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Comment by surlyadopter | Hacker News Reader

“The Greek people never learned to pay their taxes. And they never did because no one is punished. No one has ever been punished. It’s a cavalier offense—like a gentleman not opening a door for a lady.”

The article makes it clear that for Greece to improve this type of behavior must change. But is it even possible for Greece to do this in the span of say, less than one generation?

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I can't seem to find it, but I recall reading a piece at one point that suggested the general disregard for government rules in the eastern Mediterranean goes back centuries, to the rule of the Byzantines, Arabs, and Ottomans at various times. The rulers kept changing, and were generally bureaucratic, so people got used to doing whatever minimum was necessary to appease them, and generally ignore them whenever possible. Hence rampant avoidance of taxation, buildings often built in blatant violation of zoning or building codes, large informal economies, preference for dealing with officials you personally know / are related to, etc.

(IIRC, the author grouped Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt in that analysis.)

You can safely add the Balkans and Romania to that group. Although many things work well without a bribe in Romania, most important things, I'm told, do not. The first thing my parents do when they have to deal with the government is ask themselves who do we know that works in that department ? As teachers, that works great for them. TBH, they do that when dealing with private businesses too, maybe even more so, but then I realize that's just how business works.

As a Romanian, this article mostly made me feel good there are worse places. Not a noble feeling, but I'll take what I can.

This being said, this instinct about looking for acquaintances first is starting to be not so useful, and used mostly by the older generation. I've seen instances where inside intervention was less efficient - but I've also seen official free consultants (good ones) with too much free time because most people went over their. But still, it is unfortunately far from being a useless strategy in way too many cases.

Compared to how the article paints Greece though, our problems are different. Tax evasion is real here, but not critical. What _is_ extremely painful at the moment is the widespread politicization of public institutions. Everything starting from middle school headmasters has to belong to a party or another (and of course usually it's the ruling one).

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