WEBVTT NOTE 17. Bribery 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 Chapter 17, Bribery 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:16.000 As in the case of blackmail, bribery has received a uniformly bad press, and it is generally assumed that bribery should be outlawed. But is this necessarily true? 3 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:20.000 Let us examine a typical bribe contract. 4 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:24.840 Suppose that Black wants to sell materials to the XYZ company. 5 00:00:24.840 --> 00:00:31.160 In order to gain the sale, he pays a bribe to Green, the purchasing agent of the company. 6 00:00:31.160 --> 00:00:37.820 It is difficult to see what Black has done which libertarian law should consider as illegal. 7 00:00:37.820 --> 00:00:44.520 In fact, all he has done is to lower the price charged to the XYZ company by paying a rebate 8 00:00:44.520 --> 00:00:46.400 to Green. 9 00:00:46.400 --> 00:00:50.880 From Black's point of view, he would have been just as happy to charge a lower price 10 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:57.320 directly, though presumably he did not do so because the XYZ executives would still 11 00:00:57.320 --> 00:01:00.520 not have purchased the materials from him. 12 00:01:00.520 --> 00:01:06.600 But the inner workings of the XYZ company should scarcely be Black's responsibility. 13 00:01:06.600 --> 00:01:11.640 As far as he is concerned, he simply lowered his price to the company and thereby gained 14 00:01:11.640 --> 00:01:13.980 the contract. 15 00:01:13.980 --> 00:01:21.140 The illicit action here is instead solely the behavior of Green, the taker of the bribe. 16 00:01:21.140 --> 00:01:27.460 For Green's employment contract with his employers implicitly requires him to purchase materials 17 00:01:27.460 --> 00:01:32.500 to the best of his ability in the interests of his company. 18 00:01:32.500 --> 00:01:38.740 Instead he violated his contract with the XYZ company by not performing as their proper 19 00:01:38.740 --> 00:01:40.120 agent. 20 00:01:40.120 --> 00:01:44.720 For because of the bribe, he either bought from a firm, which he would not have dealt 21 00:01:44.720 --> 00:01:52.040 with otherwise, or he paid a higher price than he need have by the amount of his rebate. 22 00:01:52.040 --> 00:01:59.640 In either case, Green violated his contract and invaded the property rights of his employers. 23 00:01:59.640 --> 00:02:04.640 In the case of bribes, therefore, there is nothing illegitimate about the briber, but 24 00:02:04.640 --> 00:02:10.760 But there is much that is illegitimate about the bribee, the taker of the bribe. 25 00:02:10.760 --> 00:02:16.280 Legally there should be a property right to pay a bribe, but not to take one. 26 00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:20.860 It is only the taker of a bribe who should be prosecuted. 27 00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:27.460 In contrast, liberals tend to hold the bribe-giver as somehow more reprehensible, as in some 28 00:02:27.460 --> 00:02:30.420 way corrupting the taker. 29 00:02:30.420 --> 00:02:38.220 In that way, they deny the free will and the responsibility of each individual for his own actions. 30 00:02:38.220 --> 00:02:44.560 Let us now use our theory to analyze the problem of Paola, which repeatedly arises on radio 31 00:02:44.560 --> 00:02:47.980 programs that play popular records. 32 00:02:47.980 --> 00:02:55.440 In a typical Paola scandal, a record company bribes a disc jockey to play record A. Presumably, 33 00:02:55.440 --> 00:03:00.160 the disc jockey would either not have played the record at all, or would have played record 34 00:03:00.160 --> 00:03:07.640 A Fewer Times. Therefore, record A is being played at the expense of records B, C and 35 00:03:07.640 --> 00:03:13.680 D, which would have been played more frequently if the disc jockey had evaluated the records 36 00:03:13.680 --> 00:03:20.840 purely on the basis of his own and or the public's taste. Surely, in a moral sense, 37 00:03:20.840 --> 00:03:26.760 the public is being betrayed in its trust in the disc jockey's sincerity. That trust 38 00:03:26.760 --> 00:03:29.540 turns out to have been a foolish one. 39 00:03:29.540 --> 00:03:35.460 But the public has no property rights in the radio program, and so they have no legal complaint 40 00:03:35.460 --> 00:03:36.940 in the matter. 41 00:03:36.940 --> 00:03:40.020 They received the program without cost. 42 00:03:40.020 --> 00:03:46.180 The other record companies, the producers of records B, C and D, were also injured, 43 00:03:46.180 --> 00:03:49.580 since their products were not played as frequently. 44 00:03:49.580 --> 00:03:54.460 But they too have no property rights in the program, and they have no right to tell the 45 00:03:54.460 --> 00:03:57.460 The Disc Jockey What to Play? 46 00:03:57.460 --> 00:04:02.980 Was anyone's property rights aggressed against by the disc jockey's taking of a bribe? 47 00:04:02.980 --> 00:04:04.060 Yes. 48 00:04:04.060 --> 00:04:09.740 For as in the case of the bribed purchasing agent, the disc jockey violated his contractual 49 00:04:09.740 --> 00:04:15.880 obligation to his employer, whether it be the station owner or the sponsor of the program, 50 00:04:15.880 --> 00:04:20.460 to play those records which, in his view, will most suit the public. 51 00:04:20.460 --> 00:04:26.500 Hence, the disc jockey violated the property of the station owner or sponsor. 52 00:04:26.500 --> 00:04:31.940 Once again, it is the disc jockey who accepts Paola, who has done something criminal and 53 00:04:31.940 --> 00:04:37.380 deserves to be prosecuted, but not the record company who paid the bribe. 54 00:04:37.380 --> 00:04:43.180 Furthermore, if the record company had bribed the employer directly, whether the station 55 00:04:43.180 --> 00:04:49.340 owner or the sponsor, then there would have been no violation of anyone's property right, 56 00:04:49.340 --> 00:04:53.440 and therefore properly no question of illegality. 57 00:04:53.440 --> 00:04:59.160 Of course, the public could easily feel cheated if the truth came out, and would then be likely 58 00:04:59.160 --> 00:05:04.480 to change their listening custom to another station or sponsor. 59 00:05:04.480 --> 00:05:10.200 But what about the case of plugola, where one sponsor pays for the program and another 60 00:05:10.200 --> 00:05:15.320 company pays the producer of the program to plug its own product? 61 00:05:15.320 --> 00:05:21.840 Again, the property right being violated is that of the sponsor, who pays for the time, 62 00:05:21.840 --> 00:05:27.280 and is entitled therefore to have sole advertising rights on the program. 63 00:05:27.280 --> 00:05:33.080 The violator of his property is not the maverick company that pays the bribe, but the producer 64 00:05:33.080 --> 00:05:37.040 who violates his contract with the sponsor by accepting it.