Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies • Hacker News Board

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#291

Post by cushychicken » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

captainkrtek wrote: post #183

Was talking about this with some colleagues who are from Ukraine, Russia, and other countries. In the US, it seems corruption is only allowed at the top. If you tried to bribe your way out of a traffic ticket as a regular person, you'd get in big trouble, then meanwhile the president pardons wealthy fraudsters [1]. Meanwhile, in countries like Russia, everyone can get in on the action. A colleague of mine told me if…

It's equal opportunity corruption.

...and look how nice it sounds it live in Russia.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#292

Post by ACS_Solver » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

fwipsy wrote: post #286

ACS_Solver wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in the Soviet case, plumbing and cheese are most certainly not privately held resources. Doing such work as a plumber means you're essentially acting as self-employed or a business, which is illegal. The cheese is probably produced on a collective farm and sold at a state-owned store. But surely the cheese case would not be okay even in a Western capitalist context where the store is privately owned. Just replac…

In Western capitalist context, An apple employee can't do that because they would be stealing from Apple. If they are reselling phones that belong to them, they can dispose of them however they like. I think the Soviet context is key. Because the state is rationing these items, it creates a black market based on personal connections. In Western society nobody cares because (ideally) the market is competitive and you…

Yes, an Apple employee doing that would be stealing from Apple. But in the capitalist context, we also have entirely legal business models that I would argue are equivalent to corruption ethically. A business that chooses to sell its products or services only to a select group of customers (entirely legal) and then picks those customers not exclusively based on their finances but based on what else they can provide. Such as access to certain people, different favors, etc. That is IMO ethically questionable.

But the Soviet everyday corruption variety of retail employees reserving cheese for someone who can return favors, that particular thing is particular to a socialist economy with a scarcity of relatively basic goods.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#293

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

torginus wrote: post #262

btilly wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I commented elsewhere, the Russian name for this is blat. It isn't just corruption. It is a personal trust network for getting things done, that you can't get done if you follow the official rules. You get what you need through corruption, and your ability to do so strengthens your trust in your personal network. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn86C4ZwBSg for an excellent explanation of it. And also an explan…

It's interesting that you contrast Sweden and Russia, considering while I have not lived and worked in Russia, I've worked with Swedes quite a bit and my experience with them is that they don't really emphasize red tape that much - in the context of development, they don't really mind if you bend the rules if it's for a good cause - what I mean is there's a general attitude of pursuing sensible outcomes over blindly…

One interesting effect of LLMs getting so good at generating code, all of the process related things you mention take up a greater and greater percentage of the overall time to develop and deploy a feature, making them even more salient.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#294

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 7:06 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #289

yason wrote: post #130

It's well known that in authoritarian regimes (which autocracies generally are) corruption is, rather than a problem, a necessary element of society to keep things going. Anyone with the slightest amount of official power, like a government officer, has the ability to prevent things going forward on his part. In this kind of society, most people are poor and it would be considered stupid to not demand a small (or lar…

> Western corruption mostly concerns about the powerful and rich making friendly mutual agreements to bend the governing bodies and law to enable themselves become more powerful and richer. Believe it or not, this is how lawmaking is supposed to work in a democracy. No one in a position of power is going to be completely selfless. The Civil Rights Acts were only able to pass because NAACP promised to endorse the Repu…

> Voters have since lost interest in actual lawmaking, and have in fact become hostile to it.

This is a very succinct description of arguably the biggest problem of our democracy right now.

A huge part of Trump’s success is convincing voters that everyone in politics is corrupt, to inoculate himself from criticism for the very overt acts of corruption he engages in.

Many people seem to support him under the argument “they’re all corrupt, at least he’s not pretending to NOT be corrupt.”

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#295

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #113

dzink wrote: post #19

You have to understand how gears shift from there. Trust is essential for business transactions and specifically for long term investments. You can’t make massive leaps in technology or medicine or many other areas without trust (a lot of money on a leap means if you don’t trust the other side or the government to keep conditions stable, you won’t see a return). Now if you are in a high trust society, you may have a…

> You can’t make massive leaps in technology or medicine or many other areas without trust The Soviet Union did manage to get massive leaps in some areas (in particular related to armament, but not only) such as - armament/weapons - space technology - mathematics - physics > (a lot of money on a leap means if you don’t trust the other side or the government to keep conditions stable, you won’t see a return). I guess…

For a while before the US and other democracies left them in the dust.

