[Nokinside]

China is not Russian style system where oligarchs close to leader step in and steal your stuff if you get rich.

China resembles (British) monarchy of the old. There are laws, but they are not same for the common man and to the noble (60 million members of the communist party). If you steer away from the politics, you can be entrepreneur and become rich.

Corruption exists of course, but that's like taxation. You pay your taxes and bribes. Bribing can sometimes allow more freedoms than completely lawful society, because it allows more.

China has basically the same bioethical laws as the west, but they are not enforced because party does not care. China became the first country to approve the commercial production of a gene therapy.

[mncharity]

> Corruption exists of course, but that's like taxation.

A few years ago, at an economics talk out of Harvard, the speaker suggested there were advantages for innovation in China-style vs US-style corruption. One was that when legislative bribes are mostly paid by large incumbent companies, instead of being more broadly sourced, there's more systematic use of regulatory capture to reduce competition and replace innovation with rent seeking. Caveats: it was a side comment, and it wasn't clear to me the topic was fully within their research focus.

Similar issues exist around patents. I recently heard a billion-ish hardware tech CEO describe a large defensive patent portfolio as "table stakes" for playing. Though I wonder if they meant "buy in".

[ajross]

At least some of that may be simple circumstance. When GDP growth is at 7%, it makes more sense for the oligarchs to invest in whatever is hot than it does to steal (everyone's getting rich, why take the risk and make the enemies?).

The US remains mostly uncorrupt at 2.2%.

Russia's GDP growth is at 1.3% per my quick google search, which is well underneath inflation. If you're sitting at the top with a mostly asset-dominated income, you have to be stealing if you want to grow. So only the thieves win.

[Retric]

US has high levels of corruption at the top, it's just better hidden and less accessible to most people. The secret is changing how the rules operate instead of selective enforcement.

[enraged_camel]

>>US has high levels of corruption at the top, it's just better hidden and less accessible to most people.

It is hidden... in broad daylight. For example, what is lobbying, if not legalized corruption?

[candiodari]

You know, there is justification for lobbying, and to some extent I would even say it is a strength of our society rather than a weakness.

Lobbying informs decision makers, in a non-neutral manner, about what they regulate from the perspective of people actually subject to the regulation produced. That is a very valuable thing if you compare it to the alternative. In societies where this is absent it leads to incredible inefficiency (just ask an old Dubai taxi driver about why a building was built, for instance. Prepare to be amazed).

Lobbying provides a form of feedback that would be very hard to acquire otherwise. Neither policymakers, nor the democratic public can realistically study the entire economy in sufficient detail to regulate it. But by definition, there are people who have made it their living to study, work and use parts of the economy, and they should be given access to policymakers before they get regulated.

And that's of course where it should stop. Oh well.

[Pica_soO]

Lobbying is a abomination, and the argumentation for it not sound at all.

If you want a additional voice for the economic class within a democracy, assign them a fixed percentage of power (25 % percent of the seats in parliament e.g.), and let them vote every day in secret within that percentage with the taxes paid to the whole state . Suddenly, lobbyism does not look that necessary at all, does it? One can design systems that channel corrosive elements into a productive whole.

[nojvek]

Like intuit lobbying for not making tax simple? Like Microsoft lobbying that US govt use their cloud? Or the big military suppliers lobbying to increase military budget? Or health insurance companies and big pharmacy lobbying hard so Americans would rather commit suicide than get proper healthcare?

The system has been effectively well gamed by the big cos and politicians.

[sokoloff]

Be careful. By excluding causes you disagree with from lobbying, you may well find yourself excluding causes that you do.

Should a group be allowed to lobby to keep/make abortion legal? To increase the number or amount of social support programs? To decrease the number or amount of same? Lobby for civil rights changes that have happened over the last 60 years (and those that still need implementation)? Lobby to increase (or abolish) the minimum wage? Lobby to exclude teaching young-Earth creationism (or evolution) in schools?

Lobbying is inherently done out of self-interest (or at least perceived self-interest). You point to examples where many people don't share that same interest, but if everyone did share the same interests, there would be no need to lobby for those interests, of course...

[ajross]

Corruption in this sense of the word is economic and quantifiable, we're not talking about policymaking and who bought off whichever party you hate. The US is near the bottom of the industrialized world in metrics like this.

[Retric]

This is independent of party and more obvious at the local level than national. Look into your local zoning some time.

