In Defense of Bribery
Why should bribes to state officials be illegal? Sure, the best situation is one where the state is tightly constrained, writes Pierre Lemieux, has little to offer in terms of privileges, and where consequently bribing officials is not done. The worst situation is one where the state is all powerful and state officials cannot be bribed. Between the best and the worst case, there is a second-best situation, where powerful state officials can be bribed to let the briber carry on his peaceful activities. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (40)
"under a state that acts in the public interest..."
Excuse me, but what state would that be?
Published: August 7, 2005 4:00 PM
David White -
It was a hypothetical ideal to illustrate his point
Published: August 7, 2005 4:33 PM
Except that the state is any but hypothetical, rendering the legitimacy of bribery absurd.
Published: August 7, 2005 4:44 PM
It's important, when discussing topics such as this one, to distinguish between bribery and extortion. Bribery is when you offer money to someone to get something to which you are not entitled (ex: paying to get an your bid on a contract preference over other bids). Extortion is when you pay money to someone to get something to which you are already entitled (ex: paying to get your bid even considered). The corrupt practices act bans bribery but not extortion payments. Companies have used this distinction in defense of their actions.
Published: August 7, 2005 4:56 PM
Georgist, yours is a distinction without a difference. As Mises said, the state is "an evil inflicted on men by men," and dealing in niceties of this sort only perpetuates the fraud of statism and does a disservice to libertarianism accordingly.
Published: August 7, 2005 5:22 PM
I fail to understand how government, or any use of force, can do anything other than distort prices -- i.e. by exercising mandates, adding noise into the signals of the price system; (feedback) signals which voluntary coordination/cooperation relies on.
Thus, I fail to see how private bribery of officials, whose action only adds noise, constitutes anything other than government-business partnership -- i.e. transfer (and/or destruction), rather than creation, of wealth.
Published: August 7, 2005 7:01 PM
To answer Zuzu's post, the reason why price distorsions are bad is that they interfere with the efficient coordination of individual actions, given individual preferences. If an individual can get his preferences better satisfied (or less frustrated) by bribing a statocrat, and if everybody can do this, you reintroduce some (limited) liberty, and increase opportunities, as opposed to a situation where everybody is a slave and the price of getting out of slavery is infinite (you revolt and you are killed).
And, of course, there is a major difference between transfer and destruction of wealth. For example, a gift transfers wealth, but does not destroy it. Theft is another matter.
Published: August 7, 2005 7:44 PM
David_White: I wasn't defending anything, just pointing out some relevant terminology. Although I'm confused why you see no difference between buying government favors and buying government non-interference.
Published: August 7, 2005 7:51 PM
"I wasn't defending anything, just pointing out some relevant terminology. Although I'm confused why you see no difference between buying government favors and buying government non-interference.
Posted by Georgist at August 7, 2005 07:51 PM
..There is no difference because all gov't does is interfere; paying a bully not to beat you up is not buying a favor from him, it is paying for his non-interference, which is extortion. Paying the gov't not to beat up on you (via jail or fines or whatever) is paying for its non-interference. Defining a favor as the purchase of non-interference is far too charitable a characterization.
Published: August 7, 2005 9:30 PM
I can see one serious set of cases where bribery would make things worse: when someone bribes a public official to use state power against someone else. E.g., a businessman bribes officials to hassle or even shut down a rival. I'm sure this actually happens a lot with criminalized activities, such as gambling, prostitution, narcotics, and the like.
Published: August 7, 2005 10:02 PM
I must admit, I misread the essay. Bribing to reduce competition is mentioned, but it is not gone into in enough detail.
Also, I would like to know if anyone has read Enrico Colombatto's "Why is Corruption Tolerated?" in _The Review of of Austrian Economics_ 16(4). Covers a similar topic and might be of interest.
Published: August 7, 2005 10:12 PM
Replace the word 'bribe' with another illegal activity - but which also earns money - and read 'killing' instead...
than we can discuss the legality again...
I live in a country were people are corrupt. It slows down the economy since nothing moves without bribe. When bribes of several hundred millions flow - it definitely harms the society.
or did u mean small bribes are OK but only big ones we should prosecute ? Where is the Limit?
Killing small guys is OK - only big guys should be protected?