Mathematics and Physics maybe but not in a way that benefited the broader society overall.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#296

Post by danans » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 7:19 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #196

danans wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Society is self-organizing like that, and this stuff is all iterated prisoner's dilemma in the end.. "Iterating the prisoners dilemma" at all levels of interface with government, moral qualms about autocracy/authoritarianism aside, is a very inefficient way to run a society, because government is an inherent and natural monopoly. Even in private commerce, it only works where there are choices and not monopolies. "Z…

I never said it was efficient. There's clearly a lot of potential value wasted compared to more trustable institutions. Your point about monopoly is off the mark, though – in every high-trust society it's the government that people need to trust, because it's the ultimate enforcer of trust in any other institutions.

> Your point about monopoly is off the mark, though – in every high-trust society it's the government that people need to trust, because it's the ultimate enforcer of trust in any other institutions.

I'm not sure where the disagreement is. I agree that people need to trust government in a high trust society. Government is also the ultimate inherent monopoly.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#297

Post by btilly » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 7:22 PM UTC

fwipsy wrote: post #281

btilly wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are all corruption, or corruption adjacent. The plumber is working for a company. He's supposed to be working on an official job. But he's doing the work slowly because he's actually working on your plumbing problem. You are working for the grocery store. You are stealing cheese from the store system that is supposed to allocate it, and making it available it to the plumber as payment for your plumber being corr…

None of that was specified. As I said earlier, the problem is not with quid pro quo; it's in the stealing which you've now specified as additional context. I could just as easily specify another context where each of these actions are legitimate. (Perhaps free tickets are part of the theater worker's perks.) If I said "I baked a cake for my mother," then you could say "BUT YOU STOLE THE FLOUR!" It doesn't prove anyth…

My guess as to why it was not specified, is that the corruption is so obvious to anyone who has lived it, that it is easy to forget that others might not get the context. It's like someone trying to describe how fish live, but not remembering to remind people that water is wet.

That said, there were contextual clues. If you go back, I said, "You get what you need through corruption..." The next reply was agreeing and expanding on that. This strongly suggests that each step in the description involves corruption in some way.

That said, hopefully you're now clear that these blat networks involve pervasive corruption.

When a community that is used to blat networks moves to a different country, the blat network doesn't go away. Throughout US history, it has been common to see blat networks in immigrant communities turn into straight up organized crime. The most famous example being the rise of the Mafia. But it is hardly an isolated example.

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#298

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 7:27 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #35

lm28469 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think culture and education play much bigger roles than anything else, all the sources I find show Germany and France having similar level of corruption (on top of being geographically and economically close) but completely different level of "social trust". China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell https://ourworldindata.org/c…

The corruption numbers break down into: (1) They didn't ask the question in China, (2) They asked somebody if they paid a bribe or if taking a bribe is every justifiable, and (3) "Expert estimates of the extent to which the executive, legislative, judiciary, and bureaucracy engage in bribery and theft, and the making and implementation of laws are susceptible to corruption" For (2) China doesn't look too different fr…

Wow Americans really dislike Americans! (Pew link)

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#299

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 7:28 PM UTC

bnjms wrote: post #117

PaulHoule wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corruption numbers break down into: (1) They didn't ask the question in China, (2) They asked somebody if they paid a bribe or if taking a bribe is every justifiable, and (3) "Expert estimates of the extent to which the executive, legislative, judiciary, and bureaucracy engage in bribery and theft, and the making and implementation of laws are susceptible to corruption" For (2) China doesn't look too different fr…

> though unlike India I think very few Americans have paid a bribe to a cop. No one, left or right, thinks there is street level corruption. Not the kind accessible to someone in a traffic stop. I have experienced it in Mexico and think that kind of corruption would still be worse because I cannot imagine how to recover from it. I have hope that a few high profile arrests of c level fall his may turn the tide. If not…

Do you really think “extrajudicial” methods will improve social trust in the US?

Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies

#300

Post by jjcc » Mon, Mar 16, 2026, 7:29 PM UTC

AlecSchueler wrote: post #80

ecshafer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers in the west are a high status career, because we trust the rule of law. In China, its considered a joke career. What is the point of being a lawyer, when relative position, influence and power within the CCP is the lone factor in winning a case? Big companies all end up with shadow positions that are there just to pay money out to CCP honchos and their kids. Board positions and executive positions go to the C…

> In China, its considered a joke career. Is there a source for this or is more of a vibes thing?

It's widely believed in Western society due to the language barrier to access Chinese social media.

But it's not true , or only half true 30 years ago. I personally know 3 or 4 of my alumina abandoned their expertise of Optical Engineering to pursue Lawyer career 20 years ago and made big money.

Another example is one of celebrity law professor (not lawyer though) who recently got involved in a controversy because of Epstein file. He shut down his “weibo" (a Chinese Twitter ) account. He also made tons of money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luo_Xiang

China moves very fast compare to the western society. Something true today might not be true 3 years later. Let alone half-truth 30 years ago.