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Comment by praxulus | Hacker News Reader

The option that's fee-free to users probably costs more for the city, whereas the ones that charge a fee will probably be cheaper or even free for the city.

A city council member trying to balance a budget isn't engaging in corruption by choosing the option that reduces an expense in the city budget, even if it just places the cost on the people paying for parking instead. Constituents would be more likely to complain about higher property taxes or cuts to city services than to complain about a fee like this.

Maybe they just got bribed, but that seems less likely.

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PayByPhone also shows ads in the parking experience (thankfully, not too obtrusively, and not until the parking is confirmed). So, they could be covering some of the cost that way.

That looks like an opportunity for an "ad-free" pro subscription.

> A city council member trying to balance a budget isn't engaging in corruption by choosing the option that reduces an expense in the city budget, even if it just places the cost on the people

Sounds like a pretty solid definition of corruption to me. Siphon private individuals' money into a corporation instead of using public money to offer public services.

The problem with using an expansive definition like this is that doing so desensitizes people to the kind of corruption where politicians literally just accept money or valuables in exchange for misusing their power. E.g. "All politicians are corrupt, so who cares if he takes bribes? At least he agrees with me on X/Y/Z."

The key difference is that the politician is not being personally enriched by saving money in the city budget this way.

I agree, this is just politicians making a decision that non-drivers are not subsidizing the cost of something that mostly impacts drivers. Once that decision is made by politicians, collecting fee directly by private entity is more economical than passing the fee to government and paid out to the private entity.

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