Via bribes it was possible to take over public utilities in just about all countries with the argument that private operation would be better and cheaper... since all those services are now privatized they became unaffordable expensive to many…
Legalizing bribes is just like legalizing killing
Published: August 8, 2005 12:19 AM
Widespread acceptance of bribery would likely slow down the inevitable self-destruction of a coercive state, but is that what we really want? For public emplyees to sink into a morass of self-loathing because they're not living up to the moral standards they have accepted?
To argue that bribery should be legal is to support legislation. The problem with laws is that they use my money to enforce laws that I don't want enforced. Bribery motivates the receivers of the bribe to support the creation of more legislation about which they can be bribed. I reject the usefulness of the idea of legality. I would like to be able to choose to pay groups to enforce certain laws from which I benefit. However, I cannot argue that an act should be illegal just because I want it to be prevented. It doesn't seem useful to me. If I want it prevented, I should pay to prevent it. If I don't pay enough, then my hired guns might take bribes. If they're straight with me, they might pay all or some of the bribe to me and I might think that's just fine.
As Austrian Economists, I see that there is room for working within a coercive state, by suggesting policy changes, such as legalizing bribery. But I'm an anarcho-capitalist, so I reject the usefulness of the state altogether. Specifically, I don't think anyone should pay for anything unless they want to. Currently, there is widespread acceptance of the idea that there are some things that everyone should have to pay for, and forcing them to pay for them is one of those things. That is the root of the problem as far as I can tell. While I would pay a bribe, or suggest that a bribe be paid, to benefit myself or a friend, I would not advocate it generally because it doesn't challenge the idea that others should help pay for certain things.
It may alleviate the problems caused by government intervention, but that just slows the amassing of motivation that will ultimately solve the problem. By the way, that's my philosophy against half-assed solutions - they just make it take longer to find a real solution.
Published: August 8, 2005 1:23 AM
Read this link and find out how US Congressmen were bribed to vote for CAFTA. Still think they represent voters? Still think bribe is fine?
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2005/tst080105.htm
Published: August 8, 2005 1:35 AM
I'd like to know just how "inevitable" is the "self-destruction of a coercive state" as most coercive states seem quite long-lasting.
That said, I would classify bribery into two categories, one which is freedom-enhancing and the other which is not. An example of the former would be the pot-smoker bribing a cop to let him off the hock when the latter catches him with a bag of weed. That bribe does not, in the short run, diminish freedom and, certainly from the point of view of the pot-smoker, is better than jail. (Better for the tax-payer too, since no one has to pay for the trial and jailing of one more pot-smoker.)
An example of the latter is when a cop is bribed to let someone get away with a crime with a victim or to even carry out coercion, such as when a business rival is hassled by the police.
A priori, I don't know which is more prevalent, though I would think that in a society where bribery itself entails heavy penalties, the freedom-enhancing bribe might be the dominant form. Why? Since there is no victim involved, the state would have to invest more in policing itself. The cop who let's the pot-smoker go is very unlikely to get caught. The cop who hassles someone's business rival has no created a victim who has a vested interest in revealing the bribe.
Published: August 8, 2005 6:18 AM
I agree with David White that there is no difference between bribery and extorsion. If bribery were made legal, as Mr Lemieux naively suggests, pretty soon every public official would demand one. We would all have to pay bribes as well as taxes.
Published: August 8, 2005 9:51 AM
Having lived, worked, and studied in Latin America, I have seen
overt bribery first-hand. After the U.S. government declared that bribes could not be a tax deduction (probably around 1954), we, as well as other businesses, continued paying bribes, but with more imagination used to describe this necessary expense.
My first reaction was to criticize bribery, but with
time, I came to agree with the theme of your article. Another factor
influencing the commonplace bribery is economic.
Most Latin American countries have few resources to finance the
employment of the large number of government employees.
Policemen are underpaid. In Mexico, when I was a student, their
salary was about US$100 per month. As good Catholics and with
their Latin Lover reputation, they had large families. You cannot
support a large family on $100 per month. Result: A traffic infraction
was easily arranged with a few dollars to the cop.
This led to my agreement with your concept: Let the people who
receive the benefit of government action pay the fee (la mordida).
Why should all the citizens pay higher taxes to benefit a few?
