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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Worse than the PBA stories is hearing about the diplomatic immunity shenanigans all sorts of members of a diplomatic family would get away with.

Not sure how much was true and how much was exaggerated, but some were eye opening.

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While this is true (that diplomatic immunity poses problems with some diplomats heavily abusing it, while there doesn't seem to be a good way to punish them for it), it at least is a phenomenon that can be seen as a cost to bear for a greater good: protecting representatives of other countries from becoming targets of a sort of "state-organized bullying" by the officials in power, which often makes it possible for these representatives to enter foreign states in the first place and which thus can be seen as a mutual agreement that fosters peaceful diplomatic exchange between countries.

For these weird PBA cards, I can't see any positive effect for society as a whole that could be brought up in their defense. This is clearly a form of institutionalized corruption, pressed into a handy credit-card format, and it is unworthy of a country like the United States.

What country _is_ it worthy of? Think carefully about the implications of your answer.

"What country _is_ it worthy of? "

For any country that is weak and unpopular currently.

I was thinking along the lines of "a country that makes no secret of the fact that the ones who happen to have power due to their status in society (whether based on their wealth, social influence or whatever else) are free to use this power for their personal benefit without regard for any ethical concerns and especially without regard for the well-being of others". Such a hypothetical country would be worthy of corruption, as corruption would be a perfectly reasonable and expected part of their inner workings.

But...I don't find any real existing country that fully matches this description. There are countries in which this unbounded "rule of the powerful" practically exists, but they all try to sugar-coat it, which effectively makes them unworthy of corruption.

You might find this inderesting, Cultures of Corruption: Evidence From Diplomatic Parking Tickets[1]. Apparently, there's a fairly good correlation (if I remember correctly, but the article, or at least a summary, is there to check) between cultures with a lot of corruption and unpaid parking tickets from their diplomats in NY.

1: http://www.nber.org/papers/w12312

Interestingly Transport for London claims that the US embassy owes them ~£12 million in unpaid congestion charge fees, which exist as a disincentive to drive in central London. The embassy claim it's a form of taxation and as such they are exempt -- unsurprisingly TfL disagree. For context the next highest amounts supposedly owed are by Japan, Nigeria, Russia and India.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/us-embassy-congestion_...

Well if we successfully get a Congestion Charged passed in NYC the UK consulate here can just offset charges with the US embassy in London.

Parking fines:

http://time.com/3421587/diplomats-parking-tickets-new-york/

Parking tickets are some of the least malignant things diplomatic immunity allows diplomats and attaches to get away with. Some of the more egregious examples are things like sexual violence[1], slavery, assault, etc.

There is little the local jurisdiction can do other than ask the diplomat's home country to waive immunity --which almost never happens.

[1]https://nypost.com/2017/10/11/why-dirty-diplomats-can-litera...

Actually, they don't need to ask, they can make such a person persona non grata (which is where the term originates from [1]).

Of course this almost never happens.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_non_grata

I had a car accident a few month ago. I was the victim as the other driver did not give priority to the right. After the police arrived, they came to this conclusion, too. Turned out, that the other driver was a diplomat, who drove a brand new rented BMW, and did not understand why I was the victim. The driver was also an unwanted person in the country due to corruption scandals, and he was heading to the airport to leave the country for good. The police did not charge him due to the diplomatic immunity and patiently endured his crazy ideas that I was causing the accident on purpose, I was diving too fast, I am too young to know how to drive, and I was on my phone while driving etc. Of course, none of these was real, and ironically I could prove it thanks to the cameras there. I think this behaviour is not supposed to belong to a diplomat who represents his country on foreign soil.

> this behaviour is not supposed to belong to a diplomat

Hardline bargaining, sometimes works, very high ROI. Probably underreported, not entertaining/uplifting.

A friend was a teenager in NYC with diplomatic immunity. His older brother was driving when they were caught speeding. The policeman showed him some photos of a wrecked car, a youth's dead body, and said he didn't want to meet my friend's father.

The infraction gets reported to the embassy. Some countries don't care, but a European country for example will not be pleased if their staff are breaking American law.

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