Transiting the Suez Canal in a Private Sailboat (2003)
sailsafely.com
sailsafely.com
My home country has huge Islamic influences, and it is prevalent there as well. All it does is destroy your sense of trust for any authority, and without even minimal trust no one ever tries to improve things, a vicious cycle.
I have heard that Arabic / Islamic society is much more family, neighbor, who-you-know oriented versus western society trusting more the rules of some authority, even if not personally known to you. Even for example, mundane things like if you need your plumbing fixed, you don't look up the yellow pages, you ask your friend to refer someone.
Does this lead to "favors" being more acceptable, like as a gift to someone you know for having helped you? Interpreted in a more charitable way, bribes/baksheesh are an expression of gratitude (though now an obligation of doing business)?
You start to think such factors must be ingrained in a people's mentality, because otherwise, why don't we just declare laws that make this sort of practice illegal and everyone is happier?
High-trust is largly "Western" (North America, Western/Norhern Europe, Oceania), but also the rich Asian countries (Japan, South Korean, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore). The causal relationship between high-trust and high-income is difficult to disentangle, but there's plausibly some form of positive feedback loop at work.
I'm not sure what you have in mind with "arise for no reason". Both historically and presently by population-majority, low-trust society seem the norm and high-trust the exeption.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_trust_and_low_trust_socie...
Maybe there is another dimension than low/high trust?
I've read that the rule of law has something to do with it. E.g.: "Where civil liberties and property rights are secure under a strong rule of law, fewer social resources are up for political grabs and groups have less opportunity to benefit via zero-sum or negative-sum competition against other groups."
This also has nothing to do with Islam, you'll see it in most of the developing world and of course even in developed countries, but normally more contained.
I guess the extreme of this would be a country like Russia that more or less runs on bribes and favors, while at the same time having most actors accepting that nothing can be done about it.
The more "eastern" societal clusters have this kind of mentality more prevalent, while the most "western" ones not so much, while both are next to each other and equally poor.
The fact that other cultures share these aspects does not invalidate their presence in Islamic countries in my point of view, and of course I cannot prove that this is the case, the same way that no one can prove that it is not either. Of course I could be wrong
The way you're phrasing it, it almost sounds like you're insinuating that some countries simply "are" less corrupt, and this is why they are more developed, which is perhaps a comforting thought if you happen to live in a highly developed country, but it's quite obviously not true which a simple historical review of a few centuries back can normally show.
Some countries are less corrupt and this leads to more development, investment, etc.
It’s a low cost investment as the amount of corruption is very low, but the friction has much greater impact negatively than the cash generated.
I wish I could find the paper, but economically it’s better off to give the inspectors raises above the amount from bribes as that will improve development from the things that now happen that were being blocked by bribes.
I can't speak to whether this is verified or not, but at least it makes sense. The same logic is often used to motivate why politicians have relatively high wages, as decreasing them would incentivize bribes. It's of course not black and white and well-off politicians may still accept bribes, but at least I have a hard time seeing how the wage wouldn't be a factor.
I heard a similar anecdote about badly paid police officers, how many countries have this issue where police are paid so little they pretty much have to take bribes, in a perverted sense like waiting jobs in the US "include" tips, so the notion of an uncorrupted police officer is completely foreign as you simply wouldn't be able to make ends meet.
The Corruptions Perception Index [0] is one that’s been around for a while and it shows differences between country. It’s not just GDP/PPP and there are many factors that affect it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
I think the unwillingness to set a fixed price that can be judged fair or not by either parties, and the need for a back and forth or a ripoff is a related part of the mentality
I think that your comment would've been a lot stronger without the jab. Every time you call someone repugnant for having a particular bias (which we all do), you increase distance and decrease understanding.
Bigotry on the basis of religious grounds is repugnant wherever you see it, and should be called out wherever you see it, because it always results in atrocities. Casual bigotry like this only grows into collective hatred through complicity.
Reminds me of Christopher Hitchens's eerily prophetic view of the spreading of the word "Islamophobia" [0].
It does not. It only takes a bigot to assume it does, however.
Someone who makes even a rude assumption about a people isn't necessarily a bigot. They could just be wrong and you could correct them without insulting them in the same you would hope people would correct you if you said something inaccurate.
You might be pantywaiste about calling out bigotry online, but I'm not.
What's funny is my dad is retired now but the boss and the guy he was bribing are both living happily in Toronto, Canada thanks to Canada's investment visa and basically no rules for dirty money.
Yep. Similar, where I am (London UK) is, depending on how you measure it, not corrupt at all, or staggeringly corrupt.
Not corrupt at all, because it's nigh-impossible to bribe your way out of speeding fine or into a planning approval.
Staggeringly corrupt because it's a huge parking lot for dirty money from secretive sources around the world, mostly stored in real estate, and thus facilitates massive global corruption.
