I’m not sure what connections you think exist between Robert Mose’s corruption and him building a lot of things.
When Robert Moses wanted things to get done, they got done. A lot of the examples of how Robert Moses used his power are to complex to explain them in a paragraph.
That complexity is part of the way he defended his power because it was hard to understand how it was wielded.
On example was Moses getting a politician to pass a law that meaned that Moses could take someone’s house and start building a road the next day. He did this by writing the amendment in a way that neither the politician he proposed the law nor anyone in the parliament understood what the law would actually do.
If you can start building a road directly after you told someone that you want the road where their house is and don’t have to wait a year for a legal process about whether it’s okay to take the house of the person, it’s easier to build things.
That was in Robert Moses early days when he didn’t have a lot of people directly on his payrol but it’s a nice example of him doing things that allow his projects to move fast that would never go through today. Later examples are more complex because it’s the web of relationships he build that prevented opposition to any project he wanted to do. Caro’s book is excellent if you want to understand how power can be wielded.
Would you consider Uber or Airbnb to have engaged in corruption?
I don’t know. Both started by simply ignoring the law in many jurisdictions. Later they hired political insiders to lobby. From the outside it’s hard to know whether or not those political insiders use means that we should call corrupt to get laws changed. We might know more in one or two decades where someone writes a good book about what happened in their legislative efforts.
They don’t seem to be powerful enough in a state like California to get the law reducing their ability to hire independent contractors from getting passed which suggests that they do have some inability to corrupt that legislative process.
Okay, that’s along the lines of what I remembered from reading reviews of Caro’s book – Moses’s ‘corruption’ was, at least generally, atypical, e.g. not bribery or blatantly abusing his power. It was in a sense a much more subtle form of corruption, in large part because it wasn’t obviously corruption at all.
My problem with this line of thinking is that indicts basically all political actors:
That was in Robert Moses early days when he didn’t have a lot of people directly on his payrol but it’s a nice example of him doing things that allow his projects to move fast that would never go through today. Later examples are more complex because it’s the web of relationships he build that prevented opposition to any project he wanted to do.
You just described basically every politician. While it’s certainly common to complain ‘all politicians are corrupt’, it’s a kind of ‘fallacy of grey’ for eliding any degree or detail of how corrupt various acts are.
Would you consider Uber or Airbnb to have engaged in corruption?
I don’t know. Both started by simply ignoring the law in many jurisdictions. Later they hired political insiders to lobby. From the outside it’s hard to know whether or not those political insiders use means that we should call corrupt to get laws changed.
Right – that’s what I was getting at because I thought your conception of ‘corruption’ was too vague and too expansive.
Is “simply ignoring the law” corrupt?
Is hiring lobbyists corrupt?
Is lobbying itself corrupt? (I’d imagine you’d agree it’s not, apart from ‘stereotypical lobbying’, and maybe even not then.)
They don’t seem to be powerful enough in a state like California to get the law reducing their ability to hire independent contractors from getting passed which suggests that they do have some inability to corrupt that legislative process.
Is the ability to influence a bill being passed, and exercising that ability, corruption? Is it only corrupt if you’re a corporation or its agent?
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘corrupt’ in “corrupt that legislative process”. It seems like any effect they caused on the bill passing or not would be corruption. That doesn’t seem right.
Moses’s ‘corruption’ was, at least generally, atypical, e.g. not bribery or blatantly abusing his power.
He also did engaged in less atypical actions. He hired people to dig up dirt on his opponents. Once he had the Triborough Bridge Authority he used that to pay people off. It was however more paying people for to be loyal to him in general instead of for one particular project.
I thought your conception of ‘corruption’ was too vague and too expansive.
There’s a reason this post is a question and not an essay. I point to something unclear that I don’t understand well.
Is the ability to influence a bill being passed, and exercising that ability, corruption? Is it only corrupt if you’re a corporation or its agent?
The standard working definition of corruption I use is that it’s about trading things of different domains. If Alice votes with Bob on bill X in return for Bob voting with Alice on bill Y that’s not corruption but normal negotiation of interests in politics.
If Alice votes with Bob on bill X in return for Bob giving her personally cash, that’s corruption.
A government drafts a new law and publishes a request for feedback. A lobbyist uses his expertise to answer the request for feedback and explains a way how the law can be improved. If the government then finds that answer convincing on it’s merits and incorporates the feedback that’s not corrupt.
