Earlier quoted context omitted.
A weird thought crosses my mind... "Justice delayed is justice denied" Does an immediate "fine" on the spot deter criminal behavior?
Not if collecting the fine is itself criminal behaviour.
Yes, that's a good point.
Zero Rupee Note
231–240 of 241 posts
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Education has remarkably little to do with economic growth. Richer countries are more educated but changes in education do not predict changes in productivity. Education appears to be a superior good that people just purchase more of when they’re richer. Ghana is more educated now than France was in 1960 going by average years of education and it’s poorer. China’s years of explosive economic growth after Deng opened…
Do you have a resource to recommend that suggests reasons and provides data for this seemingly paradoxical observation?
Bryan Caplan, The Case Against Education
From the Section “The Education Premium: Personal versus National”
> “When we move to the national level, these clean results vanish.65 Some prominent economists find that boosting national education slightly impoverishes countries rather than enriching them.66 Others report small positive effects; one typical estimate is that an extra year of national education boosts national income by 1.3%–1.7%.67 Remaining papers find moderate positive effects; the effect of national education on national income roughly equals the effect of personal education on personal income.68 No matter what they find, researchers usually confess their answers are highly uncertain.69”
> “65. For overviews, see Pritchett 2006, Bosworth and Collins 2003, and A. Krueger and Lindahl 2001. 66. See, e.g., Pritchett 2001, pp. 367–91, Islam 1995, and Benhabib and Spiegel 1994. 67. A. Krueger and Lindahl 2001, p. 1125, columns (2), (3), and (5). 68. For a survey, see Lange and Topel 2006, pp. 462–70. 69. One major exception: D. Cohen and Soto 2007 emphasizes the high quality of their data and the low uncertainty of their results. But even their findings dramatically hinge on their sample. When they look at 59 countries over 1960–90, a year of education raises national income by 4.9%. When they look at 81 countries over 1970–90, a year of education raises national income by 9.0% (D. Cohen and Soto 2007, p. 68, columns 5 and 10).”
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#233Re: Zero Rupee Note
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The Big Bribe Industry" is a very organized sector and unofficially official. It is absolutely naive to believe that it can be destroyed. It is almost impossible to get a job done in a timely manner without bribing the official. The rates are fixed. The collection mechanisms are solid. Everyone, from the peon to the minister, gets a cut.
Make it legal, then. Regulate it, call it a fee and problem solved.
No. The moment bribe is legalized, it stops being a bribe. That is, the officials get a kick out of this whole shady operation. If we deny them this pleasure, they will find other ways.
As it stands today, there is no accountability in the whole system. An official can sit on a file for years with no repercussions. You can drag them to court, but sooner than later you will understand that this is a battle you can never win. The official has the power and money of the government behind him while you are totally alone. Most importantly, the official has time while you do not.
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Seems pretty unlikely Why? The example from Piskvorrr is textbook violation of 18 U.S.C. 473: (paraphrasing here) Handing out fake money with the intent that it believed to be real is a crime. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/473
Late reply here, but I was referring to the one-sided aspect. Just seems unlikely to me that someone would realistically intend for a one-sided copy of currency to be believed as real. Just seems like the threshold for printing both sides is so low that anyone who only printed one side must not really be intending for it to be taken as real, at least not for very long.
"Not for very long" - that's exactly the point of the currency-exchange scam:
- mark gets an offer of a great exchange rate from the con-man
- mark hands over real money
- gets a stack of something - the first few bills on the top and bottom are actual local currency, but most of it are one-sided counterfeits.
- con-man counts the money in a way that doesn't give this away - this obviously requires sleight of hand and insufficient lighting
- con-man disappears in crowd
- mark eventually realizes that most of the stack is worthless
The whole con takes a minute or two at most: that's not very long at all.
The critical section "mark no longer has original currency but hasn't yet realized he has been swindled" is as short as a few seconds; this has even been done with plain paper in some particularly audacious cases.
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
var balance = 0 var lastPayment = 0 var remainingPaymentsAtThisRate = balance/lastPayment // divide by zero error
Surely that doesn't account for interest?
My goal with this 3-line pseudocode snippet was not to reproduce a banking loan administration system in its entirety, but just to show a place where it could make sense to divide by currency.
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree with you entirely. When the British left India, there was officially a transfer of power to the congress party. The first prime minister was appointed by the party. The constitution, the police, the bureaucracy and the court system was inherited by the people. Unlike the developed world or China or Vietnam, India did not go through a bloody revolution. What that meant is that systems that were explicitly meant…
Could you recommend some reading to dive deeper into this narrative? It is very interesting, reminds me something I couldn't grasp now. Probably some theory about an inherent nature of Russia's failures or something like. But, you know, it is hard to think of such a matters when the main example is your own country, it is hard to keep objectivity. I'd be happy to read about India. By the way, I believe, that a bloody…
Why India Is Still A Colonial State | Sankrant Sanu | Srijan Talks
I am not prescribing a bloody revolution, a lot of ex-colonies have been through many such with no better outcome because colonization is deep seated.
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arguably it could be nullified if the payment isn't legal due to being for zero value. Under UCC §3-104, a check is only a negotiable instrument if it's an unconditional order. UCC §3-103 defines an order as "a written instruction to pay money signed by the person giving the instruction." So, to answer the original question - I don't think a zero-amount check is legally a check because it's not a written instruction…
Hm. Is $0 not an amount of money?
Writing a check for $0 is not an instruction to pay. Paying $0 is equivalent to not paying.
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm. Is $0 not an amount of money?
Writing a check for $0 is not an instruction to pay. Paying $0 is equivalent to not paying.
> Writing a check for $0 is not an instruction to pay.
By describing it as a check you've already acknowledged it as an instruction to pay.
> Paying $0 is equivalent to not paying.
It's equivalent in terms of the final balance, but it's not the same thing in other respects. If I sent you a check for $0, you would wonder how I got your address. There are a variety of ways that it would be different from me not sending you a check for any amount of money at all.
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I understand power play. Are you saying the Zero Rupee Note doesn't achieve anything?