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Comment by DigitalSea | Hacker News Reader

Everyday Australia inches one step towards being the new China. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the kind of legislation the TPP when passed will impose on Australians.

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Slavoj Zizek has been persistently arguing (though I don't think he claims the original observation as his own) that 'western' liberal-capitalist democracy has developed a dangerous infatuation with the Singapore model of authoritarian capitalism and its pro-forma ather than substantive approach to democracy.

That's not an unreasonable argument. Here in NZ various political leaders (e.g. Don Brash) and prominent business lobbyists (members of the now-defunct Business Roundtable, for example) have been quite open in their desire to see New Zealand be "more like Singapore" (though not, curiously, on topics such as large-scale state intervention in housing or telecommunications, for example).

In the Singapore model authoritarian capitalism, elected politicians are given very high compensation from the state, to reduce the incentive for corruption. The logic goes, a parliamentarian was paid $1m a year rather than $200,000 a year, you might actually attract the best talent of society, and when you're paid $1m a year, a $100k bribe at the risk of losing your position seems much less enticing. I find there's a grain of truth to that.

In western liberal-capitalist democracies, politicians are paid above average wages, but not enough to deter doing deals behind the public's back with real estate developers, corporations, and many expect a role in business after retirement from politics, in return for doing many favours during their tenure for those very businesses.

You could almost argue Singapore has a benevolent dictator, but that is definitely not true for Western liberal-capitalist democracy. Instead I find this article more descriptive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy

"The logic goes, a parliamentarian was paid $1m a year rather than $200,000 a year, you might actually attract the best talent of society, and when you're paid $1m a year, a $100k bribe at the risk of losing your position seems much less enticing. I find there's a grain of truth to that."

Logically yes, but practically there are many examples proving that increasing salary only have minimal effect or, in turn, increase bribe size. Just to name few examples:

1. https://www.aae.wisc.edu/events/papers/DevEcon/2014/foltz.11...

2. http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/41815/1/MPRA_paper_41815.pdf

2. http://www.independent.co.ug/News/news-analysis/4625-can-hig...

We find that due to raised salary impacts for Ghanaian police officers relative to customs agents causes the police to increase the value of bribes taken at each individual stop by between 20-40 percent (~$0.20 - $0.40), increase the total amount taken on the road, even while they reduce the number times they receive a bribe.

Bribe size is increased, frequency is decreased, which is what you'd expect from increasing salary of a public official for the purpose of reducing corruption.

Take it to the extreme and increase their salary to USD$1m per year, and the frequency could drop to 0 or 1, and the price could be $10m, so fewer instances of corruption would happen because fewer people can afford it.

Public officials are also people. Most people have the same inherent desire to be good, and yet most are vulnerable to same temptations. The reality is not dictated by law.

Of course, good enforcement and punishment of corrupt behaviour is also required.

IMHO, taking 1 bribe of 3000$ instead of 3 bribes of 1000$ doesn't make you less corrupt.

You're right, I think most if not all politicians are corrupt in some way or other, and if they are all there are to build governments with, then they will have to do. You could try to start yet another revolution to get rid of the corrupt officials in government, and after much bloodshed you might even succeed, but I think you know as well as I do how long that lasts.

The Singaporean model works in Singapore. Australia just has incompetent government.

Rule of law and simple, transparent regulations are way more important than occasional voting. Especially if people can still vote with their feet.

Why China, and not the US, which also engages in these kinds of shennanigans, and has a massive domestic surveillance agency? If you want a big brother that spies on your comms and kicks down your doors, we already have an English-speaking role model. And it already has it's tendrils entrenched - it's not like anglo democracies will extradite their own citizens to China, but it happens with the US.

The "emergency" bulk internet surveillance is chilling too.

I'm not terribly worried about this actually, it seems more like general incompetence and pandering to our friends in Hollywood rather than an intentionally malicious step toward mass surveillance. I don't think its really capable of tracking anything more than who is download GoT on a regular basic... /sarcasm

Seriously though it is indeed concerning the way both major parties are heading with this, even if they had the best intentions its a nasty path.

https://i.imgur.com/0pmIted.jpg

> Everyday Australia inches one step towards being the new China.

Not sure. At least China gets investment in infrastructure done.

To be fair, Australia is not turning unwilling internet users into an attack force through their infrastructure. What they're doing in this case is weaselly - but hey, at least they've attached their names to their actions.

Less an illusion of accountability than a public intimidation tactic.

I'm not talking about Internet only. Public transport is woeful, too.

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