When talking to a ex-lobbyist they explained to me that this was a lot of what they did in their work and that’s white-hat lobbying that’s important for having a government that doesn’t accidently pass laws that kill part of it’s industry because the government doesn’t understand what the laws they propose do.
If Elon Musk goes to the Texan government and says “I would like to launch rockets from Texas, at the moment the laws about noise pollution forbid this. Can you change the laws in a way that allows me to lunch rockets from Texas? I would employ Texan citizens to work for me” that’s a reasonable request. It would be reasonable if the politician on the other side asks “How many Texan citizens would you employ? Can you promise to employ at least X number of our citizens in SpaceX?”
You want an entrepreneur like SpaceX to be able to start such an exchange even without a request for feedback.
If the politician however says “My son would like an internship at SpaceX, can you see that he gets that?” that would be corrupt as it’s trading things of different domains.
There’s some debate about whether or not campaign donations should count as being in the political domain and thus fair game or not. While they are less corrupt then direct personal benefits, I think it still makes sense to see them as corruption. The fact that in the above example Elon Musk would have likely given some campaign donation before getting the meeting to discuss his proposal is a form of corruption and this paying for access is widespread in Washington.
With Uber there are allegations that Uber used his own systems to track politicians. If the information from tracking politicians was used to influence the political process that’s corrupt as it’s using things of different domains.
Uber/AirBnB getting what they want in legislation would not be evidence of corruption but them not getting what they want is evidence that the lack power to corrupt the system in the way they want to.
There’s a reason this post is a question and not an essay. I point to something unclear that I don’t understand well.
Sorry if it wasn’t clear but I’m also trying to make sense of your question and understanding what you mean by ‘corruption’ was my most significant obstacle.
The standard working definition of corruption I use is that it’s about trading things of different domains.
My problem with this is that it still seems too nebulous. I’m not sure how to answer the question without having a sharper distinction for what is and isn’t ‘corruption’ so as to at least estimate its total costs and benefits.
You mentioned “white-hat lobbying” and that’s exactly what I was thinking of when I asked whether you consider lobbying itself to be a form of corruption. From the evidence and info I’ve gleaned from the lobbyist I know, there’s quite a bit of the ‘mechanics’ involved, e.g. in ‘accessing’ politicians, that seems at least a little corrupt.
And I’ve read a reasonable defense of corruption in general arguing that, in effect, corruption provided something liked liquidity to political markets and that made negotiation among coalitions generally easier to conduct (which is itself arguably good). I’m very sympathetic to that.
I’m sorry I haven’t been able to provide a clear answer or even clear thinking about your question. I think it’s an interesting question tho!
Would you consider Uber or Airbnb to have engaged in corruption?
I’m not sure what connections you think exist between Robert Mose’s corruption and him building a lot of things. I can’t think of any off-hand.
Generally, some examples would be helpful; perhaps both central or prototypical ones as well as some you’d consider to be edge cases.
When Robert Moses wanted things to get done, they got done. A lot of the examples of how Robert Moses used his power are to complex to explain them in a paragraph.
That complexity is part of the way he defended his power because it was hard to understand how it was wielded.
On example was Moses getting a politician to pass a law that meaned that Moses could take someone’s house and start building a road the next day. He did this by writing the amendment in a way that neither the politician he proposed the law nor anyone in the parliament understood what the law would actually do.
If you can start building a road directly after you told someone that you want the road where their house is and don’t have to wait a year for a legal process about whether it’s okay to take the house of the person, it’s easier to build things.
That was in Robert Moses early days when he didn’t have a lot of people directly on his payrol but it’s a nice example of him doing things that allow his projects to move fast that would never go through today. Later examples are more complex because it’s the web of relationships he build that prevented opposition to any project he wanted to do. Caro’s book is excellent if you want to understand how power can be wielded.
I don’t know. Both started by simply ignoring the law in many jurisdictions. Later they hired political insiders to lobby. From the outside it’s hard to know whether or not those political insiders use means that we should call corrupt to get laws changed. We might know more in one or two decades where someone writes a good book about what happened in their legislative efforts.
They don’t seem to be powerful enough in a state like California to get the law reducing their ability to hire independent contractors from getting passed which suggests that they do have some inability to corrupt that legislative process.