Al Hodges
El Cajon, CA
Published: August 8, 2005 10:11 AM
I'm all for doing away with taxes and replacing them with "user fees", but what's the point of legalising bribery if you have to pay taxes as well?
Published: August 8, 2005 10:18 AM
One free-market argument in favor of bribery is that it limits the growth of bureaucracy. In an honest bureaucracy, the way to advancement is to increase the number of your subordinates. But in a bribe economy, subordinates merely reduce your take. Hence you should limit their number.
Of course, absent bureaucratic rules, the reason for bribing disappears, so perhaps these two factors cancel out!
Published: August 8, 2005 10:54 AM
So we see that it is possible to "buy" a certain amount of freedom. But, as the article points out, this is a pragmatic, second-best solution, and widespread bribery has other, unintended consequences. So what we're really seeing is reinforcement for the idea that the "morality" of a society is affected by the particular circumstances of that society, and that some circumstances provide positive reinforcement and incentives for moral behavior, while other circumstances provide reinforcement for immoral behavior, and/or disincentives for moral behavior.
Understanding and controlling those circumstances is the key to creating a successful minarchy, or understanding those circumstances and simply allowing them to happen would be the key to a successful anarchy.
;-)
Published: August 8, 2005 11:36 AM
There's government corruption and bribery galore in India. Its been there for decades and look at the size of the state and the state of the Indian economy. A limited government that recognises the need to separate the economy from the state and that has a small bureaucracy, is essential if a nation's economy is to progress. An oversized government with bloated bureaucracies that have harems of secretaries and involve themselves in all aspects of the economy, not only encourages bribery to an excess but is also destructive to the nation's economy.
As long as the size of the government and its bureaucracy is small, bribery and goodwill payments to government officials would be acceptable.
Harry Valentine
Published: August 8, 2005 12:28 PM
This article also seems to ignore another of the harms of bribing- the added incentive to public officials to increase the regulations giving rise to bribes. In the country where I recently lived, many whole industries, including basic utilities and public health care and education, revolved around extorting bribes.
Published: August 8, 2005 12:35 PM
I typically find myself much more in agreement with the articles I find at mises.org than I am with this one. Bribing government officials to leave you alone only encourages more government harassment intended to draw out more bribes. Even if that weren't the case, one cannot make a case for bribery in general because it's just as easy to bribe an official to turn up the heat on a competitor as it is to bribe him to leave you alone. In that case, bribery is [i]increasing[/i] the level of force and oppression exercised by the government.
The arbitrary abuse of power by government cannot be remedied by auctioning that power off to the highest bidder.
Published: August 8, 2005 12:55 PM
Unfortunately, many of the disagreements with this article have merit. One of the benefits for the world will be this weak link in China,
As mentioned India is an example of a capable country held back by bribery. China has a similar history of bribery being the norm. The government may be making an effort (death for accepting large bribes), but the ancient practice may win out. If bribery reigns, China will be wweakened until China has the enormous wealth to overcome the weakness. Which will come first?
Published: August 8, 2005 2:56 PM
I wonder how the US embassy ensures that it gets its mail delivered, and that its phones keeps working in countries where postal and telephone services are state owned. It might take the shape of benefit-in-kind (visas, free bottles of alcohol etc.), but bribe it is.
Forget Mercedes-Benz, I know of no company that can survive in most of the poor countries without paying bribes. Those who want to stay away from it by themselves, incorporate shell companies run by their trusted local people. They pay money to these shell companies, who then later pay to the corrupt officers. This ensures that the parent company is secluded from the corrupt transactions. What a great way of institutionalizing corruption: it has created private companies that organize corrupt accounting for you. Legalizing bribery would get rid of institutionalization and horrendous transaction costs associated with the drama and dance that goes with bribery.
Anti-bribe laws have forced people to live with guilt. Can those sitting in the ivory towers (the anti-trust law making bureaucrats sitting in the USA) respond to what they would do in the following situation? If one of your relative is in an emergency room of a government hospital and if the doctor asks for a certain amount of money to help him decide whether he amputates a leg of your relative or fix it, what would you do?
In India, some of the most honest people seriously recommend that paying bribes should be legalized. It would reduce transaction costs, and leave people not feeling guilty (something which in the long run would improve morality).
