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Comment by otikik | Hacker News Reader

I would go as far as to say that a little bit of corruption is healthy. It adds flexibility.

For example: you don't want to register your neighbor's daughter for taxes just so that she can babysit your child once or twice. That is crazytalk. And yes, a lot of countries make sure that small payments don't require registration or taxes. This was just a quick example to make the point, sometimes the general law is just not applicable to a local event and it is better that everyone ignores it.

But this is like cholesterol. The right amount in your body makes everything better. Too much and you are in deep trouble.

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> I would go as far as to say...

In the UK, it wasn't corruption. These people were paid money for products, they delivered those products, the price paid wasn't excessive.

The UK has an independent auditor that found no evidence of corruption, and that (where product was delivered incorrectly) it was due to problems with contract specs.

Afaik, there is only one case where a person was directly involved in politics and was related to a vendor, they went to great lengths to hide their connection to a vendor, repeatedly lied to civil servants who questioned them, and is now being charged criminally (for some reason, the person who made the original comment about the UK chose not to mention it, it was PPE Medpro).

The issue was that at the start of Covid, the govt called up all their suppliers asked for PPE, and they said they didn't have any. So the govt started using suppliers who often had other businesses that imported product from China (and had to set up new companies). The level of profit on the contract was normal, the price was higher but that was related to the pandemic (how quickly forgotten, in the UK there was literally no PPE for most of 2020, you couldn't buy masks at any price).

So the flexibility already exists...the UK is not corrupt, things happen naturally. Corruption is only necessary where there are supply-side bottlenecks due to politics (i.e. Qatar, Russia, India).

Private Eye has covered this. The level of profit was not normal. Some of the companies were making 50%. And the government had two lists of companies when they were awarding contracts. The priority list was for the acquaintances of ministers and MPs.

It smells very bad.

50% what? And Private Eye has also covered the NAO report, which found no evidence of this, and the GLP court case which attempted to prove the price paid was excessive and failed to do so.

No, the priority list wasn't. To approve a vendor through the normal process would have taken years, the fast track process was created to get PPE quicker than normal. I believe all but one person was unrelated to the Tories, the only person who wasn't (as I have said) repeatedly lied about their connection to the vendor, and is now facing criminal charges.

Seriously? The high court found that the operation of the priority list was unlawful [1]. You can reasonably argue that they needed to move quickly, but that doesn't explain why some companies were getting special treatment.

And the 50% is profit. Obviously.

[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59968037

Obviously...profit margin, return on equity, return on capital, return on assets, return on investment, operating margin, gross margin, net margin...to be so ignorant that it is obvious.

The reason they got special treatment was because of the speed. That was what the priority list was for - "establishes that presence on the high priority lane did not confer any advantage at the decision-making stage of the process", what you have linked me is exactly what I was just told you. The award wasn't unlawful, the govt did not report on the detail of the contracts within the time period required...that was unlawful, but a function of the process (again, the contracts were awarded outside the usual process so all the information wasn't gathered...the NAO conducted a full audit of the contracts, iirc, before the contract details were reported in the public database).

Why are you so hard at work trying to come up with excuses for obvious sleazy dealing?

There are companies that made no upfront investment, ordering equipment from China without any understanding of what they are ordering, any relevant experience, and huge quantities fo PPE had to be destroyed because it was not fit for purpose and did not meet regulatory requirements. Most of the companies contracted had no experiece of dealing with medical equipment ever before. I personally know people who have experience in the industry and government passed them up for contracts in favour of the shitsters that were chosen.

What equity? What capital? What assets? What investment? These mostly weren't PPE manufacturers or even PPE suppliers. Often they were little more than drop shippers with a 50% profit margin. It is that simple.

And the fact that companies were treated the same when they were assessed doesn't alter the fact that being assessed sooner rather than later is a massive advantage.

I think your argument boils down to don't assign to corruption what could more easily be assigned to incompetence.

Which I think is a fair point but does raise some questions about the competency of the civil servants and politicians we trust with a fairly large chunk of our income.

Yes, I think we should do that (there are massive issues with both the civil service and civil service procurement, Scotland has significant issues here...these are probably bigger than with politicians) but we have a system with robust checks and balances (for example, ministers don't make procurement decisions...if a firm was fast-tracked, they delivered something...that doesn't mean there were no issues, but ministers aren't writing cheques to people).

How does this rule work when people are both currupt and incompetent, life is the case with the Russian military? On the rare occasion anyone competent is involved, incompetence can be feigned.

I realise that you are making an off the cuff example, and I agree with your basic point. However, in the places I have lived, the babysitter would be an independent contractor and thus responsible for her own taxes. Moreover, it is unlikely that she would be making enough money to exceed the personal exemption, and therefore, it is unlikely that she would owe taxes anyway. An argument could be made that she should collect and remit sales tax or VAT where applicable, but again, there are usually thresholds below which there is no obligation.

My point is that well run, non-corrupt, systems tend to have exemptions to make everything sane and reasonable. If these exemptions don't exist, you can believe that it is because the system is corrupt and not because they are trying to stop corruption.

Well for small payments we need a simple tax box, no country is doing that, all countries require a ton of paperwork for each new “employee”.

Why not just have one payment system to rule them all run by the government that is required by law for all payment of employee-driven services? Businesses could save a TON of money on payroll systems and HR.

A government-run system--presumably--would take care of withholding the correct amount of taxes and also making sure the business/person paying a salary never has to worry about running afoul of the law (having the IRS or equivalent) come after them.

In France there are more than a hundred mandatory numbers on the paysheet. Each class of worker has its own retirement/health/subhealth/old-age-health/unemployment/family benefits. Each has a different rate.

The problem is that the revenue leakage for babysitters and other under the table services is lower than the scaled grifts that an “easy box” would generate.

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