Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zero Rupee Note

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 241 posts

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#51

Post by vbezhenar »

geomark wrote: post #44
vbezhenar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Policemen are getting pretty low wages. But there are always a lot of people who want to work there, because they can get bribes. And they actually paying percentage of those bribes to their higher-ups and so on, so it's like a pyramid. And a lot of people want things to stay that way. Policemen are getting good income. Their masters are getting huge income. Ordinary people can pay much less to policeman, than t…

That's a very accurate description of how it is where I live. But at the end you call it a terrible win-win for everyone. If it's a win-win for everyone how can it also be terrible?

I think that it's like local maximum. There's higher maximum when everyone obeys the law and everyone's getting good salary. But it's hard to move there, because nobody wants to do it now. Also it creates bad incentive for police to arrest innocent people and to blackmail money from them for things they did not do, and it does not punish enough those who need punishment, so they do not learn their lessons and continue to break laws.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#52

Post by cardiffspaceman »

Phrodo_00 wrote: post #48
geomark wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very accurate description of how it is where I live. But at the end you call it a terrible win-win for everyone. If it's a win-win for everyone how can it also be terrible?

Because people are getting away with ignoring the law, and in turn that makes bad laws more transparent, which in turn give people even more incentives to bribe their way out of situations. Bribes are also tax-exempt.

In the USA the bribe revenue would not be tax-exempt. Failing to pay tax on it would be another infraction.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#53

Post by sterlind »

wallace_f wrote: post #34
dheera wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor Jackson got the honor of being featured on the US zero note. I kind of want to put Trump's face there.

Jackson's face is fitting -- He fought against corruption, and he particularly hated central banking and other banker interests.

And he defied a ruling by the Supreme Court to initiate the Trail of Tears, killing ~16000 Native Americans during their forced relocation. The new valuation suits him well indeed.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#54

Post by mc32 »

EGreg wrote: post #40
oconnor663 wrote: post #32

I wonder how similar bribery culture is to tip culture. In the US where we tip restaurant workers, restaurant wages are often much lower than comparable positions in industries that don't have tipping, so much so that the difference is often explicitly included in minimum wage laws. Do countries with more bribery experience a similar effect, where the wages of police officers and other bribery-prone worker are much l…

Bribery and Tip culture are both about public servants being underpaid by the public sector (or by the restaurant sector), and thus it is rationalizing the need for a private economy on top, eg prioritizing certain people and so on.

Bribery though subverts law and order. Tipping might subvert service, but typically tipping is fine after service is rendered as opposed to before as in bribery.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#55

Post by Phrodo_00 »

oconnor663 wrote: post #32

I wonder how similar bribery culture is to tip culture. In the US where we tip restaurant workers, restaurant wages are often much lower than comparable positions in industries that don't have tipping, so much so that the difference is often explicitly included in minimum wage laws. Do countries with more bribery experience a similar effect, where the wages of police officers and other bribery-prone worker are much l…

Something interesting is that tipping wasn't seen as too different from bribing in 1920's America [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratuity#History

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#56

Post by Gibbon1 »

geomark wrote: post #44
vbezhenar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Policemen are getting pretty low wages. But there are always a lot of people who want to work there, because they can get bribes. And they actually paying percentage of those bribes to their higher-ups and so on, so it's like a pyramid. And a lot of people want things to stay that way. Policemen are getting good income. Their masters are getting huge income. Ordinary people can pay much less to policeman, than t…

That's a very accurate description of how it is where I live. But at the end you call it a terrible win-win for everyone. If it's a win-win for everyone how can it also be terrible?

I tend to think the corrupt way is often more fair than nothing. But less fair than a less corrupt system. Notable legal corruption is totally a thing. Just because you're not expected to bribe an police officer doesn't mean the system isn't exploitative.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#58

Post by Phrodo_00 »

cardiffspaceman wrote: post #52
Phrodo_00 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people are getting away with ignoring the law, and in turn that makes bad laws more transparent, which in turn give people even more incentives to bribe their way out of situations. Bribes are also tax-exempt.

In the USA the bribe revenue would not be tax-exempt. Failing to pay tax on it would be another infraction.

Well, they're practically tax exempt, then. It's not like you're adding a bribes line on your tax report.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#59

Post by acct1771 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #17
ketralnis wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't seem like a problem unless you're trying to rely on their population figures or something

It's a pretty great example of the wisdom of "doing one thing well." This site should just have a Wikipedia link to each country.

Or scrape/API, at most.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#60

Post by vbezhenar »

oconnor663 wrote: post #50
vbezhenar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Policemen are getting pretty low wages. But there are always a lot of people who want to work there, because they can get bribes. And they actually paying percentage of those bribes to their higher-ups and so on, so it's like a pyramid. And a lot of people want things to stay that way. Policemen are getting good income. Their masters are getting huge income. Ordinary people can pay much less to policeman, than t…

> It's that terrible win-win to everyone situation and that makes it very hard to destroy. It does make it sound like there's a bribery-free equilibrium really close by though. Like imagine all of these things happened as part of a single reform: - Policeman and management salaries go up. - Fines go down. - Taxes go up. - Anti-bribery enforcement goes way up. The idea would be to acknowledge that regardless of the br…

People don't respect police, so when government would want to massively increase their salaries, people would protest against it. Fines go down is a good thing for sure, but it'll reduce amount of money going to local budgets, so people in government will protest against it (because they'll need to find money to replace those from reduced fines). Taxes go up: nobody likes it. Anti-bribery goes way up: when everyone's corrupt, nobody wants it.

It might work when someone like president or minister really wants to do that and have support. But it's more like mini-revolution. It's hard to go there evolutionary. But may be I'm wrong.

Post reply on HN