The NYT has a story about IPaidABribe.com.
The idea is that people write in accounts of petty corruption and bribes to reduce these
problems which are endemic in the developing world and reduce the quality of government. Yglesias wonders if publicizing the corruption will just cement it as a norm and make it even more entrenched because people will get "a sense that 'everyone does it' ...and that's 'the way
the system works'." This is just the kind of plausibly counterintuitive (but wrong) thinking that Slate, Yglesias' website, is famous for.
I am optimistic that publicizing corruption will help increase government quality. There are two possibilities.
First, even if Yglesias is correct and people make bribery an entrenched norm, then standardizing the norm will make government more efficient. Government salaries can be more easily adjusted to compensate for the bribes and if the norms are universally accepted, then the bribes just become standardized fees. A big problem with corruption is that it increases transactions costs by increasing uncertainty. Reducing the uncertain information caused by corruption would reduce its cost.
Secondly, if corruption does not become an entrenched norm, then citizens will be more content to pay higher taxes and/or fees to clean up government and make it work more efficiently without corruption.
Either way, publicizing corruption is a force for better government and better society because it reduces the information failure of uncertainty about the prices for getting government to work.
Read the NYT story (link at top).
I am optimistic that publicizing corruption will help increase government quality. There are two possibilities.
First, even if Yglesias is correct and people make bribery an entrenched norm, then standardizing the norm will make government more efficient. Government salaries can be more easily adjusted to compensate for the bribes and if the norms are universally accepted, then the bribes just become standardized fees. A big problem with corruption is that it increases transactions costs by increasing uncertainty. Reducing the uncertain information caused by corruption would reduce its cost.
Secondly, if corruption does not become an entrenched norm, then citizens will be more content to pay higher taxes and/or fees to clean up government and make it work more efficiently without corruption.
Either way, publicizing corruption is a force for better government and better society because it reduces the information failure of uncertainty about the prices for getting government to work.
Read the NYT story (link at top).
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