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

151–160 of 241 posts

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#151

Post by csomar »

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…

Raising the police wages in Tunisia (three folds) increased bribery. By increasing their wages, it means they have more power over the actual government. It means they rule the streets and can be more aggressive asking for bribes.

Short answer: No. More wages does not mean less bribery. A strong government that has control over its police force is what reduces bribery.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#152

Post by Ma8ee »

thomasahle wrote: post #146
tchalla wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once read a similar apocryphal narrative. Someone, kept receiving 0$ credit card bills and the company sent repeated reminders with warnings. The person called, sent letters to discuss the situation but to no avail. The person finally gave up and wrote a 0$ check and they stopped sending letters. However, it led to a computer systems crash as the credit card company software encountered a "Divide by Zero" error due…

I'm having a hard me thinking of a case where you'd want to divide by an amount of money. What am I missing?

For example to calculate the expected time left to pay the remaining debt if you make a monthly payment of that amount.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#153

Post by godzilla82 »

altair8800 wrote: post #61
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a bit shocked that it works though It's a shaming mechanism. If an official is committed to collecting a bribe, it will be useless. But some corrupt officials might be responsive to a verbal dressing down. Handing over a zero-rupee note is less intimidating than delivering a lecture.

The beauty I see in it is that the corrupt official is offered the option to then pass this note on to someone else, whether that be whoever he needs to bribe or just a friend or family member affected by corruption. Giving someone else an alternative rather than just refusing to cooperate can catch them off guard and be quite disarming.

There is no beauty in it, you need to understand power play and how it manifests in real life. The official is taking bribe, because you have a need for some thing to be done and he wields power over you. If you do such nonsense, your work simply won't be done, and the official will simply create additional hurdles.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#155

Post by l0b0 »

aij wrote: post #105

That reminds me of when my university kept sending me a $0 bill every month after I graduated. They kept sending them, so eventually I wrote a $0 check and sent it back in the business-reply envelope. I guess they were happy I had paid my bill because they finally stopped sending them.

Sounds like misspelling "139" as "-1E9" could be profitable...

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#156

Post by ben_w »

jogjayr wrote: post #137
kamaal wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Up until around 1990, the governments agenda was perpetual poverty as they made it impossible for people to start businesses, by imposing significant red tape, and requiring regulatory approval for almost every little thing. (look up "License Raj"). The more things change, the more they remain same. You can't exactly fix these things with laws. You need to have cultural change at some point in time. I remember a co…

> India is all about reselling things we don't make Boy, you are a downer! Things are not the best, but they're not all bad either. Here are some important things India makes: 1. Movies - it has the largest (by number of productions) film industry in the world, and third largest by revenue (admittedly the latter is expected and it's third by a fair distance) 2. Satellite launch services - Antrix corporation, run by t…

> > Programmers want to be managers ASAP.

> You may find that outside the technology industry, it's like that everywhere.

Huh. Then my friends and I may be unusual. We all seem to prefer solving problems to managing people.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#157

Post by red75prime »

thomasahle wrote: post #146
tchalla wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once read a similar apocryphal narrative. Someone, kept receiving 0$ credit card bills and the company sent repeated reminders with warnings. The person called, sent letters to discuss the situation but to no avail. The person finally gave up and wrote a 0$ check and they stopped sending letters. However, it led to a computer systems crash as the credit card company software encountered a "Divide by Zero" error due…

I'm having a hard me thinking of a case where you'd want to divide by an amount of money. What am I missing?

Or to produce a report on percent of debt that has been repaid.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#158

Post by jacquesm »

klyrs wrote: post #81

Some weird and masochistic part of me wants to hand my passport to a US border guard with one of these tucked into it. Seems harmless but a dumb way to waste an afternoon

And all the other afternoons that you spend in the future when you cross that border inbound.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#159

Post by isostatic »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #148
hirundo wrote: post #86

Could negative currency be useful? For instance a fungible, negotiable debt instrument, registered on a blockchain so it can't be unilaterally destroyed. Put contractual language on it to the effect that "Registering acceptance of this note obligates you to pay $X to the U.S. treasury by date Y." Bob buys an apple from Alice but doesn't have the cash, so instead accepts/registers a -$1 note from Alice, who now has le…

How would this be better than credit cards?

Did you miss the word “blockchain”?

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#160

Post by jogjayr »

kamaal wrote: post #147
jogjayr wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> India is all about reselling things we don't make Boy, you are a downer! Things are not the best, but they're not all bad either. Here are some important things India makes: 1. Movies - it has the largest (by number of productions) film industry in the world, and third largest by revenue (admittedly the latter is expected and it's third by a fair distance) 2. Satellite launch services - Antrix corporation, run by t…

Correct. You just proved what the CTO said, We are experts at replicating X at scale, once some one originally produces X. We didn't invent the video camera, or modern studio tech, or internal combustion engine, even rocket tech, electricity, electronics, medicinal sciences, metallurgy or anything for that matter. Heck we didn't even invent the ball point pen. We replicate and resell things, we kind of have to, becau…

> We replicate and resell things, we kind of have to,

You clearly missed what I said here.

> Most countries don't produce that much valuable IP in this stage of their growth.

Seriously read that again. Every developed country has started out copying, manufacturing, and then moved up the value chain to inventing. That's how countries develop - Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, and Singapore are some examples of this. And even then ISRO and BARC have had to re-create a ton of aerospace and nuclear research on their own, on account of being frozen out of the international research community for decades.

> Heck we are experts are producing more human beings, than any country on earth

Actually India's fertility rate is only a shade above the global average. So it's middle-of-the-pack on that measure, not a world-leader :-)

> Then we can claim what we always claim, we are the best of the best, put all criticism to rest, join hands and sing Mera Bharat Mahan.

Try to ease up on the negativity, anger, and extreme opinions a bit. Everything is not awesome but it's not all bad either.

Post reply on HN