Canada is on the other end of the spectrum in terms of both transparency requirements and enforcement, so much so that the term "snow washing" has become part of the vernacular internationally, and even garnered its own Wikipedia entry. There are developing countries (e.g., Ghana) that have more robust anti-money laundering regimes.
If it's legit money, sure.
FYI:
https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/chelsea-fc-roman-a...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chelsea-abramovich-book-i...
It's of course possible that Abramovich got his riches by illegal means. Nevertheless buying a football club seems like a normal thing to do (for rich people).
I don’t think his purchase would work today
> An unexplained wealth order (UWO) is a type of court order issued by a British court to compel the target to reveal the sources of their unexplained wealth. UWOs were introduced by sections 1–2 of the Criminal Finances Act 2017
> In June 2003, Abramovich became the owner of the companies that control Chelsea Football Club in West London.
Both from Wikipedia
It's not an aspect of the Islamic world, it's an aspect of the non-developed world.
At the border crossing between Mauritania and Senegal there was a little "immigration" hut where you'd have to get your passport stamped. One very well dressed official in Ray-Bans just took people's passports and set them on a pile and they'd stay there for hours unless you'd slip in a bank note.
All he had to was stamp them, nothing else. Other travellers I was with refused to "take part in this corruption", I happily gave the guy a fee and was on my way. It's either that or standing around in the scorching sun for hours mobbed by begging locals.
At every checkpoint you'd have police / military with Kalashnikovs asking for a "petit cadeau" (little gift). At first they're very intimidating but after a while you realise they're totally harmless and will just let you pass if you just say "no sorry". Most are extremely bored and just happy to see you. In the Western Sahara they'd even invite us to some tea, teach us a few words of Arabic and one of them even asked "you, give me laptop?" Yeah sure buddy! Preloading one with a keylogger could be fun!
One guy traveling with us in a car told the story of when he first drove in Africa. In Senegal he got pulled over and police fined him 50$ cause he didn't have a danger triangle. The next year he got pulled over again and proudly showed them the triangle but he was fined 50$ again cause he didn't have 2x danger triangles. You don't know whether to laugh or cry. Good times.
Corruption has a huge cost.
Pakistan's civil aviation authority believed up to a third of commercial pilots in the country did not actually pass their pilot licensing exams.
the rest of your text makes it abundantly clear that it was a bribe, so why call it a fee? Unless you got an official receipt for it, which I highly doubt...
If the OP had used quotes, like you yourself did, this would have made it obvious that they recognised it's a bribe in all but name.
It's important to remember that this site is international and not every linguistic nuance is intentional.
It’s just the scale. A “facilitation payment” is a small bribe.
The payer of any bribe is participating in a corrupt system. Paying $1 to get your passport stamped is small, but it still is bad. Think of all the poor people who don’t have $1 and get hosed by this.
Real personal example: I'm trying to register my newly-purchased car with the RTO (c.f. DMV) in Bangalore. I have all the paperwork I need. The car is mine, my address details are correct, my proofs of address are sufficient, my fee is paid.
Only there are continual requests for more paperwork: different proofs of address, proofs of prior addresses in other countries, proofs that are officially stamped etc etc none of which are formally necessary.
On the advice of the car dealer, I paid INR 4,000 in facilitation money and suddenly the paperwork is in order and my car is registered.
The official's intent is to extort me for money, but my intent is just to comply with the law that requires my car to be registered. I'm willing and able to provide all the required paperwork. My intent is not corrupt.
If I was trying to register a car that was stolen, and I was paying the RTO official to overlook the inadequacies in my documentation, that would be a bribe. My intent is to pay the official not to do their job.
It’s not bribing your way out of a crime or something but it is still dodgy and corrupt.
If you're paying someone $20 to pass your driving test after you performed a perfect parallel parking maneuver but they baselessly claimed you were "too far from the curb"; that's a facilitation payment.
If you get a receipt back for the "fee," it's not corrupting the process.
I think the predictably and up-front nature of the fee is better.
There's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baksheesh
When I have to get my passport renewed it's possible to pay a higher fee to get it done quicker. The difference is it ends up in the state coffers vs in some official's pocket. But in the end it's just to jump the queue, same thing.
A fee to get your passport quicker isn't the same as a bribe for me - after all, you can also pay extra to get a better seat on a flight, better service and be able to board sooner, would you consider that bribing the airline? Whereas paying someone at the gate to upgrade you to business class would be bribery...
Our traffic laws are also very inconsistent here so it's very easy to make mistakes abroad:
Like Honduras requires two traffic triangles, but others only one. Nicaragua prohibits changing lanes in roundabouts, but it is allowed elsewhere. El Salvador enforces speed where there are no speed limit signs while Guatemala enforces them where there are many signs. And so on.
Egypt has by far been the worst place to visit when it comes to the locals. >50% of all money transactions (eg booking a tour, or buying water in a small shop, ...) the seller tried to scam me, whether it was ridiculous overcharge, bait and switch, not the right change, ....
