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Comment by curiousllama | Hacker News Reader

> After receiving payments ranging from between $300 to $5,000 per election from Myers, Demuro would add fraudulent votes on the voting machine

The most staggering thing for me is how _tiny_ the payments are

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That seems to frequently be the surprising thing about these corruption cases. I'm reminded of the fascinating case where journalists in Chicago bought a bar to investigate corruption. They were shocked at $10 bribes getting things done for them (30+ years ago, but still a small sum). https://interactive.wttw.com/timemachine/mirage-tavern

Many of us would assume the sums of money needed to bribe officials would be huge, but unfortunately many people don't consider corruption to be a big deal, so small payments can make an impact.

A recent episode of Darknet Diaries has a former intelligence officer explaining that the biggest threat of corruption is from within (its own employees being coerced). Often it’s people in bad moments in their life (divorce, serious illness, someone died, etc) that makes someone accept a bribe they would otherwise never have done. The argument is that the best way companies can protect against corporate espionage and other interference is treating their employees well, as it’s not often people that are structurally corrupt.

I suppose the same can be said about government employees, although the fact that it can be directly in the current government’s interest not to do that is another problem.

I read that during the cold war, a common exploit was people fearing massive penalties from their own governments over small issues. E.g., some accounting error that would get them imprisoned. So the US would walk in with a few thousand $$ equivalent and have a really well positioned source that just wanted to survive some basic screw-up.

It's a good lesson in how ratcheting up punishments can be counterproductive, even or especially even, in critical areas.

Indeed!

From fiction and movies, one would think that selling the country's secrets to foreign governments would lead to wealth enough to set you up for life on a private island. Yet when the accounts of the treachery emerge at trial, it's always troves of highly classified documents for a few thousand dollars here or there, maybe a few $100k over decades of espionage.

It still just stuns me every time I read how in reality, while honest people would die before selling out their country, some people will sell out everyone so cheaply.

Wild. I don't think $10 would get me to the front of the line reliably at good restaurants.

It works to skip the karaoke line!

(US perspective here not sure about other countries) This type of thing has made me think we should pay politicians more but then say they can't make money any other ways while in office and for some amount of years after they leave office.

No stock trading, no deals to get a private job after you leave office (unless you leave time to make sure your decisions could have no impact on the business you're joining), and no public speaking fees. You can still speak publicly but you shouldn't be getting paid for it if the whole reason for speaking is that you were a public servant. I think we have some sort of fundamental disconnect between expecting people to be a public servant while still saying they can act as a private individual financially

Ok, but you're adding a bunch of rules and some people are just out looking for ways to use their willingness to break rules as a competitive advantage.

Calvin and Hobbes called this thirty years ago.

https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/04/08

How do you manage to find a single comic strip out of thousands from thirty years ago?

The wording from some comics get burned into your brain, and then you can just search for the text. For e.g., this one is the first result for "calvin hobbes everyone has his price" https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=calvin+hobbes+everyone+has...

That's exactly how I did it. I grew up reading C&H, owned all the books, etc., and some of them really just stuck with me like that one.

A simple Google search exactly like above was sufficient in this case, but there's also a C&H-specific search engine which has been discussed on HN a few times before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1600211

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26119380

The official publisher for C&H can also search them (though it also finds matches in other comics they publish), e.g.:

https://www.gocomics.com/search/results?utf8=%E2%9C%93&terms...

I think that many times the people involved are not doing it strictly for the money, but because they feel their side is the one that should clearly be in charge.

Look at how small the donations to politicians are. I used to wonder why the big companies weren’t “flooding the zone” and then realised the official numbers surely don’t catch much — there must be all sorts of “off books” assistance.

Every time I read about someone being bribed, I'm shocked how small the payment is.

Humans will sellout for peanuts. Corruption is a huge problem.

To be fair, $300 in peanuts is a lot of peanuts!

Keep in mind, this was a year ago, before the average plumber charged $500 / hour

Governmental corruption is cheap. The going rate to buy an MP on the U.K. is £10-£15k - they’ll do pretty much anything you ask.

It's a lot safer to keep the payments small. Less suspicion, less at stake, both parties still win at end of the day.

That's because you most likely work in tech and not local government where the salaries are much lower

really makes you think about how strong America's democracy actually is if it can be corrupted this cheaply.

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