Zero rupee note (2015)
karthika2006.wordpress.com
karthika2006.wordpress.com
I was in Romania to watch the solar eclipse of there. Then we started our itinary back home. About one kilometer before the border to Hungary we were stopped by the police. It was very flat and the road very straight. We already could see the border post in the distance. The officer seemed friendly and beckoned me to get out of the car. I got off and he wanted to look at the trunk. I opened it and I showed him our gear, two tents, sleeping bags, clothes, some food and it took the time. He was very friendly, like an older uncle of you. He wanted to look at our papers again and when I passed him my passport he made a gesture, he put the flat hand between two pages.
After some time I suddenly realized that he wanted to be bribed. Duh!
Then I said, sorry no more Romanian Lei, but we have Hungarian Forint, and he nodded eagerly. So I said, just a moment please and took back my passport then I did some calculation in my head. I decided to give him $20 worth in Forint and put the notes in the passport and gave him the passport back. He was happy and gestured that we can continue.
Just to know, this was only two years after the fall of Ceausescu.
We drove away. Slowly just to give him the feeling that he has the situation in control.
We expected to wait about 15 minutes at the border post, as it already happened when we entered Romania. But when we slowly cruised to the post, another officer appeared and beckoned us through. We overtook about four cars.
I didn't plan to but we got VIP treatment.
Today I think I shouldn't have bribed the officer. However I was completely clueless and I had a good rapport with the officer and I just wanted to help him and us. I still don't know what I should have done.
As for "what happens if I refuse" - in anecdotal experience:
- I've seen friends arrested/detained until they paid up (happened 3-4 times).
- I've seen officials attempting to take a bribe "give up" when we acted confused (1-2 times).
- I've seen officials invent very creative excuses about a "EU tax" or "foreigner tax" or "special foreigner tickets".
I want to say this is amusing but honestly the situation is always terrifying and unclear and I actively avoid places with corruption when picking my tourist destinations.
I mean on the one side I'm cringing with embarrassment, on the other... the fuck?
I know it's just a different culture and I try to give a decent tip when I'm in the states as my lack of understanding will not improve the situation but it's still fubar.
If you're on a tab, you tip at the end, but a slightly larger cash tip on your first drink will get you much faster service the rest of the evening.
I would never try that sort of thing with an officer attempting to solicit a bribe though :]
Unless by bad service you mean something like spitting in your food or calling you a slur, you should just consider a 15% tip a part of bill for anything where you sit down and have food brought to you. 20-25% for good service.
American workers who can't receive tips in practice don't need to be paid the minimum wage, for example. (In theory there's a process to correct if theyre still below it after tips, but in practice that's regularly flouted).
Honestly, American restaurants shouldn't even bother putting prices on the menu. Between the tipping culture and the taxes it's impossible to guess at the true price of an item.
I usually tip generously but bad service deserve a 0.1$ tip. They choosed to work in the restauration industry and they should know that tip is given for good service, so they are suppose to know that if they want the full salary, they should provide some minimally adequate level of service.
If they don't like this they can work in another sector, if the USA is anything like Canada, big boxes shop like Wallmart and BestBuy are hiring in almost every locations. Those place are more apropriate for service worker that don't want to actualy serve the customer.
You wouldn't want to reward bad work now, would you?
I will happily give 15-20% tips for great service, but that is a additional and is given freely - not what is to be expected.
Some of these people also avoid travelling to the USA (and Canada) for similar reasons. Am I supposed to tip for this? Is this a $1 tip, or $5, or 15%? But the card terminal is giving a choice of only 20% or 25%... and is it better to leave cash anyway?
(I'm sure you could explain every situation, just like an Indian can explain all the situations in India.)
You are describing a Hippie taking a holiday, perhaps.
I am in India and I never bargain, hate the pressure. You never have to bargain unless you are in a known tourist trap places, wanting to buy trinkets.
Fixed price markets and services like Uber are a welcome improvement, but there are still plenty of recent articles (mainly blogs) aimed at tourists concerning bargaining in India.
("Hippies" on holiday in most of Europe don't have to bargain.)
What kind of weak-ass restaurant hygiene laws do you have there?
I've lived in the US all my life, and I'm still confused at when tips are required and when it's just a nice thing to do. Even order-at-the-counter places now ask for a tip (often pre-filled to 15%) at checkout. Are their employees being paid below minimum wage? I don't think so, but they know it's ambiguous enough that they can exploit the weird culture around tips.
Where is the line for when a tip is required? If I pick up my food at the counter but they clean up the tables when I'm done, are those employees making less than minimum wage? If I order at the counter but someone brings me the food? The sit-down restaurant with a dedicated waiter is the easy case, but it's not the only case.
There are a ton of ambiguous edge cases, and many, many restaurants are deliberately exploiting the uncertainty. The whole thing is a mess, and I totally sympathize with Europeans who get confused and just give up.