I cannot say much about legalising accepting bribes, but paying it should be legalised.
Published: August 8, 2005 3:24 PM
Bribery destroys the rule of law.
In the case where we have some distorted shadow of the AnCap "pay for justice" ideas, I don't know where the line between living within a corrupt culture and playing games to survive is and becoming corrupt yourself.
It is also oppressive of the poor who cannot get by the barriers that the rich can with their bribes.
But this isn't really different from nepotism or hiring friends since normally the correct thing would be to hire the best person. Sometimes it might be an acquaintance but most times it is not.
Bribery ought to be severely punished, and even investigated. There should be something as oppressive as the IRS, DEA, etc. who would just do stings against other government agencies and themselves.
Published: August 8, 2005 3:31 PM
Hi Al:
I'm not convinced that any of the disagreements with this article, at root, are disagreements with the article at all. Most really are arguments against the state having the power and authority to put state agents in a position to accept a bribe (or what might also be more aptly labeled an extortion payment) in the first place.
The negative symptoms of a powerful state, such as rampant corruption and bribery point to the evil nature of state intervention with the market in the first place. When you have a stomach ache due to salmonella poisoning, what is the real problem, the stomach ache, or the poisoning? State power is the poison, corruption and all that goes with it is the stomach ache.
Published: August 8, 2005 3:33 PM
The argument for bribery suffers from the same logical flaw as the broken window fallacy: it follows only what is seen while ignoring the unseen.
What is seen is that the bribe allows (some) commerce to succeed in situations where it would otherwise be prohibited.
What is unseen is that legalizing bribery lowers the costs associated with bribery. Economists know that when you lower the price of something, more is produced. Legalizing bribery will produce more bribery.
Bribery reinforces the power of the state rather than circumventing, disregarding, or diminishing it, as free markets do so well. To embrace bribery is to welcome increasing state coercion of free markets.
Bribery also adds a new dimension to the not-free market: who one knows is at least as important as the funds one owns or the needs and preferences of the buyers and sellers. Free markets work very well with anonymous buyers and sellers, or between family members, but bribery works only when there is a special relationship with those in power.
One can defend bribery as a rational means for the privileged to evade some forms of state violence. Bribery cannot be seriously considered as a viable alternative to limited state power and truly free markets.
Published: August 8, 2005 3:44 PM
But if i'm mistaken, i'll add this:
Governments don't put road-blocks in the way of commerce so that they can supplement their agents' income with bribes. Governments intervene in the market because that's what they do. All the negative consequences simply follow from it.
The bribery we're talking about and black markets in general are simply the result of markets under the duress of state intervention. Arguing against it is like arguing against cowering and covering your face while under attack by someone with a baseball bat. Remove the attacker with the baseball bat and it makes sense to get up and act normal. Until then, i advocate covering your face.
Published: August 8, 2005 4:01 PM
Only one class of bribery is moral: paying the government to relax restrictions on legitimate trade. Often (more often?) bribes are payment to change the rules ... otherwise known as violence for hire. I don't understand why Mises.org has been so co-opted by viewpoints which seem to completely lack fundamental grounding. Economics (i.e. human action) cannot be divorced from moral questions. There is no wertfrei (value free) thinking in economics. There is no "market" as some strange abstraction divorced from morality. In my view, the attitude that "non-violent commerce is always moral" is a fantasy about man and his nature - it takes violence to protect essential liberties and property and morality. The most significant of our problems is not the government and it's interventions, it's the heart of man. The only real solution is Jesus Christ. Never thought I'd get to this point (my dad was a preacher), but after lots of years I really got hit with it.
Published: August 8, 2005 4:45 PM
Governments in general and the US in particular want the monopoly on bribery and influence with foreign governments. For example the US Government does not let US companies bribe the governments in the middle east but REGULARLY does exactly that itself. It also has a monopoly (Campaign Donations) on receiving bribes.
The governments are afraid that their own citizens will find their own little schemes of taking and receiving bribes and begin to do the same things themselves.
Published: August 8, 2005 4:59 PM
I've always had a soft spot for bribery... the way I look at it is: A bribable 'corrupt' Nazi would have been an improvement over an unbribable 'loyal' Nazi, and likewise for all other State sanctioned evils.
