About the first paragraph: does your definition include in “corrupt” people who do not object in that situation because they believe that the benefit to the country of receiving the money (because they’d be able to use it for good things) exceeds the damage done to the country by whatever they’re asked to do?
I ask because I suspect many people in high positions have an honest but incorrectly high opinion about their worth to whatever cause they’re nominally supporting. (E.g., “without this money I’ll lose the election and the country would be much worse off because the other guy is evil”.)
I think that having damagingly uninformed opinions about the values of your actions (e.g. “I’ll lose the election and the other guy is evil”) counts as either corrupt (in terms of not monitoring information diet to take care not to betray people) or stupid (in terms of being unable to do so.)
If someone were to accept significant bribes, and then, say, donate all of the money to a highly efficient charity such as SIAI, NFP, or VillageReach, after doing a half-hour or longer calculation involving spreadsheets, then I might not count them as corrupt. However I think the odds that this has actually EVER occurred are practically insignificant.
About the first paragraph: does your definition include in “corrupt” people who do not object in that situation because they believe that the benefit to the country of receiving the money (because they’d be able to use it for good things) exceeds the damage done to the country by whatever they’re asked to do?
I ask because I suspect many people in high positions have an honest but incorrectly high opinion about their worth to whatever cause they’re nominally supporting. (E.g., “without this money I’ll lose the election and the country would be much worse off because the other guy is evil”.)
I think that having damagingly uninformed opinions about the values of your actions (e.g. “I’ll lose the election and the other guy is evil”) counts as either corrupt (in terms of not monitoring information diet to take care not to betray people) or stupid (in terms of being unable to do so.)
If someone were to accept significant bribes, and then, say, donate all of the money to a highly efficient charity such as SIAI, NFP, or VillageReach, after doing a half-hour or longer calculation involving spreadsheets, then I might not count them as corrupt. However I think the odds that this has actually EVER occurred are practically insignificant.