(Not that it's okay not to tip as long as we have this confusing mess of a wage system. You just can't say that it's an easy social norm to understand and follow.)
We live in a society.
There's no plausible scenario where some sort of mass collective customer driven action requiring coordination is going to be effective.
Tipping culture will change when restaurants change their compensation structure.
A restaurant can commit to paying the team a fair wage, include the costs in the menu pricing, prohibit tipping, and loudly market that it's what they are doing. It's happened in many places and it works. Danny Meyer in NYC seems to be doing pretty well with this plan for example.
Depriving the least powerful people in the whole equation isn't a solution. Lobby the business owners who actually make the decisions.
> you should just consider a 15% tip a part of bill for anything where you sit down and have food brought to you
No. If it’s part of the bill, put it on the bill.
It’s even worse if they ask for a tip up front like seriously, what?
No one is making this as a decision. Restaurant owners that have tried to put in place a no tipping policy have customers tip anyway because Americans are uncomfortable not tipping. They then think, somewhat accurately, the restaurant has high prices. We are stuck with a bad system.
There should be a note on American menus that says "We underpay our staff, so 15-20% tipping is expected." And European menus should read "We compensate our staff sufficiently, so tipping is not expected."
In reality, both of these are never written out, and everyone is expected to learn them culturally. Which ultimately leaves tourists in an awkward spot.
That's why I started this by saying I'd have an issue with someone who kept not tipping after being informed about the issue.
But I'd be hard pressed to come up with a reason that "customer -> staff" is objectively better or worse than "customer -> owner -> staff".
Same money, gets to the same place.
I was recently in a restaurant that had exactly that. There was a fine print note at the bottom of the menu explaining that because a state law prevented servers from splitting tips with the kitchen staff, a 3% surcharge would be added to the check so that non-tipped staff could "earn a living wage".
https://www.squidlipsgrill.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Sq...
In Britain, bills usually say "Service charge" or "Service is included" [1]
But I think these are exceptions, and I wouldn't expect it in general -- just like it doesn't say "Service included" when I buy a buy shoes in France or Britain, even though the staff usually have to fetch them from the stock room.
It does more than confuse tourists, it locks every restaurant into the system whether the owners wish it or not. That’s why I think the “we underpay” with its pejorative tinge is inappropriate.
Interestingly, people have been (wrongly) arrested for not paying tips in the US. They were quickly released, but I think that misconception indicates how strong of a norm paying at least something in tips is.
Long term, tipping just means these employers can compete for labor against other (non-tip) industries forced to pay higher, and without having to reflect that additional cost in their prices to the end customer.
The idea that the employer is the one getting the tip is a myth, and a well bolstered one for obvious reasons.
The same thing is true for the sanctions on Russia.
Nonetheless they are the only tool at my disposal.
People should get paid decently, and not rely on tips to make a living.
It’s basically a standover extortion at that point.
Unfortunately the US has a tipping culture enshrined in law. So businesses can legally pay their employees who may potentially receive tips far below minimum wage.
People cant separate the cultural expectation of tipping from the reason the expectation exists. I find it mildly infuriating that the reason tipping exists isn't even present in my state but I am still expected to tip.
It's not that simple. I fully agree that in cases where the establishment is allowed to under-pay, it's our job to tip. But I've lived in the United States all my life, and there are still enough edge cases in the restaurant industry alone to be terribly confusing. That doesn't even get into questions of barkeeps, hotel staff, taxi drivers, and whoever else.
What if I order at the counter, then I sit down and someone brings me the food? Are the employees who bring me that food making less than minimum wage? How do I know one way or the other?
Even more confusingly, order-at-the-counter restaurants have started asking for 15% tips at checkout. I'm relatively confident that they're not building tips into the wage structure, but how can I be sure?
It's definitely not the fault of the workers that this system exists, but it's a horrible, opaque, and confusing way to do business. At a minimum, restaurants should be required to make it explicit when their employees need the tip.
I have. I went to a Chinese buffet in Raleigh, North Carolina, with my family. We finished eating, went to the cashier and paid, then we left.
As we were getting into our car the 'waiter' who had sloshed lemonade into out glasses ran up loudly complaining that we hadn't left him a tip. Why such people should be tipped is beyond me.
Anyway, I further insulted him by handing him a single dollar bill, with a smile.
Because that person is paid $2.50/hr for their work.
If you don't want to tip, you should boycott the restaurant until they implement a fair wage policy.
This is an illegal wage according to federal minimum wage laws. I can't imagine the GP commenter should be responsible for labor law violations beyond reporting it to the relevant local agency. Many states go even farther, requiring the same minimum wage (excluding tips) even for tipped employees, but the federal law already requires minimum wage including tips.
