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Comment by qikInNdOutReply | Hacker News Reader

Yes, they do. They all do. You need a rule of law, to tame corruption and no non-democracy has that.

The attempt to deploy western culture globally has failed miserably, generating jobs who exist merley to errect a veneer of compliance.

Behind the thin layer of paint, the old culture and world continus happily on unphased by the hysterics. And it was always painfully obvious for those in the know.

For example there was a law in many arab countries, that you could not do buisness with israel and do buisness with them. Yet, when you opened company location maps, there they were, side by side, right next to the company "morals & mission statements" tab. The obvious answer, bribes in broad daylight.

Now, as the western exported "cultural revolution" winds down in obvious failure, all that veneer fades away and the ugly old world reappears as if it was never gone.

Very soon, the workers with confiscated passports might as well be called slaves again. Its a sad, depressing state of affairs, but then it was for the non deluded befor this point in time too.

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Many years ago (15+ years ago), I worked for a company that wanted to sell some software product to China. Now, you can't legally use bribes where I am, "the EU says NO". What you can do is hire a Chinese consulting company, they will invoice you a surprisringly high amount for their services and take some of that money and use it to grease the wheels of the Chinese bureaucracy. At least at that point in time, it was basically required to win any sort of contract on that level in China.

Microsoft using bribes in Africa, the Middle East or parts of Asia isn't a Microsoft problem, it a problem that those specific countries need to deal with. Microsoft would most likely have made their sales anyway, if bribes hadn't been a thing, it would just be slightly cheaper to do so, so I don't think management at Microsoft cares one way or the other.

Company "fasttracked" worker visas to china, are basically olympic sport visas etc. reassigned for a bribe.

It's absolutely a Microsoft problem that they don't take a moral stand on bribing.

Morale in a for-profit company is a virtual concept, it simply does not exist in reality. Claiming it does is likely delusionary or an attempt to hide the truth.

You are implying that running a for-profit company is immoral. Of course you can run a for-profit company in moral and ethical way!

Then it's a for-profit-and-some-other-things. And when there is more than one owner those other things better be defined in a legally binding way or else.

No, yoou can't. Claiming otherwise is pretty naive.

Teach me, please... What is immoral if you open your Limited company and sell your programming services to some customers and make profit doing it?

Make it economically bad times, and the customer a shady actor. Will the company deliberately close and stop offering its services, despite needing to put food on the table? Or will the company just go along and do the coding for shady customer?

Now, put a lot of air in that thought-baloon and you will see how basically every for-profit will end up doing immoral things.

You are wrong! Not every for-profit will end up doing immoral things in this case! Some will move on to do other stuff...

Most people in the developed world are all immoral according this argument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTsfzLTBuo0

"no ethical consumption under capitalism" is a saying for a reason

"Morals" in any organization large enough for responsibility to be sufficiently diffuse is a virtue statement. Every large organization will sociopathically and amorally advance its KPIs. It just so happens that some organizations are in or adjacent to morals as part of their core business hence why the church comes out looking a little better than Monsanto.

Your argument works just as well for any other company or organisation.

The worst morale failures in history have been perpetrated by governments.

They don't take a moral stand on a lot of things. Most of the large companies in the world are deeply immoral, but we draw the line at bribing, in a culture that encourages it?

I'd argue that it's a WTO problem, let's just cut of all ties to countries where bribing in any form is acceptable, leaving us with what? The Nordic countries and New Zealand?

I'm not arguing that it's not an issue, but what would you have them do exactly? The bribing isn't going to disappear because Microsoft says no. Africa will just be running on Red Star OS and Tecent Cloud.

Microsoft is an American company, so the US can just forbid Microsoft from paying bribes.

Just like the US is using their clout to force people around the world to eg force French companies not to do business with Iran.

> I'd argue that it's a WTO problem, let's just cut of all ties to countries where bribing in any form is acceptable, leaving us with what?

As a compromise, you could target countries in which bribing is de jure _legal_, and worry about de facto later.

>>US can just forbid Microsoft from paying bribes.

That's already the case. It's already illegal for an American company to pay bribes abroad, even if it's "legal" there. The problem is that like many other people said - you just hire a local "consulting" business that handles that for you and your hands are clean.