It's like a 'check and balance' on bureaucracy, bureaucracy becomes onerous, bribery undermines it.
Some people object on the grounds that bribery begets bribery, it's probably true, but that may not be an entirely bad thing (obviously removing the need to bribe would be better). I think bribery brings to the surface the nature of State evil, without bribery people are complacent and accepting of the State robbing and killing people left and right, with bribery then suddenly the state is corrupt, untrustworthy and obviously self-interested. But as we know it was these things all along, yet people accept it for whatever reasons.
Think of it as fire with smoke vs. fire without smoke... or a disease with symptoms vs. a disease without symptoms. The smoke and the symptoms are obviously bad in their own right, but if your intention is to cure the cause, then they're actually helpful by drawing attention to the underlying problem.
Take the police for example: I happen to think they have way too much discretionary power, when they kill people they aren't held to the same standards as private citizens, and they're given far too much power of 'general harassment'. Here in Canada, the police investigate themselves (there's no 'internal investigations' division), and they always find themselves relatively 'innocent'. Yet people tolerate this kind of thing because they see the police as inherently acting in the public's interests, they think only the 'bad guys' are mistreated, and therefore anyone mistreated must be a 'bad guy' (and therefore deserve it). If we went further than this article suggests, and made bribing a police officer legal (although perhaps accepting it would still cost the officer their job) and assuming bribery became rampant, the public would recognize that individual officers are acting in their own self-interest... even though they were all along, whether as petty-bully, self-styled vigilante, or state sponsored thug and enforcer. The police would lose the public trust and the public would call for massive restrictions on police power.
I grew up in a 3rd world country where the question 'who will gaurd the gaurds' actually has an answer: the angry mob. Bribery was rampant and people recognized the police as nothing more than thugs and enforcers for a particular gang, and anytime the police did anything particularly unseemly, the angry mob would descend on the police station and trash everything (turn over cars, knock down walls, etc..). And the police couldn't do anything about it because there were enough people that recognized the police as corrupt, they were outnumbered and would literally be lynched if they did anything other than run.
Obviously a little extreme and probably not exactly what anyone has in mind when they talk about reducing the power of the State. I'm just saying that bribery doesn't exist in a vacuum, and if the State is so opposed to bribery then the implications of widespread bribery are worth examining and may even be beneficial to individual liberty. I think bribery fundamentally (even for distant 3rd parties) moves loyalty from the collective to the individual, collectivists (right and left) correctly identify this as a negative 'externality', which implies that it'd would be a beneficial 'externality' for (the more extreme) individualist.
Published: August 8, 2005 6:20 PM
No, misc, bribery doesn't exist in a vacuum; rather, it fills all available space in the moral void that the state creates, taking its toll accordingly. That this obvious immorality would be defended on this site is a sign of how easy it is to stray from the path of true freedom.
Published: August 8, 2005 8:26 PM
I'll assume that by immoral you mean something more than simply illegal (or 'contrary to the current order of things'), and I hope you don't consider breaking the law to be inherently immoral (in which case bribery is a way of indirectly breaking the law, and so yes, it would be immoral by that assumption).
Bribery is moral/immoral depending on what you are using it for, much like all value neutral actions whose morality is determined based on the circumstance, much like breaking the law (note, I am not advocating moral relativism, merely that the action's immorality be judged based on the harm it does).
If it's moral to break unjust laws, then it's moral to use bribery to indirectly circumvent unjust laws.
Consider this: I consider being taxed to be immoral. Some combination of the State (and/or the 51% majority) seem to want to redistribute my income for their benefit, the State (and/or the majority) have the ability to increase taxes which, them being the same people that benefit from taxes, results is the State increasing taxes with no end in sight.
Under wide spread bribery (where perhaps you would split your taxes with the IRS agent who is auditing you), the State that is attempting to extort money out of you is no longer the group benefiting from the extortion, the petty bureaucrats are, which removes the incentive for the State to tax people (since the petty bureaucrats don't have the power to tax anyone, and the people with the power to tax aren't benefiting from taxes). Too much taxes = more bribery, at some point there is an equilibrium where taxes are so low that they aren't being wasted on bribes (a 'natural rate of taxation').