Unlike boycott this way customers are given ample chance to behave even if they are not local and visiting first time.
in that vein, is there a list somewhere of American eateries which pay non-poverty wages and therefore adopt tipping practices which are less morally reprehensible to us foreigners? I'd happily go out of my way when in the US to avoid this particular cultural norm.
There are really 3 relevant parties here: the restaurant owner, the restaurant staff, and the customer.
The owners have lobbied for and gotten exceptions to most minimum wage laws, to the effect that they can pay their staff under minimum wage, with tipping making up the difference.
Consequently, if staff receives no tips: the restaurant is required to pay them minimum wage (US$7.25 / hr), or applicable local minimum wage if higher [0].
If staff receives tips, the owner is allowed to pay them a much lower wage (don't remember offhand), with tips making up the difference to meet or exceed minimum wage.
Some of this may be changing due to worker shortages, but restaurant margins are always pretty thin.
Tl;dr - restaurant workers make over minimum wage only if tipped
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Minimum_wage_by_state_b...
> Tl;dr - restaurant workers make over minimum wage only if tipped
Your tl;dr doesn't match. According to you workers make minimum wage irrespective of whether you tip (unless the owner breaks the law), and all your tips do is directly offset owner costs.
It was extraordinarily rude.
There are a couple of exceptions, but only really if you weren't paying for your drinks, like at a casino. In those cases, yes, you should tip per drink.
It's not helped by the fact that every order-at-the-counter restaurant now asks for tips as you pay. It's almost to the point where I assume that a tip is needed if and only if I'm not asked for one. No wonder it's confusing to visitors.
I mean, the root cause is similar: low wages incentives the official/waiter to ask for more money directly to a citizen/client, or else.
There's no tips where I'm from, so tips have always been strange and unecessary to me.
Genuinely wondering. I have no fixed opinion.
Edit to add: also a root cause is that both practices are generally accepted in some areas.
The idea behind tipping is that the wait staff will do a better job if part of their salary depends on impressing the customer. How well this actually works is a different conversation.
With police corruption they are purposely doing a bad job to get the bribe, and getting the bribe encourages them to keep doing a bad job.
I wish wait staff were paid better, or atleast got an automatic gratuity everywhere, then we wouldn't need tips.
Edit: OK, there is one big difference: tipping is encouraged by the employer while bribery is not.
If tipping is a form of a corruption, it is the boss—which neither gives nor receives the tip—who is the corrupt one.
I'm American, I grudgingly accept that tipping is how things are done and not tipping would be unfair to wait staff, but even before COVID I was mostly choosing restaurants that don't have table service just to avoid the 20% tip tax.
I am not sure why only car sales guys get bad rap when restaurants always looking to hide true cost to customers in advertisements.
Today, tips are paid because wait staff are paid below minimum wage. This is legal - as tipping is baked into their compensation. It's stupid and anachronistic, but it's not the fault of the staff (though GOOD waiters will often express support for the system because they fear going to fixed wage w/ zero tipping will reduce their income).
I'd much prefer a living wage with optional tips for extraordinary service (which seems to be the norm in much of western Europe). Here in the US, 20% gratuity is pretty much expected. And FWIW, I'll pay 25-30% for good service, and to get less than 20%, a waiter would have to be downright awful.
So, a waiter should always earn at least minimum wage, but can earn more if tips are good.
However, in practice, there are problems with this system. First, waiters who don't earn lots of tips usually get the bad shifts, then fired. Second, lots of room for wage theft.
At bars on the other hand the 'corruption' is much clearer. Tip badly for a round of drinks and you'll get slow/bad service for the rest of the evening. Tip well and you'll get priority service and perhaps even free booze. Especially with spirits and mixed drinks the corruption is obvious. Tip well and the bartender will pour you a double while charging you for a single, essentially 'stealing' from his employer and selling you the stolen goods at a discount under the table.
It's not totally implausible that the owner is fully aware of the situation and accepts the status quo as a local maximum of profitability, why mess with standing social norms -- much how most restauraunteurs in the states wouldn't dream of paying a living wage for their wait staff because they know customers are going to tip sufficiently regardless of wages and that enough potential employees are fine with the situation (or prefer it) that they won't have staffing issues.
TLDR: It’s remarkable what tipping and basic human decency can do to the quality of service you receive at a bar.
Of course we now need an experiment to disentangle those two variables! One team tips very well, but treats the staff badly , one team treats the staff with plenty of human decency, but doesn't tip. Then we measure the quality of service received by the two groups. I wonder if I can apply for a research grant?
The point is, fundamentally the current way tips are collected in the US is like corruption. And like corruption, it should be made illegal.
For those who think people can’t survive without tips, first it is a problem that they are mistreated by their employer, second make it legally binding to mandatory add 20% or whatever to the meal and pass that to the directly (again legally binding).