> The problem is that like many other people said - you just hire a local "consulting" business that handles that for you and your hands are clean.

Just make that illegal, too? And make sure that ignorance is not an excuse before the law. (Something like gross negligence, if you don't check on your subcontractors well enough.)

I wonder how much the citizens of a country rife with low-level corruption would appreciate the US taking the high road and refusing to allow their companies to do business with them.

That's what's already happening with a few countries around the world.

No, this isn't Microsoft simply "paying the cost of business", this is Microsoft tolerating its own employees stealing millions for themselves on the excuse that their other corrupt practices brings in business.

Yes, this is Microsoft (or its employees) siphoning public funds from corrupt governments that those societies sorely need.

Those funds are lost regardless. There's no action that Microsoft or any other Western company can take that would do anything but leave them with a slightly cleaner conscience. As long as corruption is accepted those funds will never be directed towards schools, hospitals or infrastructure anyway.

It's a shitty argument, I'll grant you that, but it's not a problem that Microsoft can fix. They should take the moral high ground, but the money was always going to be siphoned of.

So the money should go to a local construction company to “build affordable houses” that will never get built or buy cheap computers with a 300% markup? Without systematically changing the culture in these countries corruption is never going to go away and no one has proved the FCPA has moved the needle anywhere.

It's gonna be tough for the West to try and use their sway over multinationals to stop this kind of behavior overseas when they can't even stop it at home. Not that they shouldn't try to do both, but there are limits to what can be achieved in this area.

It doesn't matter if the country has corruption problems on it's own, we shouldn't be party to that, and we shouldn't facilitate or encourage it by doing business with them. That's the whole point of these laws.

Why is that a given? It ultimately results in our adversaries like China or Prigozhin who are willing to pay bribes getting the resources. Or even other European countries who barely enforce these laws. So American companies are forced to be at a disadvantage and no actual bribery is prevented.

You realize that both parties in bribing are corrupt? This is not only people in middle east breaking the law, it also requires that people in the US are willing to commit fraud.

Saying it is fine when Americans bribe in foreign countries is saying it is fine if Americans are corrupt.

Every year I’m forced to watch training videos saying that it’s against US laws to be involved in bribery abroad. As I understand it, there’s severe federal penalties for briberies committed abroad. It may not be a Microsoft problem exclusively, but I can’t imagine “hey everyone else is breaking the law” is going to work as a defense.

It's the same in the EU, hence the "consulting" companies. Don't get to hung up on the fact that you know the money is going towards a bribe, because legally you didn't do it, nor did you technically ask anyone else to do it. All you did was hire a company that understand the local business culture and they helped facilitate the contract.

We even had a visiting member of the EU parliament and the CEO directly asked about this scenario. The PM argued that it wasn't ideal, but that it was part of doing business with, in this case, China. Technically, yeah you know, legally, just don't have the word bribe in the contract with the consultants.

The "arms-length consulting" is absolutely illegal in the US, I'm surprised that it doesn't seem to be that way for the EU.

Based on those trainings I also have to take yearly, the US has a weird carve out for "facilitation payments" that are basically just bribes to cut through red tape and delays that probably exist just to extract bribes in the first place. But I do remember the training calling out using a third party intermediary to launder your bribes isn't a defense and you're suppose to be responsible for how your money is used. I suspect the later isn't well enforced though but I couldn't say.

It’s stupid complicated, but essentially right. The legality of facilitation depends on the laws of all the jurisdictions involved. So where it’s legal and customary, say, in Egypt or whatever, I think, you can get away with it. Because how else would you get anything done?

It is.

I guess people just don't know that that it's just as illegal, or feel it's less objectionable than paying bribes directly. Or they speculate that it's harder to prove.

I think they know, or at least see that it's an issue, but what are they suppose to do? Either they stay out of a large number of countries, which seriously hamper their options for expansion or they speculate in it being hard to prove.

It also create an uneven playing field. Western countries can't do business in large part of the world, while companies from those same countries are free to sell anywhere.

You don't have a god-given right to run your business in every country in the world, especially when the manner in which you are doing so breaks the law of the countries you are headquartered in.

If you did, sanctioned countries wouldn't be a thing.

'I want to make money' isn't some kind of first, last, or sole moral consideration, overriding all others.

