
Why Paying Bribes Should Be Legal - kqr2
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/04/01/135011027/why-paying-bribes-should-be-legal
======
eapen
In India, it is almost impossible to get something done without giving a bribe
and especially if you need something in time. If not, the bribe-expecting
government workers will keep you waiting till you are ready to hand over the
bribe. I didn't realize it was illegal to give a bribe in India, so I guess I
can't even admit to having done that - which is ridiculous!

When I needed to get a document in India (in a more rural area), the young
government official, who I assumed was above all this corruption, kept telling
me to come later (when there were fewer people around) and had me go to a
nearby Xerox shop to get copies of a document. While I was going there, the
official called the guy at the Xerox shop and told him to tell me how the
process works. Suffice to say that I gave something and apparently that wasn't
enough, so I had my mom visit him the next day and he made a comment that I
hadn't given enough. My mom just smiled, picked up the certificate (which was
in front of him) and left.

On the other hand, reporting an official is still a bit scary knowing that him
or his partners-in-crime can _accidentally_ mess up any of the other official
documents and since most of the documents are still on paper and not
digitized, it could throw you down into a deeper hole. Unless a massive
campaign against corruption is introduced, I dont see this problem going away
anytime soon.

~~~
wslh
Same in Argentina, is how things work.

------
michaelchisari
The second half of this is left out:

 _Why Paying Bribes Should Be Legal To Pay, But Illegal To Accept_

This changes the meaning considerably.

~~~
wisty
Also, this is only suggested for someone paying a bribe "to receive something
they are legally entitled to receive."

The example is an official demanding a bribe to process a tax return.

It wouldn't apply to someone paying a bribe to avoid a speeding ticket.

~~~
erikb
And also those who like to keep a good relationship to the officials they have
to work with on a daily basis. I can't prove or test it, but I assume that
this category contains the biggest amount of people AND money concerning
bribery. "Doing favors" to each other is just a basic social activity,
especially if the other person is one with the power to change your life to
better or worse.

~~~
wisty
In the US and China, yes. Outright bribery is rare, but people with
"connections" get special treatment.

However, the article is about India, a country where corruption is so rampant
that there's an Association of Dead People, who can't afford the bribe to have
themselves "reinstated" after they were reported dead.

"Hi, I'd like to report, my in-laws declared me to be deceased, and have
stolen my house and land."

"Hmm, your name? OK, it seems you are dead."

"Yes, and my house has been stolen. I'd like to file a complaint."

"You can't."

"Why?"

"You are dead."

People spend decades trying to get back on the books. It would be hilarious if
it wasn't true.

------
georgecmu
_("Orthogonal" is a jargony way of saying "opposed.") Update: Several
commenters raised questions about my gloss of "orthogonal." So I emailed Basu
to ask him how he was using the word here. His answer: "Orthogonal interests
are interests pulling in opposite directions."_

Yeah... someone needs a refresher in linear algebra and a reminder not to use
words the meaning of which he doesn't know.

~~~
pingswept
Agreed. Can we just be clear? "Orthogonal" means "perpendicular."

~~~
AndyKelley
Seems clear to me. Parallel == same direction. Perpendicular == different
directions.

~~~
A1kmm
Parallel can mean in the same direction, or it can mean in exactly opposite
directions. North and south train lines might run parallel to each other, for
example.

In plain English, two things are orthogonal if they are unrelated or
independent of each other.

In linear algebra, this meaning is given a more specific technical meaning of
perpendicular; transforming a point p by a vector u that is orthogonal to a
basis vector v to get p' means that p and p' have the same multiplier on v
(i.e. the contribution of v is independent of transformations orthogonal to v)

~~~
Luyt
I associate 'orthogonal' with CPU instruction sets: the ability to combine any
instruction with any register (and adressing mode).

~~~
sp332
Sure, in that case the vectors are instructions and registers. So if you
change from using instruction p to instruction p' it doesn't change the
register you're using.

------
JoshTriplett
This change (making bribes legal for the payer, just not the payee) seems
highly sensible. Right now, if an official demands a bribe for something you
have a right to in the first place, you can attempt to report them, but
meanwhile you have to do without, with the associated cost to you. With this
change, you can still report the person demanding the bribe, but in the
meantime you can choose whether it would cost you less to go ahead and pay the
bribe (and hope to get it back later) than to do without whatever you'd needed
in the first place.

This won't help in all cases, though: as I understand it, some countries
(including the US) have laws against paying bribes in other countries, even
when such a prohibition effectively prevents doing business in those
countries.

