Pharmaceutical companies used all inclusive "conferences" to influence doctors to prescribe more opioids. It was effective enough to be banned.

> Accepting a free trip to a drug-company-sponsored conference guided doctors to write more prescriptions of the company’s drugs, a spike of 80 to 190 percent

https://www.drugwatch.com/news/2012/01/18/pharmaceutical-com...

America is generally good about limiting things to legal graft. I can't offer an elected official money in exchange for a vote, but I can donate millions to entities controlled by the elected officials that are my "friends" and make sure they know about it.

It doesn't really seem that different.

You think inviting someone to conferences is the same thing as putting $700k in their personal bank account?

Is this satire? What is going on in this thread?

At least in the medical field, conferences only provided the thinnest veneer. Doctors were paid handsome fees to present, which is tantamount to dropping money in their bank account when you compare it to other professions whether people often go to conferences on their own (or company’s) dime.

Some people think that quantitative differences are never qualitative differences. Zero, one, infinity, right?

It is VERY different, come on.

It's an open conference offered by the largest player in the space vs. a shady deal between a supplier and ONE person of another company, without its employers consent, on top of that.

If I know AWS will fly me out for good times every year (but only so long as I select them for my Big Enterprise Account), I'm more likely to pick them over a vendor that won't do the same, regardless of what's better for the company. Bribery doesn't require currency, it just requires an exchange of value.

And my boss knows that, and it's okay for executives to make corporate decisions for personal reasons. It's not okay for executives to make corporate decisions for personal reasons without acknowledgement, and particularly not with explicit deception. The difference between "my product is better for intangible reasons" and "my product is better because of lies out of teeth is fraud.

Taking personal kickbacks from vendors can be legal, so long as it's reported to your employer (and the IRS). What's not legal is hiding it from your employer because they have policies against it, and every (large) employer does.

The sole owners of large private companies can and do occasionally get personal kickbacks for their business. It rarely makes sense for them, because as owners of large private corporations they have better way of extracting cash from those companies (like literally paying themselves a salary or bonus). Totally legal, though.

It’s different in facts, but it’s not different in spirit.

Did you know that pharma sales reps take out doctors to play golf all expenses paid, plus fancy restaurant lunch in the end?

Is that different?

How about a lobbyist donating money to a political party?

Is that different?

Google the law of reciprocity. It’s human nature.

It is different in spirit.

A marketing scheme intended to attract new customers is well within what's morally accepted. Also, it's not like every guy that goes to AWS re:Invent comes back with a brand new luxury car. What they get is just some good food and drinks, while they're there, and that's just providing good hospitality for your guests. It also does not happen behind closed doors, and most of the people that go are already existing customers.

vs.

Corrupt company approaches corrupt employee off the record to offer cash in exchange of contracts that would not get assigned to them otherwise (because if they were, they wouldn't resort to this).

The main difference here is the scale.

"Let us take you on a $2000 vacation" vs. "Let us take you on a $700,000 vacation." One is objectively ridiculous - this is the difference.

So what you’re saying is taking a smaller bribe is okay? Just as long as it’s not a “ridiculous” bribe…

There are thresholds elsewhere. For example, a civil servant can accept a gift, up to a very small amount, from a vendor without being an ethics violation.

But there’s proportional impact as well. The person who got the AWS treatment might be responsible for $50K of AWS budget. And the person at Netflix is responsible for millions of dollars of budgets, royalties and other schemes.

> It's an open conference offered by the largest player in the space

In Vegas...

Hmm, even at my most cynical I would say the difference is the free conference is a much smaller (and thus presumably less effective) bribe. Giving away tickets to a conference which they sell the tickets for costs AMZN very little (sure, there are costs associated with putting it on, but those would have had to be paid anyhow, adding an attendee or two won't change much). So it's a few grand worth of airplane tickets vs. $700K...

This situation is like lobbying: is it the people's voice in fungible action or is it mega-corporations funneling money directly into politicians pockets?

The answer is probably both, and any attempt to litigate it will probably be abused and lead to even more issues.