The founding fathers of America fought a war and _killed_ people over a 3% tax (and for the freedom of self-determination). If you can justify war and killing for a good cause, then surely bribery for a good cause is tolerable.
Btw, the different between bribing a petty bureaucrat and being extorted by a petty bureaucrat, is that when you are being extorted by a bureaucrat, you can turn to his superiors (i.e. the State) for relief (since he would be breaking the law)... but when it's the State doing the extorting (i.e. taxes, regulations, etc..) you have no where to turn to, except bribes to the petty bureaucrats. Bribery is the only remaining defense against State sponsored extortion. Legalizing (offered) bribery could be put on par with the 2nd amendment on the grounds of resisting tyranny.
Published: August 8, 2005 10:48 PM
Legalizing (offered) bribery could be put on par with the 2nd amendment on the grounds of resisting tyranny.
Posted by misc at August 8, 2005 10:48 PM
That is an absolutely wonderful argument. You should patent that!
Published: August 9, 2005 12:50 AM
Bribery might be considered an imperfection in the system of the distribution of goods. It provides benefit to both the giver and the taker, and sometimes to the third parties affected by the bribe.
Looking at our current models of government, we find coercion at the root of most of them, the word for our tribute is the letter "T" followed with the "AX."
The question arises; why have we not yet gone beyond the extortion murder racket that government really is? The need for an operating system in human affairs seems to be real, though some think that the end of the state would be preferable.
Force of the military and fraud from the church and media are our daily bread. How have we ever let ourselves be fooled about what the historical criminal classes have planned for us.
We pay them a bribe to park our cars, or would that be they extort money from us to let us park our cars, and pretend to provide protection for us.
I say pretend, because our nuclear war criminals knew from early on that someday we would begin to ask these basic questions.
They apparently feel that instinct is the reason that they are allowed to lord over us and take our wealth from us, which is like, "taking candy from a baby."
This intinctual, or natural right arises from their proficiency with the use force. The nuclear age brought about the end of the use of force in human relations, yet our nuclear war criminals also had fraud as their other best friend.
The fraud is that they needed nuclear weapons to defend us. That is a lie. They secretly planned to destroy us early on in the nuclear age. The decision was made in April of 1947. Finally they could kill us all and end our discussions about the how and why of the state.
If you have stayed with me this long, this also reveals why our nuclear war criminal leadership is so sensitive about discussing the presence of "Higher level powers." You may have noticed the news about the space shuttle, where the captain called to mission control and asked during the undocking procedure, "what was that shiny object by the space station?"
NASA of course said that it was marsh gas, or an illusion or a smudge on the window.
Talking and thinking about economics is very stimulating. What shall become of our world as we enter into this new and advanced stage of development? That is if "ET" will continue to hold our nuclear war criminals down for long enough for the mass of the population to awaken and take them in hand, and retire them and their genocidal machines. The force and fraud of the old extortion murder rackets are coming to an end around the world.
http://politicsofet.com
Published: August 9, 2005 2:53 AM
"I'll assume that by immoral you mean something more than simply illegal (or 'contrary to the current order of things'), and I hope you don't consider breaking the law to be inherently immoral (in which case bribery is a way of indirectly breaking the law, and so yes, it would be immoral by that assumption)."
You assume correctly, misc, and no, I don't consider breaking the law to be inherently immoral. On the contrary, because the state in inherently antisocial, all its actions are immoral and, accordingly, so are it's laws. Which is to say that not only are all states in a state of nature with each other; they are also in a state of nature with their subjects (citizenship being a myth). Since, in a state of nature, might makes right, lawlessness (the Law of the Jungle) prevails, meaning that subjects are under no moral constraints with respect to "their" or any other state and can deal with them as they see fit (mindful of the state's might, of course).
But since bribery cannot be controlled (certainly no state law can control it), it cannot but do harm to other members of society. And since subjects of a state are NOT in a state of nature with each other, they have a moral obligation not to harm each other, rendering bribery of the state immoral.
True, bribing the state to simply leave you alone would be the exception, but bribery in general cannot be defended on moral grounds, at least if natural law exists. If it doesn't (and a good case can be made that it does not), then the Law of the Jungle prevails everywhere, leaving no one morally obligated to another.