When the rules says X must be farm land, but changing that so X can become tract housing means local developer can make a few million... Well that's a lot of power to hand some tiny group with minimal oversight. Supplying pencils etc to the local high schools can be a lot simpler if you know the right people...

[chaostheory]

Yes the key word is 'at the top'. For example it is way harder and much more rare to bribe a police officer or a teacher to get out of a ticket or get better grades in the West. The difference is the pervasiveness and acceptance of corruption. This matters for innovation. When everyone doesn't respect the rule of law, then stuff like investing in intellectual property gets completely thrown out the door. In China's defense, the West is going the other extreme which isn't good either

[r00fus]

> Bribing can sometimes allow more freedoms than completely lawful society, because it allows more.

Bribing allows one to buy more freedom, generally at the cost of those who don't pay. It's essentially pay-to-play.

One could argue that the Chinese system has more "devolved/decentralized" pay-to-play system as opposed to the US where the Federalization experiment (states allowed to experiment with different legal interpretation) has broken down.

[seanmcdirmid]

Rule by law, not rule of law. Once you understand the difference between these two concepts, you'll understand China a bit better.

[RickHull]

Rule of (arbitrary and capricious) man vs. rule of law is a similar distinction

[dredmorbius]

That's not a particularly clear distinction, care to expand / unpack?

[seanmcdirmid]

"Rule by law" is the use of law to control the people. You use laws as convenient to punish your enemies, but aren't particularly interested in enforcing laws fairly. It becomes more of the default whenever there is no independent judiciary to interpret the law, or an independent media to make sure the government stays honest.

"Rule of law" is the aspiration that we are used to in the west (fair application of the law, everyone is subject to the law, etc...). It isn't perfect, we often exist in between the two extremes, but our systems are set up to at least aspire to it, while the Chinese system self admittedly depends solely on the wisdom and benevolence of a singular ruling class (in this case, the top-down CPC).

[Canada]

With over a billion people in the country, the highest levels of leadership can't easily stop the kind of corruption that most businesses are victimized by: Extortion by local officials. It's like, they walk in to your factory, claim your fire extinguishers are not regulation, and demand that you buy a dozen of them from their friend and no one else, and it's going to cost you 50,000 RMB ($7k USD). And if you don't go and get them, right now, then they're taking the keys to your factory, kicking out all the employees (who you will still have to pay) and not letting anyone back in until you do. And it has to be cash. And no, you're not getting a receipt.

Or it will be things like, you order something, it's not delivered even close to spec, and the corrupt police make you pay for it anyway or else. Contracts are utterly meaningless. And of course this only starts happening when you start making money. And they'll know you're making money because the locals around you are definitely ratting you out and quite possibly in on it.

You need to have the right friends to avoid this, and those kind of friends cost money.

Our systems aren't perfect, but it's rare we have to put up with shit like that.

Still, I like it here. The cost of living is reasonable, the weather is good, it's a big city with lots of entertainment, and a lot of people are here doing stuff. Being right next to Hong Kong is also a big plus. Biggest downside is how bad the internet sucks.

[mncharity]

> Our systems aren't perfect, but it's rare we have to put up with shit like that.

I'd love to see a breakdown of the US economy, sketching which rules apply where. Including gray and black markets.

When a couple of Boston-NYC gray bus operators went legit, incumbent Greyhound fought them in various ways, including leveraging corruption in federal law enforcement. The sole battered survivor had to hire a DC lobbyist.

SpaceX is massively disrupting a large mature industry, while doing no defensive patenting at all. Apparently relying entirely on something like "you don't piss off US Senators and DoD".

There's a lot of fascinating texture to how the US economy is structured, but I've never seen a broadly scoped and roughly quantitative sketch.

[greglindahl]

SpaceX patenting ITAR-covered technology is a landmine of problems.

[malloryerik]

Can I ask what you mean about the internet sucking? Is it censorship, quality of sites, or speed and reliability of service?

[Canada]

Everything is censored. You have to tunnel pretty much everything. Massive packet loss is par for the course. You can't have a routable address. You can't just fire up a VM in minutes, you can't even have a VM without a registered company with a license to run a web server.

Things we take for granted like attaching a 2mb file to an email or a simple Google search can take several minutes to accomplish.

[nyolfen]

hazarding a guess, i expect he's saying rule by a privileged group using law as a tool, versus the (ideal) western conception of the rule of law, as a framework that everyone must operate within, equally subject and evenly applied

[dredmorbius]

Thanks, that helps.