~~~
alextp
Except bribes undermine social fairness significantly. Notice that as the
clerk presumably knows how much money he should give you for your tax returns
there is a strong incentive for him to ask for a bribe that covers a
significant share of your tax returns, effectively making the entire tax
return process useless for the citizen.

Also, if you think of a slightly different scenario, imagine the office is
only allowed to issue X tax returns a month (maybe the money comes in
packets), and the bribe is required to cut the line. Now it's really unfair
and wrong, and a lot more so for the briber than for the bribee.

You should have in mind that it's not actually that hard to bribe people
indirectly. Any place with a bribing culture tends to have people you can hire
to unofficially bribe some government employee to do something for you. In
Brazil these are called "despachantes" (dispatchers), and even though in the
last decade or so they have been getting progressively more useless as the
country moves away from a bribing culture, you should keep in mind that a lot
of despachantes are legally incorporated and even pay taxes. One can't be
blamed for hiring that sort of person.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_In Brazil...in the last decade or so they have been getting progressively
more useless as the country moves away from a bribing culture..._

Just curious, could you elaborate on how and why this has occurred? (Moving
away from a bribing culture, I mean.)

Also, do you think other countries could do the same thing?

~~~
alextp
I think it came with the economic boom, but I'm at a loss at explaining how or
why. Also, part of my perception can be because I moved from a less to a more
"civilized" place in Brazil (from Salvador to São Paulo).

I have anecdotal reports, from members of my family who used to work in law,
that a couple of decades ago buying and selling real estate, for example,
required a lot of palm-greasing. Maybe due to pressures from the industry this
is not true right now in the big cities (I rarely go to the countryside, so I
don't know how things are over there, although in brazil the coutnryside tends
to move more slowly).

It seems, however, that even at its peak Brazil never had as bad a bribing
culture as India seems to have, from the news.

All of the bribing I hear about these days are teenagers and young adults
bribing cops to overlook possession of small amounts of drugs (and also some
very high profile cases in the government), but bribing to get things you
should have by right is something I or anyone I know in my generation has
never had to do.

------
phylofx
As one commenter on the article pointed out, the scenario described is
"extortion", not bribery, so there shouldn't be any legal consequences for the
person extorted in such a way anyway. "Most states define extortion as the
gaining of property or money by almost any kind of force, or threat of 1)
violence, 2) property damage, 3) harm to reputation, or 4) unfavorable
government action." bribery is "the receiving or offering any undue reward by
or to any person whomsoever, whose ordinary profession or business relates to
the administration of public justice, in order to influence his behaviour in
office and to incline him to act contrary to his duty and the known rules of
honesty and integrity."

------
_pius
I found the incorrect usage of the word "orthogonal" in the article much more
distracting than I'd have expected.

------
Goladus
In US Culture, there's still plenty of reason to discourage people from
offering bribes. Offering bribes encourages corruption. The victims of a bribe
in the US are typically everyone BUT the briber and the collector. If you're
at a restaurant and bribe a maitre d' to bump up your priority for a table, he
pockets some cash you get your table and all the people following the rules
get boned. The briber is not being exploited at all. This scenario is probably
not illegal and certainly not a big deal, but is a good example of the way our
cultural rules usually work.

In a place like India, where it's typical for government workers to expect
bribes and refuse service without it, or for police to hassle people about
trivial things like whether the mirror on your bike is adjusted properly, it's
really more appropriately called extortion. The victims are the people paying
the 'bribes.' The only one who really benefits is the collector. In that case
it makes more sense to focus on solving the problem from that angle.

------
matthew-wegner
Permits and things are already quite bribe-like:

Owner: "Can I open a store here?"

City: "No."

Owner: "How about if I paid you, say, $500?"

City: "OK then!"

~~~
lucasjung
It's not even always so blatant. I currently live in a rural county in
Maryland. A buddy of mine built a detached garage last year. Parts of it he
contracted out, and the contractors handled the permits. Other parts he did
himself, and so had to file for his permits in person. It went something like
this:

Homeowner: "I'd like a permit to build a garage."

County Clerk: "Your contractor will handle the permits for you."

Homeowner: "I'm going to build it myself."

County Clerk: "Why would you do something so selfish? Don't you want to create
jobs for hard-working locals by hiring a contractor?"