Published: August 9, 2005 7:52 AM
The biggest problem with this essay is that it doesn't actually analyze the possibilities very well. It assumes implicitly that government will do unjustly (often true), and that bribers are seeking to do things that they should be free to do anyway (sometimes true).
There are actually four possibilities, two of which are meaningful. The government is either doing justly or unjustly, and the briber is either seeking justice or injustice. One only bribes when the government isn't already doing what you wish, so either government is doing justly and the briber seeks injustice, or vice versa.
So by casually assuming that government always does unjustly, one concludes that bribers are always seeking justice. But does that comport with reality? Are a majority of bribes paid to judges by innocent parties seeking acquittal, or by guilty parties seeking acquittal? (To avoid arguing about the justice of law itself, restrict your attention to trials for violent crimes.)
The author does indeed have a point, in that third-world bureaucrats often do interfere in perfectly legal, moral behavior in order to secure a bribe, and paying the bribe is easier than preaching honesty or attempting political reform. But to draw his point too far, and for example legalize bribery in the US, is to invite a bad-enough kleptocracy to full-blown extortionist entrepreneurism. Given his own assumption that bureaucrats are corrupt (which I agree with), we would expect a dramatic increase in such extortion.
Published: August 9, 2005 11:12 AM
I think a sharp distinction can be drawn between the 2 cases: (1) a briber seeking justice from unjust laws, and (2) a briber seeking injustice from just laws:
I'm advocating legalizing offering bribes, but leaving receiving bribes illegal and/or costly (in terms of fines, loss of job, etc..), so I'll assume that's what we're working under.
For defining just and unjust laws, I think a just law must directly protect a victim from force and/or fraud, and therefore all victim-less crimes (or crimes where the victim is 'society') are based on inherently unjust laws (since they needlessly restrict freedom).
So in the case where a briber is seeking an injustice from just laws, there would have to be a victim (or even just someone to object) based on the assuption of no victim-less evils, which would result in the victim (or bystander) reporting the crime leading to penalties for the official and the briber. If the victim always has a recourse and if injustice implies the existance of a victim, then injustice (through bribery) would be at the same disadvantage it is currently at - hindered by the force of law.
As I see it, only the good kind of bribery would benefit from legalizing offered bribery. With the added benefit of greatly reducing bureaucratic/police/state power since the public will see them as readily corruptible.
The only incoherence I can see is if you pay a person to intimidate/assault/kill someone else, and you get caught, then both you and the person you paid are guiltly of something; if you bribe a police officer to do the same thing and you get caught, (and bribery is legal) then what are you guilty of? Some part of me feels that you should be guilty of something in both cases, but is it simply 'encouraging illegal activity' (which leads to the draconian restrictions on free speech we have in here in Canada)? Perhaps what I'm getting at is 'bribery is legal so long as no 3rd party objects' (a check and balance at the implementation level of law).
Taking up arms against the state falls under the same foggy morality, clearly most people doing this aren't 'good' and aren't doing it in the cause of some justice. Yet only the most benevolent and far-sighted state recognizes it's own fallibility and would allow it's citizens the freedom to potentially oppose it (i.e. own guns).
Published: August 9, 2005 1:48 PM
If i am too tired to work but my co-workers are too, we'll have to pay the boss for the lack of productivity so it can remain in place.
Sometimes the whole country is tired and bureaucracy flourishes, so the private bankers of the central banks wait to see signs of energy in the country then they ask for the payment of the debt. They will allways ask when a bunch of people are tired and cynical about life, they only need a minority that works.
I saw a documentary saying 4 billions of people are unusefull for the free market evolution.
It makes me more compassionate to socialism when i see the majority means nothing more than more cultural distinction.
is pragmatism and objectivism based on eliminating the majority because there is no choice left? is miseans libertarians and anarcho capitalism too?
bribery is as worst as majority ruling against minority, sometimes good and sometimes bad.
the majority on earth is religious, but stem cells research is better than testing on rats, both are used but one is more peacefull than the other. South america, mid-east and africa will vote against that but also against gay wedding.
in quebec this week, we hear about moody's fear of our debt, unions are ready to fight the government two years in a row, the young liberals (their party is ruling now, but they represent the conservative anti-union)want to nationalize water and we have a housing bubble, but they say its good this time.
Published: August 9, 2005 5:29 PM