties tells you whom to bribe.

Some say (I find it credible) that governments deliberately mess up recruitment procedure so they are sub-judice for a long period of time. This way, the government does not have to pay salary to them and instead use the money to many welfare projects and gain the votes of the masses.

Say, you want to give ₹10k to each HS student in your state so that they can buy smartphones. One smartphone ~5-10 votes in an election. Minium salary in peon rank ~₹40k. There are 2000 vacancies. You mess up the recruitment process deliberately, and the case goes to court. The case runs for 4 months to 5 years. If the case goes on for two years, you save ₹40k × 2000 × 24 ~ $25.6 million. And with that money, you can bankroll 192k smartphones amd get close to 500k votes- enough to swing a district (districts are sub-provinces in India).

There has been, and still are- several large scale conspiracies that manipulate results in entrance tests. People have died for investigating it. See [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyapam_scam

Not just for a job but people also pay (or made to pay) high price to get 'transfers'. If you a are govt. school teacher or doctor you'll likely be posted at a place which is very far from your residence just so that you'll be ready to pay a hefty sum to get transferred to a nearby location.

That's even more sinister than what I had thought. So you could take two job openings in two towns and two good candidates in those two towns and get 2x the bribe just by doing the inefficient thing and sending them to the wrong post.

Now these two people are out a lot of money and in their mind they have to recoup that money somehow and the cycle of bribes continues. :/

> just by doing the inefficient thing and sending them to the wrong post.

Not the case most of the times. In each recruitment process, a central list is created based on test score and other criteria.

And candidates give choices. Most want to live in megacities like Chennai or Kolkata. Many want to be close to their homes.

Choices are awarded (or disregarded) first-come-first-serve basis on that merit list.

A few get desired postings due to their scores. Most of them end up in godforsaken places where your future children will get shitty schools and a worse environment. And very bad healthcare facilities.

So these people are eager to shell out a lot of money to get desired posting.

Indian companies and government institutions always had unions. Most of them leftist, and many apolitical (in white collar places, obviously). Nowadays unions are hijacked overnight by whichever party comes to power.

They work as a center of power. And they are the intermediaries in corruption.

Most unions have stopped caring about their ideals, and the people. They are just power brokers hungry for the fulfilment of the few.

This is how corruption becomes universal in India. There are taxicab unions, actors' unions, teachers' unions, farm-workers' union- all rules over by the ruling party. They don't give a rat's ass about the members.

They just care about a few. And they can stay in power because they are supported by the ruling party and give them huge cuts.

The primary emotion I feel when reading this is pure exhaustion. I mean, there's plenty of things wrong with this, and it sounds like a terrible way to organize society in general, but first and foremost it just feels… exhausting. I wouldn't have the stamina for it.

Many people feel the same. Some who are able immigrate to western countries where corruption is not a overt. Except the US where it’s just legal through campaign contributions and what not. Lol

Jokes apart, in your day to day life you don’t have to go through this multiple times a day in the west with every interaction you have. Of course this isn’t like every Indian goes through this daily. Depends on what they do. If you’re a small business owner, this is a large part of your daily life.

I get the feeling some people reading this are going to think corruption in the supply chain is a far away problem that could never happen near them.

In fact, one of the main benefits of adopting the shipping container in the 1970s was reducing such graft. Earlier most of the cost of shipping by sea was the labour of packing and unpacking goods at the pier. Goods such as liquor and electronics simply went missing during transit. This was a common practice on the New York piers at the time.

The shipping container changed that. It was vastly cheaper because it took very little time to handle at the ports, and it cut down on graft. Shipping and exports grew in the US because “losses” decreased.

Source: The Box by Marc Levinson.

You can't beat corruption in the same way you can't beat crime. If you leave it alone, it gets far worse, though.

We do have corruption on that level - some of my relatives worked in construction, and they'd just set aside money to bribe everyone. There's money and hookers for project managers. There's money for fire inspections. There's money set aside for to pay police and family members if someone dies. It's treated like a fine. There's code words, like when someone says their phone keeps running out of battery and can't call back, it means that they expect a new iPhone.

It's all fine until the prime minister siphons billions off the sovereign wealth fund. Cleaning up corruption is a lot of work, and often the process has a lot of unexpected ripples. Often it can't be cleaned up without a revolution, sometimes a violent one.

> and realize this can NEVER be beat

Ah, the classic "'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens".

You can live your whole life in several European countries without ever witnessing corruption. But because America is special, surely nothing can be done!

I think it’s interesting that they said it can’t be beat, yet they’re starting a startup. This feels like corruption itself.

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