I have an unusual perspective here.
In my country the politicians are openly very corrupt. (Well, possibly yours too ;)
Recently there has been a lot of improvement to the infrastructure. I realized that what has happened is, a lot of EU funds have been made available for development, and people are lining up to skim a little bit off the top.
How you say, the incentives are aligned, yeah?
I find myself in the odd situation where for each dollar that gets embezzled, a little bit of actual construction happens. That seems like a force you'd want to work with, rather than against.
I mean yeah ideally we'd get rid of corruption, but haha good luck with that. At least now they're fixing the roads.
I am from Brazil, and there is a famous politician there that has the non-official slogan of "Steals but Does". He is Paulo Maluf. "Everyone" knows he is corrupt. But people vote for him anyway, because he get things done, and he doesn't engage in certain kinds of corruption.
That is the problem, how you get corruption to go the way you want?
Lots of politicians see Paulo Maluf, and think they can imitate him, that they will be beloved by the public and steal money somehow and line their own pockets, except those are too self-serving or too incompetent to pull that off properly, so they steal in ways that go against the public.
So for example in one city where I lived, one mayor stole the money from the kids lunch, resulting in hungry kids. Another mayor stole ludicrous amounts of money from garbage collection services, the result is that the city ended with debts in the billions while being a tiny city (it has 100k people, yet has debts bigger than cities with millions of people).
Paulo Maluf meanwhile built lots of useful infrastructure that is still in use. (also hilariously he used to brag a lot using the phrase "Maluf that did it!", one time some comedic journalists went to a bridge opening, and asked him who did the bridge, he replied: "Maluf didn't do this bridge. But he did the two roads the bridge are connecting, so there is no bridge without Maluf!")
In a sense, he is not unlike a high ranked executive or business owners. These people usually demand high pay for their work because of how important their decisions are for the well-being of the company.
Same idea here except that it happens under the table. Elected officials usually get a fixed pay, and often, it is not that high compared to the importance of their work. What Paulo Maluf is proposing is essentially "I am going to pay myself well (through corruption), but I will do what's best for the city".
The copy part sounds a lot like Cargo Culting.
Copying the visible behavior but not doing the actual part that matters.
Also incredibly common in corporate.
I would vote for an infrastructure kleptocrat any day over someone that will actually enforce the insane zoning and code law we have here. A big problem in USA is you can only get many building or infrastructure things done maybe if you have millions to "influence" politicians. The opportunity to have a politician rob me of 10,20% of the construction costs and meanwhile actually be able to build a condo or something on my own property would be amazing.
You might reconsider when your richer neighbor paid the politician to block you or build an asphalt plant next to your new condo. It's a slippery slope. Or how about when the fire department starts asking for a little something to keep your condo "safe"
Costing money to block me rather than $0 is an improvement.
I have no fire department where I live, nor really any effective police. We don't have public infrastructure nor public roads or anything like that. People here do not use public services and our taxes aren't high enough to pay for them, they are almost $0. We do have zoning and codes, but that's sustainable only because it's funded by enforcement fines, otherwise you're on your own.
Where are you?
Rural southwest USA
You don't have public roads? in the USA? Even if rural? Ah, maybe those roads are maintained by the state? Even so - those are public, no?
I am not sure the incentives are aligned.
those people fixing the roads are incentivized to do the work cheaply so they can skim more “off the top”
And you still need to fight corruption to some level or it will come to a point where there’s more skimming than work being done
>those people fixing the roads are incentivized to do the work cheaply
this incentive exists with or without corruption
cheaply as in not meeting standards
without corruption you could do a shitty job once and then you won’t get another contract because you did a shit job
with corruption the quality of the work won’t matter so in the extreme case you can deliver nothing at all and you’ll still keep getting contracts - In my country we call this being “plugged in”
Exactly, sounds inherently unsafe and the work is only done superficially to keep more EU funds coming (like in Hungary).
At some point the process to prevent corruption costs more than the actual corruption. The process to award the contract for the Obamacare website wasn't corrupt, but it cost $700 million and the app didn't even work. In a corrupt system that contract would have gone to a company owned by some official's cousin, and he would have bid $100 million knowing he could pocket 50, but it would have got done because he knows the last thing he needs is an investigation. That's kind of how it works in China.
Depends on how it happens and what your goal is, it starts with a little bit off the top, and ends with it being the prime goal. Somewhere on that gliding scale people get hurt because a bridge collapses because the money went into someone's pockets instead of construction.