Remember: the whole point of bribery is not just for the briber to gain an unfair market advantage. It also lets the bribee unaccountably extract phantom taxes from the wider economy. Furthermore, because participation in this system is illegal, the bribee can further blackmail the briber into paying additional bribes to avoid prosecution.
Naive prosecutions of corruption can, ironically, institutionalize it.
SF's system is almost intentionally designed to breed corruption. The reason is that elected officials are aligned with "community organizations" which are just extortion outfits, but favored ones, like MAC or TODCO. SF's policies direct the flow of bribes into these organizations, who if left un-bribed will sue to stop your project, and the groups in turn kick part of the money back into campaigns.
1. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article...
One of the reasons for byzantine regulations and procedures in the first place is exactly to extract extraneous informal payments to those in position to smooth over the roadbumps which their kind created to begin with.
It's the New Jersey way, badda-boom-badda-bing!
Someone has decided that rank cynicism is the fastest route to justifying criminal behavior.
> the whole point of bribery
Bribery is a tool of convenience not an end unto itself.
> the bribee can further blackmail the briber
This assumes the the "briber" has no proof of the transaction or no standing to present it. If they do, then this logic fails to be applicable.
> Naive prosecutions of corruption can, ironically, institutionalize it.
Um. How?
Um. How?
Well, if only new players and small fish get caught up in bribery charges (because the big and old players are so institutionalized they have almost no exposure and thus no risk outside of vendettas and such), bribery and prosecution of bribery actually ends up looking like the barriers for entry we see in over-regulated industries. Many times the biggest companies in a given industry actually lobby for onerous regulations because they know how to get around them (or can simply afford the immense costs with all their existing wealth), meanwhile they sleep easily at night knowing that new players are going to be burning cash with insane risk exposure just trying to get a foothold in a system of perverse incentives and broken policy. Bribery at the local level could very easily function in the same way to further stratify the local money/power structures.
1. Receiving bribes is just as illegal as paying them.
2. Good luck stopping a federal prosecution when you're some municipal politician.
I don’t think this is a good characterization of bribery. Probably just better to say “extract money” or “personal profit”, taxes are not bribery and are used to support government’s ability to do things like maintain infrastructure, pay for schools, etc. They are not generally for enriching individuals, unless there is also fraud going on.