Should western countries be able to use slave labor outside the west?

These training programs are there so the company can check a box, have plausible deniability, and so low ranking employees don’t do something stupid that exposes the company.

Yes, I had to watch the same videos when I worked for BigCo.

It's obvious though that the problem is getting caught. If bribery is endemic, then you pay both the corporate bribe costs and the "not-getting-caught" bribe costs

I had to take some training at work on not doing exactly that. I guess the regulators are on to the little scam.

So hold the company liable for its subcontractors' violations. This isn't rocket surgery.

> Now, you can't legally use bribes where I am, "the EU says NO". What you can do is hire a Chinese consulting company, they will invoice you a surprisringly high amount for their services and take some of that money and use it to grease the wheels of the Chinese bureaucracy.

Just so y'all know, people have been convicted for international bribery in the US using "arms-length" consultants. This has been called out in every ethics training I've had to take since like 2004.

All this recent talk of "banning AI work for the sake of the economy" (perhaps when they're fully competitive with human-equivalent workers across all multidisciplinary domains) has had me thinking the money will just go to international consulting firms or independent contractors that can then use the AI tools as they wish.

That's why people need to start thinking of these issues globally, not in terms of what "their country" can do

> use it to grease the wheels of the Chinese bureaucracy.

"Facilitating payments" aka "grease payments" are explicitly allowed in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

This article is about actual, real bribery, which is illegal under the FCPA.

The article isn’t so much about Microsoft paying bribes to grease the wheels as it is about Microsoft employees skimming money from the contract.

Sorry, but democracy is not automaticcally a guarantee that there is no corruption. I can tell, because I am living in a supposedly democratic country which has gained quite a number of points in the corruption-index recently...

There is the ability of the population to organize and vote out and and all corrupt influence. Usually the citzenry is kept down via media and culture, but as several revolutions have shown, the old culture can get thrown out hard and fast, if the population has enough.

I believe the time of revolutions is actually gone. We've reached a point where the comfort we're enjoying in the west is baasically preventing revolutionary change. Because even though there might be things you dont like about the system you are in, overall, with social security, a health care system that mostly works (sorry USA, I am not talking about you, death penalty and all) vmost people prefer the status quo over whatever revolution you might imagine.

You’re undermining your point by calling it “supposedly”. You’re otherwise not wrong, though.

Well no true Scotsman and so on.

Even in old and established democracies, there's usually a large gap between what is said of the democracy, and what the democracy actually is and does.

That was my cynism. Democracy seems to be used as a wildcard to say "we are the good people" awfully lot recently, which gets my attention.

Yeah, but when your argument is that $BAD_THING still occurs in a democracy (which it certainly does), then it doesn’t help if you weaken that to a “supposed” democracy, because then the counterargument is that it wouldn’t happen in a real democracy. Whereas your aim is to argue that (real) democracy isn’t a panacea.

Point taken. Thanks for correcting me and actually taking the time to understand what I was really trying to say. And thanks for the very appropriate word suggestion. "democracy isn’t a panacea" is indeed a very concise way of stating what I wanted to say.

The comment you replied to said the opposite. They said:

> You need a rule of law, to tame corruption and no non-democracy has that.

As far as I can tell, that implies the only combination that's impossible is non-democracy and non-corruption. Ie all non-democracies are corrupt, but some democracies might also be corrupt.

Btw, I don't think that's even true: British ruled Hong Kong had rule of law, but no democracy.

However statistically, there seems to be at least a weak correlation (negative) between corruption and democracy.

Without democracy the rule of law itself is corrupt.

What definitions of democracy, rule of law and corruption are you using here?

As long as contracts are being upheld, and court decisions are speedy and predictable, and public officials don't enrich themselves, that counts as low / no corruption, doesn't it?

Democracy might help with that ideal, but it's by no means strictly necessary.

Rule of law in a non-democratic polity inherently benefits its rulers more than other citizens. That is legally-enforced corruption.

What definition of corruption are you using here?

As far as I can tell, an absolute monarchy that is run for the benefit of the ruler can still have rule of law and low corruption.

As an alternate history example, take Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, but make him king and increase his salary to 1 billion SGD per year (instead of 1 million SGD per year). Change nothing else.