"Hard-working locals" being a euphemism for "My friends and relatives." The
parts that were handled by contractors sailed through inspections. The parts
he did himself, he had to wait months for a county inspector to come out and
in some cases was repeatedly failed for bogus reasons. Nobody ever wanted a
direct bribe, they just wanted him to pay their friends/family for services he
didn't need.

~~~
olegious
"Why would you do something so selfish..." Just got an "Atlas Shrugged"
flashback ;).

------
aufreak3
I'm left wondering whether such direct intervention of the legal system is the
only way to contain the rampant bribery. For instance, what if employment
contracts for officials make them agree to an "I will not accept bribes and I
understand that I can be fired for doing so" clause, and also a "I hereby
declare that have not accepted bribes in the past and understand that I can be
fired if it was found to be otherwise".

I'm using loose language, but that kind of thing can tie bribes to contract
laws and impact the employability anywhere of an official who accepts bribes.
To further facilitate evidence collection, it can be made legal to secretly
record (as audio/video) transactions solely intended to expose corrupt
officials.

~~~
archangel_one
Surely the fact that accepting bribes is illegal would implictly mean that
employees could be fired for doing so? I can't imagine that adding a bit of
extra language to the employment contract saying "don't do illegal thing x" is
going to stop people from doing it any more than the fact that x is illegal in
the first place.

~~~
aufreak3
Adding laws about bribery demands new legal machinery. I was wondering whether
the need for that can be bypassed by piggy backing on contract law.

------
srgseg
Map of World corruption:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/World_Map...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/World_Map_Index_of_perception_of_corruption_2010.svg)

(From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index>)

~~~
yummyfajitas
Map of world _perception_ of corruption. It's an important distinction.

------
duopixel
I grew up in Mexico and I can see the logic behind this, I don't think it
would work in practice:

People usually give bribes when they've done something wrong, not when they
are entitled to something. If a clerk asked me for a bribe in exchange for tax
refund, I'd demand to talk to his supervisor, and I'm pretty sure he'd shit
bricks and pretend to be joking.

Let's say I fail a driving test, the clerk insinuates (because it's never
obvious) an extra "fee" might help me get my licence:

1\. What if the clerk never suggested a bribe, but instead I threatened to
accuse him of bribery if he didn't give me a passing score?

2\. If he did suggest a bribe, would my licence still be valid?

3\. A bribed official would never give you a receipt of your bribery, how are
they going to know if what you're saying is true? I can picture trolls
affirming they were bribed by thousands of traffic officers in hopes of
profitting from a faulty system.

~~~
ajays
"People usually give bribes when they've done something wrong, not when they
are entitled to something."

Oh how wrong you are. In India, if you don't bribe, you won't get the service
you need and are entitled to.

I can give examples, but HN's disks may overflow.

For example: to get a passport, you need a certificate of residency (or
something like that, it's been a while) from the local police station. Unless
you bribe the cops there, they'll never mail it in.

Basically, in India, every touchpoint of the government machinery has a bribe
slot. If you ever need a service from the government, you need to pay up. It
simply does not matter how deserving your case is. There are examples aplenty
of old pensioners having to bribe the pension officers to collect their own
pensions!

Corruption is a cruel system that abuses the most vulnerable and weak in
society. The rich can use it to their advantage, and hence they don't care
(one neighbor of ours became a multi-millionaire by bribing and selling sub-
standard equipment to the Indian Railways ). The poor, on the other hand, get
taken advantage of. I have seen, with my own eyes, mothers pawning their
wedding jewelry to raise money for bribes so their sons could get a government
job. It brought tears to my eyes, and this is why I hate that fucking system
with a passion.

------
kolinko
This is the way it works in Poland. We had a change in law a couple of years
ago exactly due to the reasons you stated.

One thing I don't know about our law though - if I try to bribe someone (say -
Policeman), and he refuses, can I be prosecuted? I don't know about our law,
but it would be interesting if _trying to bribe_ someone would be illegal, but
_bribing someone_ was legal.

~~~
spindritf
> This is the way it works in Poland.

Not really. There is an exemption if you inform the law enforcement before
they detect it themselves though.

> One thing I don't know about our law though - if I try to bribe someone (say
> - Policeman), and he refuses, can I be prosecuted?

Yes, art. 229. k.k. It's not even terribly unlikely that you will get arrested
on the spot, '90s are over.

IANAL.

------
sandstrom
Although prostitution and bribes isn't that related, I know Sweden did
something similar — the supply side of prostitution is legal but buying isn't.
From what I know I think it has worked fairly well.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Sweden#Purchasi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Sweden#Purchasing_sex_.28Brottsbalk_6.11.29)

I know something similar is also used for collusion in the US, where a party
that is first to snitch can avoid prosecution.

Although there are undoubtedly other ways of curbing corruption, e.g.
competition between agencies driving down bribes to zero (in theory at least),
this could work.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Something I've never understood. People advocate to make only the buying side
of prostitution illegal. The same people often advocate to make only the
selling side of drugs illegal.

It's a weird dichotomy I can't wrap my head around.