If you think tips encourage good quality of service, other places without a culture of giving tips have our ways of providing good quality of service. You don’t need tip for that.
I once heard tips people gave, that when checking into hotel rooms, you should hold a 20 dollar notes as hint of tip and then ask them for upgrade. If they do, then you give them the tip. This is bribery, one of the many examples how tip culture can be used in a way indistinguishable to corruption.
Of course.
With a government agent, you are not necessarily supposed to be paying them. Typical bribes are dependent upon an implicit threat of abuse of power rather than being a normal purchase of goods & services.
Tips are not a "lesser form of corruption". Unless you were somehow buying something with that tip that would otherwise be off-limits but in that case I think people would call it a bribe.
That said, it's up for debate whether this is a valid expectation either in the context of public services provided by the government, engagements with private parties, or both.
In the US, servers can make much more than minimum wage. Cash tips weren't reported for taxes. Reference: dated waitresses
But, if you're paying as you go, then yeah, you'd tip the bartender each order.
You said waitress, which implies table service. That would normally be tipped when you pay at end of evening. I've never been to a bar that requires paying per drink when seated and getting table service.
Also Americans should just get rid of tipping culture already, and pay employees what they deserve. You're a democracy, right?
McAfee has written an extensive guide on how it works in central America: https://www.whoismcafee.com/the-travel-guide/
Cynical, but spot-on.
The world became a bit darker (but also more sane), when McCafee died.
Hah. Now I stopped wondering about the friendliness of the officer.
Yes, I thought about it. I tried to estimate the salary of the police officer and wanted to give him enough, but not too much. It was a difficult decision and I took some time to think this through, about one minute, but he was very patient. We had about $150 worth in Forint in the car and he saw the notes when I took out the $20. Probably $20 was on the high end, but not so much because it seems he shared the gain with his colleagues.
It seems that we were lucky.
And that's why corruption is bad. It creates wrong incentives and loss of security.
In 2022 small time corruption in Romania is still a big problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_Beach
I had no trouble w/ the police in any country but the train conductor wanted a bribe upon entering Romania and we wound up spending an extra night in a small town because the train schedules were screwed up thanks to the war in Yugoslavia. Instead of staying in a hotel we spent that night on our feet talking to some kid who was making fun of our Romanian money and then I passed out when I drank a 7-up after getting out of a hot and crowded train in Varna.
People have to take a step back and realize this can NEVER be beat. Because corruption is a philosophical construct. We saw virtually incorruptible countries tied up in the financial recession that was fueled by greed. But it wasn't greed until it all came crashing down, before that it was a smart move.
So preachiness aside let me tell you story. So a friend of mine works in supply chain operations in a certain country. Surprisingly local supply chain professionals are paid comparatively low than their peers with similar skill and education. Yet supply chain type work are always the most deemed jobs in any industry. I asked him, what's the deal. So he just told me, people just makes up the "opportunity" cost by over invoicing and charging commissions to their favored vendors. I said what kind monitoring mechanism do the bosses have. They said usually none, but if they even have monitoring mechanism and get this, corrupt people will use the monitoring mechanism itself to weed out the ones who are honest! So, for the owners the cost corruption is just part of the cost production. They include the cost without much care.
Anyway, I am trying to convince him to open a startup with me to address this problem and apply to YC S22.
In India, from the lowest level of administration- from ward (a few blocks of town/city) councillor and village board members to governor's of states to prime minister and cabinet minister- corruption exists at every level. Every level.
Most people are corrupt.
People are corrupt, too. People regularly lie about income and property to avail government benefits.
In India, if you are not nepotistic, you are perceived badly in society. You will become an outcast and invite anger if you do not abuse Power to help people in your relational vicinity.
I know many people who seek government jobs just so they can earn through bribes.
However, what this simplistic conclusion fails because the developed countries have huge amounts of corruption at all other levels. Everything is still impacted by lobbying and back channels, in huge multi-billion dollar amounts…
However, I feel like the focus on small-time corruption distracts us from the bigger institutionalised corruption that is ever prevalent. By deciding that the lower levels of gov are going to be both underpaid and devoid of other “benefits”, we still end up with gov employees that hate their job and have no motivation. It changes nothing other than convenience for the citizens and results in near-poverty for the gov employees. Meanwhile, the higher-ups are living in mansions in both situations. It’s effectively a classist gate keeping - wherein the powerful always get what they want, and have the opportunity to hide it enough that IME the average citizen in the West still truly believes that their gov is fair and not corrupt.
For example, corrupt traffic officers' bribes are often regressive (as nobody's threatening the rich and powerful), leave people with less money in their pocket, and requires the creation of direct injustices like wrongful imprisonment or even violence.
Whereas a defence contractor who has a bunch of retired generals and senators as "advisers" merely steals from tax revenue, which is collected progressively; the average citizen has no less money in their pocket; and no direct threats are needed at all. It's still corruption, certainly, but it doesn't put innocent people in jail.