They would still be one of the least corrupt countries on earth, and have a judiciary that enforces the rule of law.

> Rule of law in a non-democratic polity inherently benefits its rulers more than other citizens.

That can and does happen in democracies, too.

That's no different than if the president of the US used his power to acquire money. The only difference is that in Singapore the law itself has been corrupted to allow it.

Corruption, and even corrupt laws, exist in democracies too, but in a non-democracy all laws are inherently corrupt. Non-democracies have no legitimate basis for even having laws.

What makes democracies magically more legitimate?

Can you elaborate? To me this makes no sense whatsoever, and I can easily provide a counter example. Islam is not democratic in the Western sense, yet its laws curb corruption.

Democracy leads to better government in general, which leads to reduced corruption. People in Islamic countries accurately think their countries are corrupt: https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022

Correlation vs causation. Those Islamic countries are still facing occupation especially from post WWI mandates like Sykes Picot and Balfour, and we see first hand the interest of "democratic" countries to keep things that way to ensure their superiority by force. They are not letting things take their natural course.

The older I get the harder it is to not see Pareto was right about democracy.

"Pareto believed that societies are ruled by an elite class, which he called the "circulation of elites." In his view, these elites are able to gain and maintain power by using their wealth, intelligence, and social connections to influence political and economic institutions. Pareto saw democracy as a way to redistribute power and wealth from the elite to the masses, but he was skeptical that this could ever be achieved in practice. He argued that even in democracies, power tends to be concentrated in the hands of a small group of people who are able to control the political process and manipulate public opinion."

I am not sure what the argument really is against that. That sounds like the reality we live in.

> Behind the thin layer of paint, the old culture and world continus happily on unphased by the hysterics

For instance:

I've always thought it was really funny when westerners adopted the belief that Benazir Bhutto was some enlightened champion of democracy and progress while remaining blissfully ignorant of the historical position of vast wealth and power her family occupies in Sindh.

Inside “democratic” countries, they are just bribing via legal means - see lobbying.

Yes. Sadly yes. But its not spread societywide. You do not bribe your way out of law enforcement etc. You do not have that society wide tax on just "breathing" - yet. There is also not yet, the worst kind of corruption, were incompetence in education gets through and enshrined to entrench other corrupt incompetence and finally destroys the mechanism to dislodge incompetence.

Were a visit to the doctor might kill you, because they all got their diploma because they know the same family and never spent a day awake and sober in university. And the health minister is from that family. And the whole anti-corruption self-repair mechanism is dysfunct, cause its married to that familys cousin.

Well, maybe you don’t bribe directly by handing money over to an LEO. But I would say there is still tons of corruption that is based on influence, soft skills, knowing right people, donations to specific charities/political parties.

>You do not bribe your way out of law enforcement etc.

Don't you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_gra...

In the US at least, FOPs (social organizations / quasi union most police belong to) sell “donor cards” that specifically can be shown to grant favors similar to those one would be eligible in bribable countries.

There are certainly many bad things happening this way, but it's a far cry from the undeniably clear transaction structures of "those in control of formalities will block everything forever unless the inofficial tax is paid as well"

So when EFF raises funds to petition elected officials to protect privacy that’s bribery?

Because thats what lobbying is.

Lobbying has a veneer of legitimacy, but it is mostly for bribing.

But bribery is illegal.

So i dobt understand what people mean when they say “lobbying is legal bribery”.

Please explain

Yes, they do. But not everyone does it! Better not to do business at all than to be part of bribing!

After growing to a certain size, you just don't not do business. Because if you don't to some businesses, your competitors will, and then they'll outgrow you and force you out of the market.

I'm not siding with Microsoft here or any other business, just stating that this is how things are. I mean, of course, there could be many other ways, but this carries the least risk for the business.

Honestly, most of them do it.. not even because they want to, but because it's expected on the other end.

I've been in contract negotiations where the purchase of industrial equipment is contingent upon prostitutes and trips to DisneyWorld.

Of course we don't want to pay for these things, but if you don't, they just give the contract to someone who will.

On the last point, I must be missing something obvious, but why don't those workers who have their passports taken report them lost/stolen and get a new one from their embassy?

