It used to be that way. Right now in the United States, the level of corruption that we see is absolutely off the charts and out in the open.

It's akin to a strange alien weapon for most Americans, that goes off near you, putting you in a state of trance, and you don't even know what's happening.

There is brazenness and blatancy to it, as in "yeah, I did it, what are YOU going to do about it?"

In many other countries the remedy is torches and pitchforks, but here in the U.S. the crime syndicate infesting Washington D.C. is protected by a thick layer of laws and "norms". That's why William Barr can go on TV and say things like "winners write history". Try that shit elsewhere and see what happens.

In the developing world, corruption is quiet, it's subtle. No one is supposed to know you have 5 summer houses, because that makes people jealous and very very stabby. And that's the difference.

I only see it because I grew up in post-Soviet Ukraine. Americans don't have that unfortunate experience.

It's been this way for a while (forever?) in the US... Dick Cheney helped start a war (that killed something like 500,000 people) on knowingly false pretenses partly so that he could give his company Halliburton a $7 billion dollar no-bid contract.

That's pretty standard corruption. But the Bush administration, as rotten as it was, would at least provide schools with resources to open.

Right now that's not happening. Why? Because there is no money in it. You can't get a kickback from a school, you can't get a lobbying gig, you can't get a board seat. There is nothing to gain.

> > in the US... Dick Cheney helped start a war (that killed something like 500,000 people) on knowingly false pretenses

> That's pretty standard corruption. But the Bush administration, as rotten as it was, would at least provide schools with resources to open.

By what measure is killing half a million people, standard corruption?

(and you didn't really mean to say that's okay when they would at least provide schools with resources to open ... did you?)

He could get Halliburton billion dollar contracts without a war. Claiming that was a reason for the war trivializes the actual thought process that led to it.

No, it's not that bad in America.

The corruption we see in DE is similar to that of US and even Canada - and it's of a different kinds.

It's not corruption in the classical sense, it actually is rational for the state to prefer copper, if the state has investments in copper - in a kind of perverse way.

Less rational and borderline corruption if an individual state actor has personal investments in copper.

'Big Business' is often done on the basis of relationship, of the advice of consultants, and it's far more of a systematic thing than an overt thing.

For example, there is quite a lot of oversight for things like insider trading, and such shenanigans. People are not taking bribes.

It's rational for congressional members to 'fight' for the big government contract to be located in their district, even if it's not the ideal outcome.

This kind of network/influence dysfunction is a huge issue, and it deserves it's own name, because it operates in a different way, has different results and is way more nuanced.

That said it can have major impacts and it is a big deal, it should not be ignored, but it should be recognized as another category.

FYI - if contractors, suppliers etc. all did a really good job, it would matter less. There may or may not have been shenanigans in the allocating to CGI for the big Healthcare.gov project, but the worst part is that it was a failure. If CGI had of done a great job ... well that reduces the issue of how contracts are awarded.

The city of Montreal had some serious problems with low-level 'corruption' when handing out city contracts - as it turns out, it was partly bad acting, but partly because there was no concept of transparency, bidding, no proper systems and checks for how procurement is made, leaving the door open to city officials getting to go to expensive dinners etc..

It's an issue, but of a different kind.

I think the issues you've enumerated are actually different types of corruption (or not corruption at all)

A country preferring copper internet because they have large stocks of copper (which makes the project cheaper) is arguably the right thing to do. If it turns out it's a bad decision in the long run (because the negative impact of slow internet outweighs the savings brought by the cheap copper), that's just a bad investment. At worst, it's a mismanaged government.

An individual doing something to gain personal benefits (i.e. Cheney) is more regular, high level-corruption.

Somewhere in between the two, you get regulatory capture.

Then you have things like Old Boys' Clubs where you can't get hired in high-paying jobs unless you went to school with the right people. I'd call that an unequal society.

These are different types of problems which require radically different solutions.

It wasn't Germany that had stocks in the copper company, it was the politician who made the decision that had them.

You're being downvoted because network effects aren't the same as corruption. Although it is certainly unpleasant to consider that government officials might be making decisions more favorable to one company than another in the hope or expectation that that they will get a board seat five years hence, it is worth noting that if they upset one company now, they may get the board seat on the other company. And since anything can happen in five years, it may in many cases make better sense to make the right decision, rather than the self-interested decision. Moreover, quite independent of any decisions they make, they remain valuable since they have contacts and know government processes.

So cash in hand is a bazillion times worse than a board seat.

You might have a point if one of the reliable features of privatisations in the UK over the last few decades hadn't been a steady stream of ministers pushing through privatisation - often at significant public cost - and then parachuting straight into the board of the privatised company.

This is a bazillion times worse than cash in an envelope, because it's straightforward larceny of public resources, papered over with some thin PR nonsense about "efficiency".

This current government isn't even pretending to do anything else. There have been so many no-bid contracts for "PPE supply" handed out to cronies with no PPE experience - and no PPE delivered, while lethal shortages continue - that there are are now formal legal challenges working their way through the courts.

> This current government isn't even pretending to do anything else.

The current government in the UK is uniquely poor compared to every UK government that has come before it. The situation there does not extend to "western nations" in general - just those run by incompetent/malignant (take your pick) populists.

The populists may have dispensed with the pretense of claiming not to be corrupt, but the corruption the parent describes was certainly there long before they came on the scene.

I think your core statement highlights the bigger problem with our progression as a society overall;

We don't eliminate corruption as we 'advance', but instead we just keep abstracting it away until the less observant don't see it as corruption but instead some form of 'networking'.

The amount of public money you can funnel out or funnel in by cash in hand is limited to actual cash in hand. The level of corruption at the highest levels are on the order of a billion euros. I am not sure if you can get even close to billions of euros in corruption using only cash.

Network effects is value-free description. Corruption is how network effects are judged.

Good job rationalizing it. All cash bribes put together might be about as much as one fat government subsidy.