I've often thought about the bribery that occurs in Peru (and, presumably, many other countries) when a policeman stops your car for some minor infraction, to accept a bribe in exchange for letting you go without a ticket.

The usual thinking is that this is bribery and that it is corrosive on the morals of society.

But, the way I see it, this system is actually a better system for price discovery than the legal route. In other words, it's a better and more efficient system for finding out what the price of a minor infraction should be.

If you think about it, the official penalty for an infraction is set by a small committee of people claiming to represent the people by being voted into power or through some other democratic method.

But, the quality of information available to this small committee is much lower than the aggregate information the market has in its totality. The price signals that dictate the amount of a bribe are therefore best emitted by the market itself. Some groups in the market will want the price to be higher, others will want it to be lower. If general society drives well, without infractions, the policeman will be forced by market forces to charge a higher bribe to the few that drive badly, which means that the price will reflect accurately how people view the act of driving badly. Similarly, if a lot of people drive badly, the bribe will be lower, again reflecting the fact that society doesn't see bad driving as something that should be heavily penalised.

So, in this particular sector at least, you could argue that the bribe system is actually more just and representative of the will of the people than any arbitrary penalty system decided by its legal representatives.