Because their job is tied to company owned by the citizen of the host country who employs them (their visa sponsor), and they're probably sending money back home to India, Pakistan or Bangladesh to support a family of eight people. You report that and cause a legal fuss with your employers, you not only don't get paid your previous month of work, you get deported and banned from the UAE or Qatar or Saudi Arabia for life.

It is illegal to confiscate an employee's passport in the UAE. If it happens, it doesn't make it legal.

Shockingly enough a lot of things are illegal in the UAE and yet they're extremely commonplace.

how ironic to say that in a post about illegal bribes

The police in UAE are not there to help Indian people get their passports returned... and I suspect it would be incredibly dangerous to start complaining to them; your only reason to be there is to work, cheaply and shut up. You are a second class citizen and it’s unbelievably naive to start sticking your head above your station. You’ll be telling them they should start a union next!

Western expats might be second class citizens in the UAE, with some luck. As a worker from India in the UAE, you are far treated far below a second class citizen, sadly.

So we have an individual that has travelled overseas to earn more money than he would be able to make at home, to better support his family. That is not a slave and calling it slavery cheapens actual slavery IMO.

Now, having said that, the conditions are appalling and the employers do many unscrupulous and illegal things. But it is a voluntary arrangement unlike slavery.

The workers have often had to pay huge fees to brokers to score the job in the first place, often including taking out large loans that must be paid back with the job's income.

On arrival, the worker realizes that everything they have been told is a lie. Their passport is confiscated and they are told that, if they try to run away to their embassy etc, goons will go to their family to extort the money owed for the loans by any means necessary, including torture and death.

Would you still call this a "voluntary arrangement"?

No, especially the element of having goons back home to coerce the family sounds like actually slavery. I double check these days. Westerners try to make charity cases out of people from the developing world that are just trying to make a buck like we all do.

> Would you still call this a "voluntary arrangement"?

Perhaps not for the first guy to ever fall for this. But existing workers are still communicating with the folks back home, so prospective new workers now what to expect and what to believe and not to believe.

I agree that they aren't treated well; but we can't ignore that the situation back home is often even worse.

There are a lot of poor villages in Pakistan or Nepal, a lot of brokers, a lot of different lies to tell and a lot of suckers born every minute. And, of course, there's the odd village boy who beats the odds, strikes it rich (often by getting into a position where he can exploit others, eg as a labor broker), builds a big-ass house and becomes inspiration for others to follow in his footsteps.

Voluntary arrangements require informed consent. These workers are denied that and their options to leave are limited.

> Yes, they do. They all do. You need a rule of law, to tame corruption and no non-democracy has that.

Contrary to common belief, corruption does not have much to do with democracy. There are many non-democratic countries without corruption, and many democratic countries with corruption (and the inverse too for both).

The relation is that, currently, a high standard of living leads both to less corruption and to more democracy.

> You need a rule of law, to tame corruption and no non-democracy has that.

Old British-ruled Hong Kong arguably had rule of law and no democracy.

Western Countries promote and protect corruption in the rest of the world. Where does the corruption money go? Where do the corrupt people and their families live after they are removed from power for whatever reason?

As opposed to the legal bribery in democracy, it turns into an oligarchy, it always does. This is known to be true in the past and observable truth in the present.

HK (pre~2020) had and Singapore has rule of law.

Doesn't democracy simply institutionalize corruption?

Where is the incentive for honesty or long term thinking for politicians or political candidates?

The politician's primary concern is to win the next election. Promises of any sort can be fielded to win this battle. Ideally his promises should motivate voters to support his campaign. After the election, excuses can be made. The opposition offers an easy scapegoat for not delivering upon previous promises.

While in office, the politician has every incentive to milk his position for all it is worth. He doesn't personally have a stake in the country's budget. The politician is driven to drive funds towards his donors. His only time preference is to make it happen before his term expires. Long term results of policies or contracts are besides the point.

After spending considerable time in 3rd world countries, my takeaway is that corruption in the developed world is simply more expensive. Yes, you can legally lobby for your company to receive gov. contracts. The difference is that you need to pay expensive lawyers to execute the process. You can't just simply throw a few hundred dollars around or ask your brother-in-law.

There's a right way to lobby in the west and a wrong way, which is tabooed as corruption. The end result is much the same. The difference is often partisan perception.

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