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Comment by sensanaty | Hacker News Reader

This is of course assuming that politicians aren't largely duplicitious and actually believe in a word they say. I grew up in Indonesia, and the number of politicians who were extremely anti-porn getting caught watching porn in parliament is frankly staggering, yet alone the ones who are pro death penalty for drugs caught as being part of massive drug smuggling rings.

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You raise an interesting point: One question that I think about developing countries: Most of them have higher perception of corruption compared to highly developed (OECD) nations. How do countries realistically reduce corruption? Korea went from an incredibly poor country in 1960 to a wealthy country in 2010. I am sure they dramatically reduced corruption over this time period... but how? Another example, in the 1960s/1970s, Hongkong dramatically increased the pay for civil servants (including police officers) to reduce corruption. (It worked, mostly.)

I live in a developing country. What I find is that the corruption is generally easier to navigate here that it was in the USA. The corruption in the USA is much more entrenched, in the form of regulatory capture. At the local level this can look like a local ordinance where “only a contractor with xy and z (only one of which is needed for the job) can bid, favoring a specific contractor. Here you just figure out compliance with the person in charge.

Part of how the USA got that way is hilariously enough, anti-corruption policies.

    > much more entrenched, in the form of regulatory capture

I am unsure how to interpret this comment. It is so broad that it dilutes the effect. Are there any wealthy countries that you feel do not suffer from the same issue?

Idk, I’ve not lived in any wealthy countries besides the USA.

Corruption is eliminated by properly aligning incentives. Capitalism is also all about properly aligning incentives. Moving to a more capitalism-heavy system usually causes countries to get much richer.

Eastern Europe went through a similar transition. Before the iron curtain fell, the eastern bloc operated on favors more than it operated on money. This definitely isn't the case any more.

This is probably the best explanation. I didn't consider that when incentives are better aligned through capitalism, that perceived corruption may naturally fall. Your example of Eastern Europe is a very good one.

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