I agree that low-end corruption is more regressive for the common person, both in that they are more forced to pay up, but also that it comes from a smaller wealth pool.
High-end corruption is lobbying and think-tanks. While low-level bribing is for pettier things like paperwork, the rich and powerful aim to influence public policy to their benefit.
While the common person might not have to visibly participate, these changes affect their lives. Taxes are only progressive by design, but in reality are disproportionately paid by those who can’t afford to evade/game the system. Moreover, the non-rich people are the ones who actually really need the outcomes of tax money.
As more and more of it that is siphoned away by high-level corruption, you end up with decaying infrastructure. This outcome is quite visible in a lot of developed countries now. Another great example are defence budgets that dominate the entire national budget, but primarily funnel money to the rich military-industrial oligarchs, while being used to murder people in “faraway lands”.
One takeaway is that corruption is a tool of power. If there are a lot of "keys", chances are that you are a key and if a bribe demand is so bad that it is likely to be your top priority, you will switch your allegiance to a different leader.
The thing that others me is how we can have very unpopular things but I don't care enough to get rid of those things.
Take the second amendment (2A), for example. I don't want people to own guns and carry them on their person flaunting it at gas stations. However, I don't care about it enough to make it my single issue. So my understanding is there can be 5% of the voters really care about something stupid to ignore everything else and vote based on 2A for example.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own...
They share a basket of political goals and within that basket, the more extreme version of each tends to win out, at least for those goals that are not broad, cross-party American priorities.
» In India, from the lowest level of administration- from ward (a few blocks of town/city) councillor and village board members to governor's of states to prime minister and cabinet minister- corruption exists at every level. Every level.
My understanding is the people I to don't need to personally demand bribes from the public at all. If you expect to make a lot of money with your government job, the people with the power to put you in the job will demand you pay to get that job, right?
Scandals in recruitment is huge in India.
Interview panels are regularly challenged in court and sometimes overthrown and cancelled.
Some people even get their salary stopped, deducted, and fired for getting hired through illegal channels.
And not only in jobs where you stand to gain bribes, but also in jobs that are tenured from day one. Like High School teachers or elementary school teachers. Their salary is also much higher than their American counterparts when PPP is considered.
People bribe and get into all sorts of tenured posts.
People even get called to (already fixed) interviews even though their score in written test was lower than people who did not get the call.
As I said, challenging recruitment panels in court is really common.
Airtight systems can be created and are in place (e.g. in central state-owned bank recruitments) where no corruption happens. Where there is corruption it is because the people in power want it that way. The ruling parties want to recruit loyalists and their relatives in government ranks. They also have to pay high bribe, but being a member of the parties tells you whom to bribe.
Some say (I find it credible) that governments deliberately mess up recruitment procedure so they are sub-judice for a long period of time. This way, the government does not have to pay salary to them and instead use the money to many welfare projects and gain the votes of the masses.
Say, you want to give ₹10k to each HS student in your state so that they can buy smartphones. One smartphone ~5-10 votes in an election. Minium salary in peon rank ~₹40k. There are 2000 vacancies. You mess up the recruitment process deliberately, and the case goes to court. The case runs for 4 months to 5 years. If the case goes on for two years, you save ₹40k × 2000 × 24 ~ $25.6 million. And with that money, you can bankroll 192k smartphones amd get close to 500k votes- enough to swing a district (districts are sub-provinces in India).
There has been, and still are- several large scale conspiracies that manipulate results in entrance tests. People have died for investigating it. See [0].
Now these two people are out a lot of money and in their mind they have to recoup that money somehow and the cycle of bribes continues. :/
Not the case most of the times. In each recruitment process, a central list is created based on test score and other criteria.
And candidates give choices. Most want to live in megacities like Chennai or Kolkata. Many want to be close to their homes.
Choices are awarded (or disregarded) first-come-first-serve basis on that merit list.
A few get desired postings due to their scores. Most of them end up in godforsaken places where your future children will get shitty schools and a worse environment. And very bad healthcare facilities.
So these people are eager to shell out a lot of money to get desired posting.
Indian companies and government institutions always had unions. Most of them leftist, and many apolitical (in white collar places, obviously). Nowadays unions are hijacked overnight by whichever party comes to power.
They work as a center of power. And they are the intermediaries in corruption.
Most unions have stopped caring about their ideals, and the people. They are just power brokers hungry for the fulfilment of the few.
This is how corruption becomes universal in India. There are taxicab unions, actors' unions, teachers' unions, farm-workers' union- all rules over by the ruling party. They don't give a rat's ass about the members.
They just care about a few. And they can stay in power because they are supported by the ruling party and give them huge cuts.