Okay, that’s along the lines of what I remembered from reading reviews of Caro’s book – Moses’s ‘corruption’ was, at least generally, atypical, e.g. not bribery or blatantly abusing his power. It was in a sense a much more subtle form of corruption, in large part because it wasn’t obviously corruption at all.
My problem with this line of thinking is that indicts basically all political actors:
You just described basically every politician. While it’s certainly common to complain ‘all politicians are corrupt’, it’s a kind of ‘fallacy of grey’ for eliding any degree or detail of how corrupt various acts are.
Right – that’s what I was getting at because I thought your conception of ‘corruption’ was too vague and too expansive.
Is “simply ignoring the law” corrupt?
Is hiring lobbyists corrupt?
Is lobbying itself corrupt? (I’d imagine you’d agree it’s not, apart from ‘stereotypical lobbying’, and maybe even not then.)
Is the ability to influence a bill being passed, and exercising that ability, corruption? Is it only corrupt if you’re a corporation or its agent?
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘corrupt’ in “corrupt that legislative process”. It seems like any effect they caused on the bill passing or not would be corruption. That doesn’t seem right.
He also did engaged in less atypical actions. He hired people to dig up dirt on his opponents. Once he had the Triborough Bridge Authority he used that to pay people off. It was however more paying people for to be loyal to him in general instead of for one particular project.
There’s a reason this post is a question and not an essay. I point to something unclear that I don’t understand well.
The standard working definition of corruption I use is that it’s about trading things of different domains. If Alice votes with Bob on bill X in return for Bob voting with Alice on bill Y that’s not corruption but normal negotiation of interests in politics.
If Alice votes with Bob on bill X in return for Bob giving her personally cash, that’s corruption.
A government drafts a new law and publishes a request for feedback. A lobbyist uses his expertise to answer the request for feedback and explains a way how the law can be improved. If the government then finds that answer convincing on it’s merits and incorporates the feedback that’s not corrupt.
When talking to a ex-lobbyist they explained to me that this was a lot of what they did in their work and that’s white-hat lobbying that’s important for having a government that doesn’t accidently pass laws that kill part of it’s industry because the government doesn’t understand what the laws they propose do.
If Elon Musk goes to the Texan government and says “I would like to launch rockets from Texas, at the moment the laws about noise pollution forbid this. Can you change the laws in a way that allows me to lunch rockets from Texas? I would employ Texan citizens to work for me” that’s a reasonable request. It would be reasonable if the politician on the other side asks “How many Texan citizens would you employ? Can you promise to employ at least X number of our citizens in SpaceX?”
You want an entrepreneur like SpaceX to be able to start such an exchange even without a request for feedback.
If the politician however says “My son would like an internship at SpaceX, can you see that he gets that?” that would be corrupt as it’s trading things of different domains.
There’s some debate about whether or not campaign donations should count as being in the political domain and thus fair game or not. While they are less corrupt then direct personal benefits, I think it still makes sense to see them as corruption. The fact that in the above example Elon Musk would have likely given some campaign donation before getting the meeting to discuss his proposal is a form of corruption and this paying for access is widespread in Washington.
With Uber there are allegations that Uber used his own systems to track politicians. If the information from tracking politicians was used to influence the political process that’s corrupt as it’s using things of different domains.
Uber/AirBnB getting what they want in legislation would not be evidence of corruption but them not getting what they want is evidence that the lack power to corrupt the system in the way they want to.
Sorry if it wasn’t clear but I’m also trying to make sense of your question and understanding what you mean by ‘corruption’ was my most significant obstacle.
My problem with this is that it still seems too nebulous. I’m not sure how to answer the question without having a sharper distinction for what is and isn’t ‘corruption’ so as to at least estimate its total costs and benefits.
You mentioned “white-hat lobbying” and that’s exactly what I was thinking of when I asked whether you consider lobbying itself to be a form of corruption. From the evidence and info I’ve gleaned from the lobbyist I know, there’s quite a bit of the ‘mechanics’ involved, e.g. in ‘accessing’ politicians, that seems at least a little corrupt.
And I’ve read a reasonable defense of corruption in general arguing that, in effect, corruption provided something liked liquidity to political markets and that made negotiation among coalitions generally easier to conduct (which is itself arguably good). I’m very sympathetic to that.
I’m sorry I haven’t been able to provide a clear answer or even clear thinking about your question. I think it’s an interesting question tho!