You were talking about high corruption and low corruption countries in general. Did you forget your own context?

The point that I and several others have made is that what “low corruption” often corresponds to is that corruption has been legalized in various ways.

Re the amount, the fact that it’s a token is kind of the point in those cases. It’s a public display and reminder to everyone where their campaign funding is coming from. Other amounts are often donated at other times, and larger amounts may come from other companies in the same industry. They didn’t change their vote for those specific checks, it’s more like a reminder that the vote that had already been bought was coming up.

Their tactics apparently worked on you to make you inclined to ignore the exact kind of blatant corruption you had just been criticizing. It’s not “low corruption”, it’s corruption that’s apparently less easy for many people to recognize.

> 500, even in 1995, is a token amount of money to the representatives.

In the post-soviet countries (many of them now in EU), you can't imagine how much you can "get done" by "gifting" the right person a bottle of their favourite poison - which costs a token amount by almost any standard (like, high school pocket money).

My point is that these are two names for the same thing, an attempt to justify the "rules for you but not for us" on the moral spectrum. Microsoft can launder open source code with generative AI, but don't you dare even look at their sources.

Same shit, dressed pretty.