Jokes apart, in your day to day life you don’t have to go through this multiple times a day in the west with every interaction you have. Of course this isn’t like every Indian goes through this daily. Depends on what they do. If you’re a small business owner, this is a large part of your daily life.
In fact, one of the main benefits of adopting the shipping container in the 1970s was reducing such graft. Earlier most of the cost of shipping by sea was the labour of packing and unpacking goods at the pier. Goods such as liquor and electronics simply went missing during transit. This was a common practice on the New York piers at the time.
The shipping container changed that. It was vastly cheaper because it took very little time to handle at the ports, and it cut down on graft. Shipping and exports grew in the US because “losses” decreased.
Source: The Box by Marc Levinson.
We do have corruption on that level - some of my relatives worked in construction, and they'd just set aside money to bribe everyone. There's money and hookers for project managers. There's money for fire inspections. There's money set aside for to pay police and family members if someone dies. It's treated like a fine. There's code words, like when someone says their phone keeps running out of battery and can't call back, it means that they expect a new iPhone.
It's all fine until the prime minister siphons billions off the sovereign wealth fund. Cleaning up corruption is a lot of work, and often the process has a lot of unexpected ripples. Often it can't be cleaned up without a revolution, sometimes a violent one.
Ah, the classic "'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens".
You can live your whole life in several European countries without ever witnessing corruption. But because America is special, surely nothing can be done!
Bribes are not solicited for no reason. Officials require bribes in exchange for essential services: Getting your passport renewed, changing a land document, getting a particular license. In a small town where everybody knows everybody but the officials knows the most dangerous gang in the country (the police), it's downright inane to think handing him a note like this is going to put any fear into him. Whatever you were bribing the guy for will now simply not be done.
The citizen who does this morally self-righteous act will also get a nice target painted on his head. And should he choose to report the case, well, he's playing the usual game of dice that is the legal system here.
It would have been infinitely superior to make bribe-reporting a more anonymous process.
That would be illegal. You cannot print money that looks indistinguishable from real currency. Penalties for this are very strict and severe, and the "justice" apparatus moves swiftly on this sort of stuff. After all, this is the source of the government's power over the population.
These exist and they're made by the government's anti corruption bodies.
This zero rupee is made by an NGO and it's different to make a statement.
I would love to see a source of this. Because as far as I am aware, making special "notes" by any agency, government or not, is just against the minting laws.
You are just confidently incorrect in your answers & resort to downvoting to views you don't like. Anti-corruption agencies (ACB EOW of CBI & ED of audits & account) in India use Potassium permanganate to dust the notes. The handprint of the accused are processed if they touch the notes. Usually recorded as pink stains on paper & dated with a magisterial witness.
Source: https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/epgpdata/uploads/epgp_content/F...
When someone uses this currency, it gives a perception that they are not alone and there is some organization behind them. The gov official would prefer to move on to prey on other innocent citizens rather than dealing with this one person who seems to have some sort of support from some known/unknown organization. Unfortunately, this does not solve the issue completely as it just shifts the issue to other innocent folks.
Since then though things are constantly improving. With computerisation / automation you don't have to face any person for many of the tasks. I can buy tickets, do bank transactions, get marriage/birth certificate, passport appointment all from my laptop/phone.
So I for one am hopeful. Police/ministries are one of the last places where corruption is deeply entrenched but we are making a lot of progress.
They find new ways though. My friends in the US needed H1B stamping appointments that are near impossible to find. Apparently there are “agents” who you give your username and password to and they can get you an appointment as they know when new appointments are released. They jump on the appointments knowing when they will be released and get you one.
Security wise this is a clusterfuck. But the fact that this is even happening is crazy. Of course my friend didn’t use this given the Giant security issue but it seems people do use it successfully.
Edit: Just out of curiosity, anyone know what 7CR is, in USD?
Edit2: It's just over $9000
7 crore INR = 70,000,000 INR = USD $900,000
Your edit seems to refer to:
7 lakh INR = 700,000 INR = USD $9000
Indian corruption is propagated by beaurocrats because the middle-man beaurocracy has power. The US gives power to elected officials, so corrupt money is channeled through lobbying and cushy retirement jobs.
The best we can do is to increase visibility (eg: making campaign finances public) and remove points of friction. The other alternative is to go full Singapore and become authoritarian. Democratic govts. have limited power, so they can't ensure quantity and quality at the same time.
It has led me to conclude that small-but-strong govts are optimal for to deterring corruption.
An unintented? consequence of demonetization was digitization of the Indian financial system, which has enhanced visibility. The sell-off of non-performing PSUs is another great step. Hope the Govt. picks up the pace on these changes, but at least the general.direction is encouraging.
Corruption doesn't happen because people have less money. If that was true, the poorest would be the most corrupt and the richest would be the least corrupt. This is definitely not the case. It happens when there is no downside to it.