(I realize that some people may favor only one of these policies, but I don't
think the intersection of people favoring both is empty.)

~~~
cturner
I was thinking about last night. I see logic in it. (1) Target the people who
you have best hope of affecting the behaviour of. (2) Avoiding compounding
damage to people who are already messed up.

Prostitution attracts girls who are already degraded. It's common for the
girls to have been sexually abused as a child, physically abused as a young
wife, or to have drug issues. Participation in the trade suggests that the
person is not a full-functioning citizen.

A motivation for outlawing prostitution is paternalistic: it's a dynamic that
causes this a concentrated group of people with existing problems to spiral
further.

Using the legal system to target people in that situation for their own good
is counterproductive. They have low faith in government and institutions
already, and jailing them probably isn't going to help that. You just end up
pushing them into and out of new institutions, but they keep practicing
because the business is there and they don't take control of their lives to
rise out of it.

Whereas the business that fuels prostitution is vulnerable to the dynamic of
the police and legal system. Users are usually people who are full
participants in society and are vulnerable to shame and the threat of jail
time. They generally have a good understanding of rights/responsibility even
if they have periods where they hold themselves to be above it.

I sometimes read that prostitution is "misogynistic". It's not. For the most
part the users don't think about the circumstances of the girls at all. Some
people don't naturally behave with concern for other people's circumstance,
and the stick attempts to compensate for that.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Regarding 1), why do you believe it is easier to change the behavior of drug
dealers than drug users? Drug addicts may not change behavior, but casual
users behavior should be easier to change than someone who's livelihood
depends on drugs.

Regarding 2), why do you believe prostitutes are more messed up than their
clients? While prostitutes at the lower end tend to have sordid histories and
drug habits, their clients tend to be socially isolated men desperate for
human contact.

To get an idea of how messed up the clients of prostitutes are, it's estimated
that 40% or so of men who pay for a prostitute don't sleep with her (they just
talk and maybe kiss).

<http://www.slate.com/id/2186491/>

~~~
cturner
I'm not confident that the laws around drugs are sensible, but I was more
focussed on thinking about the laws around prostitution.

    
    
        > their clients tend to be socially isolated men
        > desperate for human contact.
    

I hadn't considered this case.

Thanks for link. This development towards 'escorts' is intriguing, and changes
the dynamic somewhat. I can imagine that growing, a flow-on from a decline in
tightly-knit families and neighbourhoods and more mobile labour.

------
sliverstorm
This might even fix the opposite case, where the briber initiates the bribe,
and the receiver of the bribe wasn't looking for a bribe.

The receiver has to decide, do I refuse knowing that the briber can freely
inform the law I accepted his bribe without fear of retribution?

------
shalinmangar
The article assumes that a functioning judicial and investigative system
exists which can help you in a reasonable amount of time. If that were the
case, bribery wouldn't have become so rampant in the first place.

How is one supposed to show evidence of wrongdoing? What keeps the government
official from exercising his powers and punishing the reporter in the future?

------
sagarun
The scenario described in the article is not bribe, it is extortion.

------
teyc
That assumes that the government employees are independent of one another and
will not "punish" the person reporting the incident.

What works better is a system where the PM alone is allowed to take bribes
with impunity but no one else is allowed to. The reasoning behind this is it
gives the PM and his inner circle sufficient financial independence to
implement anti-corruption measures.

For example, the central government in China has been known to mete out
capital punishments on mid-ranking politicians found to take bribes. This
limits the base of people who are able to seek an economic rent on the basis
of their position. Like any triangle, the people at the top may get filthy
rich and in many sense untouchable; they will be able to keep the large pool
of people below them honest.

~~~
galadriel
This would only work if the top level official wants bribe only for high level
project. The approach would fail in India, where every amount of bribe has
fixed distribution, from bottom most official to the top.

Say for example you wallet got lost, and you need to file an police report.
The bribe you pay at police station would not be to the local official alone,
but a cut of it would extend all the way over to top till the Home secretary.
No one wants to punish anyone in such cases. This allows top-most official to
acquire a much larger wealth than they would if they stopped corruption at
lower level

~~~
teyc
This type of bribes already occur through taxation, traffic fines and other
processing charges. These allow public servants to earn a bonus on top of
their normal wages.

This is the effect of bribery tainting everybody up the chain. However, if
bribery were to be legalised only at the highest level, then the highest
leaders will have no incentive to accept bad bribes from their subordinates.

------
dchest
I like the idea [edit: on a second thought, as commenters pointed out, the
described process is extortion, not bribery].

