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Comment by sillygeese | Hacker News Reader

If you're in a position to hand out $5B of other people's money, do you think some people might want to bribe you to get it?

What if you can only hand out $1M? Will someone still want to bribe you? -Of course, but he'll be a "smaller player" then.

All public spending involves some sort of "corruption" [1] because it's always other people's money being spent, and there's always someone in charge of spending it.

If you could pay $10 to get $100, wouldn't you do it? A bribe is an investment, and the tax money received in exchange is the ROI.

[1] I put "corruption" in quotes because it's just the system working as intended. If the system were actually corrupted, it would somehow start working for the masses' benefit instead.

Think about it. How do you benefit from someone else spending your money for you? Your money serves a means towards an end for whoever spends it, meaning he will be trying to benefit from spending it.

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> If you could pay $10 to get $100, wouldn't you do it?

Certainly not, if the $10 is a bribe. Would you?

> A bribe is an investment...

No, it is a criminal offence, in most places. And for good reason. Corruption does horrible things to the economy.

>> A bribe is an investment

> No, it is a criminal offence, in most places.

You say that like criminal offences can't be investments.

> Certainly not, if the $10 is a bribe. Would you?

Probably not, even if only because I'm not the kind of person who'd even get into a position to bribe someone for personal gain.

But there's this thing called "psychopaths", and they do seek out bribing opportunities and they don't have any problem whatsoever with paying bribes too.

> No, it is a criminal offence, in most places. And for good reason.

Sure, but the people taking the bribes are part of the organization that's supposed to punish people for taking bribes (i.e. "criminal offenses"). See a problem there?

> All public spending involves some sort of "corruption" [1] because it's always other people's money being spent, and there's always someone in charge of spending it.

In an ideal democratic system, opposing parties would seek to expose corruption in public officials and use it to their advantage, thereby dis-incentivizing the misappropriation of public funds. Obviously no democracy is perfectly ideal, but your armchair analysis hasn't exactly blown a hole in modern governing theory.

In any event, this article specifically makes the airport's woes out to be more of mismanagement than corruption, and you haven't linked to anything else in your response.

> In an ideal democratic system, opposing parties would seek to expose corruption in public officials and use it to their advantage, thereby dis-incentivizing the misappropriation of public funds.

Look, "misappropriating public funds" is exactly why someone would work hard to get into a position where he's in charge of public funds. No one does anything without some personal gain involved.

> Obviously no democracy is perfectly ideal, but your armchair analysis hasn't exactly blown a hole in modern governing theory.

On the other hand, you haven't exactly blown a hole in the fact that people act according to incentives, and people in charge of vast amounts of other people's money presents a massive incentive for both bribing them and them accepting bribes.

> more of mismanagement than corruption

How do you tell them apart, especially considering "mismanagement" would be an excellent cover for blatant bribery. "Oh this silly city official guy chose a completely shitty service provider for this project. Maybe he'll check their track record next time!"

"How do you benefit from someone else spending your money for you?"

1. Economy of scale 2. I can get 5% on my own but they can get 8%. If he invests my money for me for 1.5% then we both prosper.

So there's at least 2 ways. There are more. Yes it's more complicated, but you asked and I answered.

> 1. Economy of scale 2. I can get 5% on my own but they can get 8%. If he invests my money for me for 1.5% then we both prosper.

First of all, "he" is not interested in your well-being, so he might as well get a good deal with a total price of X, but mark down X + Y as the expenses, and then pocket the difference.

And second, free competition drives quality up and prices down, so you'll get a good deal that way too. There's plenty of "economy of scale" in millions of people seeking out the best deal on whatever.

"Think about it. How do you benefit from someone else spending your money for you?"

What is convenient and rational for an agent from the perspective of that agent could be not the more convenient action if all the other agents in the “game” take the same action at the same time.

In a sense, this is the root of the separation between microeconomics and macroeconomics.

In other words, you can benefit from somebody thinking with a global perspective. Of course, finding the incentives for that is a hard problem.

What is this I can't even..

But in case it helps, let's make this a bit more accurate: How do you benefit from someone forcefully taking your money from you and then spending it for you?

(Hint: If you actually did benefit, they wouldn't have to take your money by force - you'd be happy to hand it over!)

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