> higher accountability of the funds allocated for government projects
How? By having more government employees to monitor the existing ones? This is the exact kind of solution that would come from a seasoned bureaucrat. It serves the purpose of looking like a solution while adding to the problem.
What should be done is to remove most of the government employees and hire firms to do the job instead. That way, the individual activity and performance is the responsibility of the firm. Will some of these private firms be corrupt? Yes, but they can be monitored and replaced much easier than you can do with millions of individual government employees. Corruption can be reported directly to the firms and they will have incentives to sack the corrupt employees because of the fear of being investigated and sacked by the government.
That is a bit simplistic. The penalty for corruption could be death, definitely a downside, but an official will only be singled out for punishment if they displace someone more powerful. Corruption as such thrives in countries without strong rule of law (where laws might be harsh but are applied arbitrarily).
It seems clearly true to me that poorer countries have greater issues with corruption than poorer ones. What makes you say that's not true?
As I understand things, highly corrupt countries have a sort of 'bribe pyramid' where the police chief remits a certain amount of bribe revenue to his boss in order to keep his job, who in turn gives a portion to his boss and so on, so the police chief sees a lot of money, but will be replaced if he develops a conscience.
Most people wouldn't accept a bribe that would be just pocket money (unless they're so corrupt they get as many as tips), but having a bribe offer equivalent to a month salary (or 2, or 3) really makes you think.
India's approach is technological, like the Aadhar biometric system to ensure financial aid payments are not embezzled by corrupt officials. Some cultures like Scandinavia have managed to develop a zero-tolerance approach to corruption, like the minister who had to resign because she used her government credit card to buy a chocolate bar.
I only paid one on the whole continent, that was a bad day
One thing I find confusing with this ranking is that it can easily be interpreted as "India is the 85th more corrupted country (or perceived as so) in the world". In reality, it’s a reversed ranking: the higher rank you get the more corrupt you’re perceived as. This means that, excluding Bhutan, India is less perceived as corrupt than any of its neighbors. The first 3 countries in that ranking in 2021 were Denmark, Finland and New Zealand.
Because they want to keep avenues of corruption open.
The one that comes to mind is mutation of land type- very easily implementable solution, but it remains traditional, not analog.
Digitization does not do away with corruption. One example is the drivers' license office. There are "brokers" who take non-trivial "fees" so that you pass your driving tests and you do not face any hindrances or waste your time by having to go many times for a single task. The officers take cuts from these brokers.
Without them, only local people with no value of time will be able to get drivers' license.
There are also road signs tests. While hard for many, I found it trivially easy.
Edit: That said, I’d love something like this for tips in restaurants when there service is below par. It would provide a passive aggressive way to let the server know their service was poor without drawing attention to them or you. It would be easy to slip into the rest of the tip.
http://www.cynical-c.com/2016/01/22/restaurant-managers-resp...
Alternatively, you could use one of the cards that religious folks use that look like a bill, but has a message on the back.
The real solution is to mention the issue to your server or their manager. Most are willing to bend over backwards to make it right. If you are going to mess with someone’s expected income you should at least allow them a chance to know why if not fix the issue
Are you implying that people waiting tables are too stupid to understand that the whole business of tipping is disliked, that transparency in pricing is something that many people prefer, that people prefer a service that they are paying for be performed correctly rather than poorly?
If you have to mention it to the manager then the server is likely to be in even greater trouble and anyway, the manager is ultimately the one responsible for the poor service in the first place.
Waiters have opted into a tipping system and their customers have too. Part of the expectation on both sides is that menu prices are lower in exchange for paying directly for service. If you want to avoid tipping culture then google around for restaurants that don't accept tips, or just do takeout. Mostly non-tipping restaurants don't last long in NA because they go out of business for a variety of reasons, one of which is that service tends to suffer.
The manager likely already knows who is good at their job and who isn't. If there was a breakdown, they wan't to know 1. so they can make it right with the dissatisfied customer, and 2. so they can help the server deliver better service, or fix the system if it was outside the server's control. So yeah, the manager is responsible for doing the best to ensure good service, and they are also the one who has the most power to make it right.
You will get way farther asking for them to make it right then you will by not tipping.
I know all this because I used to work for a very large restaurant chain. They had a spend in the hundreds of thousands for comping menu items because dissatisfaction always happens. Sometimes it is the customer's fault (ordering a steak well done, and then complaining about the texture), sometimes it is the restaurant's fault.
Not necessarily. There is a whole range of reasons why someone can have a bad experience and sometimes it is as simple as a communication error or the person who trained up the server forgot to mention something important to them. Sometimes the customer just doesn't feel loved that day so they will invent reasons for being unsatisfied just to feel the warmth of someone that cares how they feel and wants them to be happy.
I agree with your negative sentiments towards tipping but why does the employee have to suffer the brunt of your frustrations of this messed up system? Is it just a good excuse to give yourself a 10% discount?