Unfortunately, improvement requires that bribe reporting system is not corrupt
(police, courts, etc.), which, I think, is not the case for countries with
high corruption rates.

~~~
wisty
It's easy. Just have make a publicly visible issue tracking system. Issues
could be tracked, and punishments recorded (if applicable). You could put a
little bit of identity protection in (i.e. Officer 123 vs Customer 345).

~~~
dchest
Records:

\- Customer 345 reported a bribe.

\- Officer 123 has been cleaned from false reporting.

Non-records:

Customer 345 thrown into jail for possession of drugs.

------
stretchwithme
What are they talking about? Bribes ARE legal. All you have to do is call it a
campaign contribution.

But, yeah, its the politicians that should be prosecuted for taking, not
people who are victims of the shakedown.

And it is a shakedown when in order to do business in a particular fields all
of your competition is already bribing and if you don't, you're screwed.

Of course, the reason the politician has power to abuse is that he has power
he shouldn't even have. So its really our fault for allowing the concentration
of power or believing power is supposed to be concentrated.

~~~
Goladus
The kind of bribe discussed in the article isn't like a campaign contribution,
it's regular people bribing rank-and-file government clerks and police, which
happens as a matter of course in India and many other countries.

~~~
stretchwithme
And if you read the rest of my comment, you would see I am aware of that.

------
known
In India, bribe is considered as a _tip_ that we give to waiter/waitress in
US. <http://truthaboutindiacorruption.org/>

------
angus77
I always thought it should be the opposite---paying bribes should be illegal,
but accepting them legal. It would be like collecting a reward for turning in
the briber.

~~~
dchest
There's a fatal flaw in this scheme: the person who accepted a bribe is now in
position to extort money from the briber forever.

------
thematt
The situation where somebody is being forced to pay a bribe is already
illegal.

Why do I actually have to pay it in order for the authorities to do something
about it?

This seems erroneously predicated on the assumption that the briber is doing
so because he knows the payer will be complicit in the crime. I think the more
likely scenario is that the briber does this because he has no fear of the
authorities or their ability to enforce such laws.

~~~
elehack
Because, at the end of the day, you still need your tax return or whatever it
is, and the bribe-requester is preventing you from getting it.

Going through the legal system, if it even works, would take quite a while.

------
joe_the_user
It's not that clear cut.

It seems like whoever has the most leverage and can initiate the transaction
should go to jail.

Company which offers pay an EPA official ten times their salary to look the
other for pollution should be the prosecuted party. But a police officer who
extracts a $50 bribe for ignoring a ticket should, on the other hand, wind-up
being the one prosecuted.

~~~
chrisbennet
Read the whole article.

------
scythe
Shouldn't you just be able to report the corrupt official for not giving you
the refund in the first place?

~~~
bdhe
The corrupt official is not going to be straightforward. Think of a convoluted
system where the official can put you behind tons of red tape (you might
literally spend hours filling up nonsensical forms). But a small price to pay
and -poof- all the red tape vanishes.

Reporting such (clearly) corrupt officials itself might involve paying bribes
(think recursive) or might involve a court date months into the future which
completely defeats the purpose. The justice system is itself part of the
corruption problem.

~~~
markbao
This is what happens in a lot of third-world countries, India included. It
would be impossible to get anything done business-wise in some countries that
are heavy on bribes—without bribes, it would take forever to get licenses,
building permits, and other government-mandated items for doing business,
whereas a bribe would put you on the fast track.

~~~
bdhe
> It would be impossible to get anything done business-wise ...

You'd be surprised how a background verification and other processing for a
passport application can require four months without a bribe but less than a
couple of weeks if the right hands are greased. I think corruption is a real
problem if ordinary Joe cannot function without ending up bribing someone.

------
sbov
This seems fine when you have to bribe someone to get something you should
already be getting. But what about when you bribe for other things, such as
access to information you shouldn't have access to? Or to get certain laws
passed?

~~~
kd0amg
From the article:

 _Finally, Basu's suggestion applies only to one type of bribe: When someone
has to pay a bribe to receive something they are legally entitled to receive.
Basu makes it clear that it should still be illegal to pay other types of
bribes. So, for example, it would still be illegal for a big company to pay a
bribe to win a government contract._

------
grease
Not sure this works in all cases. This will work assuming you have money to
pay the bribe in the first place. There is no way to protect you from getting
asked for a bribe (that you cannot pay).

------
cheez
Yipes, the incentive not to report is high. I don't know that this will do
anything.

------
known
India cannot be free from corruption unless it disintegrates like USSR.

~~~
Deestan
It didn't help USSR, though. Corruption is rampant in Russia.

~~~
known
But remaining republics of USSR are relatively free from corruption
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Republics_of_...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Republics_of_the_Soviet_Union)

