They don't even negotiate well, you need to play both sides.
Give US a choice -> either you reinstate support for Ukraine or we close half the bases in Europe. Because if US is unwilling to help with Russia, why do we need US bases?
Offer Russia peace deal in exchange for closing some US bases, they would probably treat it as a great victory.
If US obliges and helps -> that's a win. If US denies, then you can't trust Trump anyway, win. And probably war in middle east ends because without EU bases it's logistically unsustainable.
I am just saying that it would be good if we could have more precise discussion about corruption because different types of it are not equal, and we have more precise terminology.
> So of course it would be viewed as corruption by any country with such institutions
It’s not viewed as corruption. US gov made numerous public statements condemning IP theft, and never even once classified it as corruption - it’s simply a different crime.
Furthermore, you suggested a benchmark is: “How wealthy are the ruling elites”
Well let’s see - the richest man in the world is American, 70% of 100 richest people are American, American has higher inequality than China.
By what robust quantitative measurement does this effort look less genuine than American one?
Are you accessing any objective facts or you simply are unable to accept that a country you are opposed to is making genuine progress?
I like how you are unable to separate actual crimes from government policies you disagree with.
>> corruption is an institution
>> Or for example, how has IP theft policy changed?
Another country may decide to have no IP protections, that’s not a crime.
Furthermore Intellectual property is legal fiction, some people and countries don’t believe in it.
Apparently Anthropic don’t believe in IP either, they are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, but cry wolf when someone does it to them. And they are asking for legal immunity on IP theft.
I am pointing out the whole ‘losing face’ thing exists in the west too.
If you cause certain people to lose face, you will get China-like response.
In fact it’s a core conservative value and you can observe it in interactions with police - if a victim embarrasses the police they will prosecute the victim instead of the perpetrator
Facilitation payment are usually considered the less egregious kinds of bribery, some may be considered acceptable in a culture, and there can be a whole etiquette to it.
In some countries, doctors or surgeons are severely underpaid and it would be customary for a well off citizen to bring them a gift or a cash summ before an important surgery.
That’s quite different from Kickbacks (rampant in UK leaseholds by the way), etc.
I disagree, producing something valuable is common, and it’s common for scientists / inventors / artists / composers to die poor.
Selling, Capturing the value, and building businesses on top is hard.