Also understand voicing your disappointments to a manager/owner or even the person serving you gives the establishment a chance to rectify the issue to no one's betterment but yourself. You can still choose not to tip or return. Not everyone is easily readable and some people have very high or unique expectations. I am just saying there is no need for snarky little mind games to get the last laugh.
[0] Construction Project Manager’s Pocket Book (Routledge Pocket Books) (it’s research reffered to in the ethics section somewhere, you can use look inside to view on Amazon)
Could you provide a(nother) reference to e.g. your 40% figure, as it is a topic that interests me? Thankyou.
(edit - yes it is from the 2nd edition, thanks for your help)
If one side of corruption is effectively legalized corruption becomes much harder!
The bribe taker is in the position of power, and abusing that position to extract a bribe. The one paying the bribe may have little choice.
Reason for being unconvinced that decriminalisation of both acts is a good idea, is that it assumes that either the person receiving or giving the bribe is always the active participant. When in reality the active participant depends on the context.
In a system where bribing is expected, then the receiver will almost always be the one soliciting the bribe, as it’s normalised for them to request and receive bribes. However in systems with low corruption where bribing is not expected, then it’s more likely the giver of the bribe is the active participant. Attempting to get the receiver to accept a bribe they haven’t solicited, in which case they should be punished (even if the bribe isn’t accepted), along with the receiver if they accept.
In my view the mere attempt to give or receive a bribe needs to be punishable. That creates risk for the active party, regardless of outcome. Making the act of attempting a bribe less palatable.
Intuitively I agree with that. It's the position of power, it's the public position and it gives power to assess to the public.
Clerk at the RTO won't issue your driving license? Make it so any driving school can issue licenses to people who have completed a course.
Policeman demands a bribe to avoid having a record on your license for driving without a seat belt or helmet? Remove unnecessary laws like this, because it is not the government's job to forcibly keep you safe.
About 2 decades ago, it was common to bribe the telecom department employees to get your phone line installed or repaired. How did we solve this problem? By making the government irrelevant in the telecom market. Now I can get a 1Gbps connection installed the same day from Airtel or Jio, no bribes needed. You can tip the installation guy if you want :)
I understand that this will still leave a lot of avenues for corruption to occur, but at least we will get rid of the low hanging fruit.
The policemen in my city were very specific about getting the fine digitally. They wouldn't handle cash even if it was for the fine.
> The answer to bribery is to take away the power from the government
A much more practical way would be to disassociate the approver and applicant. Eg: You can't bribe your University examiners Cuz they won't even know how to find your paper from lot.
I'm having a hard time believing this. Police corruption is embedded into the very power structure. Which city are you talking about?
Then your city has solved the bribe problem! We should all emulate what you guys have done.
> A much more practical way would be to disassociate the approver and applicant.
I disagree. Such measures provide a temporary respite at best. People in power are still in power, they will find out a way to exploit that. The only way is to remove the person from her power over others.
Beware of what you ask. Private corruption is 100 times worse than government corruption. Good people in the government have job safety. But honest people in private sector can just be fired if they do not comply to corruption practices. I have seen this happened many times.
> because it is not the government's job to forcibly keep you safe.
There are some laws that keep others safe. Like drunk driving. Some laws are there because they keep safe the people who often have done nothing wrong.
In India they keep on getting transferred to different departments, sometimes in in some remote area where you will have to live without your family.
Those are traditionally: Legislature, Executive, Judiciary and the Media
Via https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/openindia/fifth-pillar-of-i...
It's for tourists
Funding Government agencies so that they aren’t forced to take bribes is perhaps a better tool. Even better, invest in feedback mechanisms and make it easy to report officials that take bribes.
Corruption is often a symptom of underlying issues and not the cause.
Would be nice to have a systematic study correlating availability of social protection vs prevalence of corruption and it's overall impact.
Edit: This comment is about the general likeness, where counterfeit can be mixed with regular notes. Guys, stop getting touchy about your currency & downvoting without a reason.
This is from 2010-2012, when large scams mobilized common people against corruption in India.
> They look a lot like the 50-rupee notes: They carry a picture of Gandhi and are a similar colour.
FWIW if these need a moment of inspection, I would still say mixing such in a stack/pile of notes - typical of charities and donations - is still a vile act thats easy to pull. Technically, the ZR note becomes an instrument for siphoning or fraud.
Wherever loose money is collected in large quantities & sorted manually, money counters dont spend inordinate times to sift currencies. They are sorted by color. e.g. in major temples & churches. Places where petty stealing is also prevalent.
Be tolerant of counter views if they don't agree with yours.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/06/india-...
As India has continued to inherit these institutions it would be hard to just reform it, it would have to completely replace it with digitization and stripping laws of unnecessary complexities.
At least the center had made great progress wiping out entire sections of colonial era laws.