Comment by zajio1am | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zajio1am | Hacker News Reader

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> Just because the passenger pulls out their wallet and hands over a bribe at the first sign of friction, does that make the passenger more guilty than those who set up this corrupt system? Those that benefit from the corruption?

If they set up the corrupt system and everyone is expected to pay bribes, then the newly incoming passenger is not really the initiator, in that case the corruption is systemic, and i would put most blame on management to not make steps to eliminate it, but i agree that in this setup the bribees are more responsible than bribers, as they have more experience and information about the corruption in the system.

But let consider a slightly different case - a bureau (say building authority), with many twisted bureaucratic rules and procedures, where any request takes long to proceed and is often denied, but generally not corrupt. People just patiently do the necessary steps and accept it, or shrug off and go away. Then someone does not accept that and instead offers a bribe to get pass their request fast. In such case the initiator is clearly responsible for corruption, while the bureau is just responsible for general bureaucratic inefficiency.

And lets consider third case - driving license exam, and someone who fails it just bribes driving inspector to instead make it pass. In that case it is not even inefficiency, the license should be rejected and the briber just seeks unfair advantage. That is even more clear that initiator is more guilty, although the driving inspector has the power.

So, i would say that there are two kinds of corruptions - first, where briber wants something that should get without bribes, and second, where briber wants some unfair advantage.

Without getting too deep into the intricacies of morality, I'd disagree. (Who am I kidding? We're already deep :D )

Your premise is that acting on the desire of an unfair advantage is the greater immoral act, and the act of accepting the payment for an unfair advantage is less morally bankrupt.

In each of these scenarios, the person being bribed has the power. They have nothing to lose if they reject the bribe.

Yet, if they have nothing to lose when _accepting_ the bribe, that is how corrupt regimes start.

Of course, one could argue that it depends on the corruption. In your case of a building authority, imagine one that always says no regardless of the request. Maybe they let through the odd high-profile project where someone in the project is chummy with the director of the authority. Arguably, this building authority is already corrupt, and merely hiding behind the excuse of bureaucracy. (We don't tend to think about social capital as a form of bribery, but it very much is)

In the case of the driving inspector, they are potentially licensing an individual who will get others killed. Morally speaking, any future deaths are at least partially attributable to the driving inspector.

I suspect part of your position hinges on a malicious intent in the initiator. However, power and responsibility are not separable - and cases where there are possible consequences, morality must be judged in part on the basis of that responsibility.

As I say, we're getting into the weeds - these hypothetical situations are in many ways divorced from the original question, so let's look at that:

- A person is kicked off an online communications platform. Nobody is quite sure why, but there are some pretty likely conclusions.

- The platform is known for bending the rules for high-profile accounts

- The person can prove that they are not breaking any consistently-applied rules (assuming valid interpretation of vague rules should be judged on whether their peers are allowed to post similar - and in this case, she pointed out that her content is well within moral norms for the platform)

- The platform offers no accessible recourse (except for those with social capital) and not just bureaucracy, but hidden bureaucracy dependant on the whims of a hidden adjudicator who has nothing to lose for interpreting the rules harshly.

- Very limited harms if accepted, potential loss of revenue, personal content, position in a (digital) society, freedom of expression etc if rejected.

In this case, I'd say the briber has, at the point their account was terminated, already lost a lot to the corruption of the platform, and yet the bribe was still over-paid. Saying that theirs was the more immoral act seems intensely unfair, when they did the only thing they felt they could to re-gain justice.

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