Worst was the idiots around tourist attractions, like camel riders close to the pyramids in Cairo, but a security guard with AK-47 at the airport wasn't pleasant either. He said plainly he wanted baksheesh or our baggage would be overweight.
We got the tip to buy an arabic newspaper and carry it with me visible but not in a pointing-it-out manner. The idea is that people see it and think I know the ways. Worked, a bit.
Low-level corruption is just endemic across much of the world, whether it is notionally Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist or none of the above.
There's a list here for your reference:
e.g; "Ofsted stopped inspecting collective worship in 2004, after 76 per cent of schools were found to be non-compliant."
-- https://schoolsweek.co.uk/worship-in-school-assemblies-is-in...
There are pros and cons to both systems. The low bribery systems tend to curb the worst behavior (no amount of donating to the right causes will help you put a toxic waste processing plant in Manhatten) at the expense of really screwing the people who are edge cases.
The equatorial developing nations tend to have a lot of class divide and racism problems that get nastier in a regulatory environment where everything is fuzzy. If you want to see a bribery based regulatory environment done right look at eastern Europe from 1980-2000ish (years vary depending on where you look).
HN loves the "hurr durr stupid poor countries and their bribery" trope but for those countries routine bribery is mostly just a cultural workaround for the fact that they can't afford a massive administrative state to grant you a stupid variance from their stupid zoning rules on your stupid garden shed (or whatever). They're effectively pushing decision making onto the leaves of the organizational tree and cutting the organizational tree out of the payment loop somewhat. Yes, it goes awry sometimes but it's not like western bureaucracies have any lack of similarly bad outcomes.
By saying you want the goalposts located at the "fairly and evenly line" you're just moving the inequality from being the fault of the enforcers to be the fault of other parts of the system. The poor guy can't take time off work to fight the ticket and the end result of the system is barely any fairer.
If you're being reasonable it's much easier to say "officer, I'm being reasonable, here's some money, screw off" than it is to try and appeal to a bureaucracy, especially if you're doing something that's outside the letter of the law but within the spirit of the law.
For most people most of the time the difference is a wash. The main difference is the edge cases and failure modes. Think about this next time you're (you reading this comment with disdain, not the person I'm replying to in particular) waiting for a police officer to finish writing you your ticket for going the same speed as everyone else while looking slightly more interesting than everyone else.
Its cloaked with "agents" and "consultants" but it's still cash changing hands, at the end of the day.
As for why it happens or why it's common... there are plenty of reasons, really. (obviously, I will talk about my country only, and what I see) Personally, I believe that the most important one / the root cause is that the law isn't enforced, which erodes peoples' trust in it as well as people's respect, and you end up with people exploiting that (a vicious cycle, as you said). Not only that, but when the law is finally enforced, it's usually not enforced fairly[1].
If anyone is curious about Islam's stance, well, Islam explicitly says:
وَلاَ تَأْكُلُواْ أَمْوَالَكُم بَيْنَكُم بِالْبَاطِلِ وَتُدْلُواْ بِهَا إِلَى الْحُكَّامِ لِتَأْكُلُواْ فَرِيقًا مِّنْ أَمْوَالِ النَّاسِ بِالإِثْمِ وَأَنتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ [البقرة:188].
Translation: "And do not consume one another's wealth unjustly or send it [in bribery] to the rulers in order that [they might aid] you [to] consume a portion of the wealth of the people in sin, while you know [it is unlawful]."
روى الإمام أحمد عن ثوبان قال رسول الله: لَعَنَ اللّهُ الراشيَ والمُرتَشِيَ والرائشَ الذي يَمشِي بَينَهُما..
Translation: The Prophet (S) said, 'Allah's curse is on the briber, the bribed, and the agent between them.’
And there are more.
I do not blame you (nor anyone else) for the correlation, I just wanted to clarify.
---
[1] This is off-topic, but there was a huge issue in Egypt with regards to people building apartment complexes and buildings illegally, through bribing the province officials. Well, recently,the government said that enough is enough and went to crack down on that. They placed huge fines on the illegal buildings (supposed to be paid by the builder in question / building owner, but he/she actually have no incentive to, so the people who paid were actually the building residents), and said that if the fines aren't paid, the buildings will be bulldozed (and indeed, some were).
They punished the people who bought residence in the illegal buildings (some of whom actually didn't know that it was illegal). But the governmental workers / officials who gave out the fake permits and took the bribes? Not a single one was punished.
Sorry but that just sounds massively Islamophobic. I'm half Croatian, we have had a history of more-or-less open corruption in all levels of government, from policemen to heads of state, and the same applies for wide swaths of Eastern Europe. Not to mention the entire narcorruption situation in Southern America.
Corruption is a symptom of weak government structures (and, to some extent, poverty) which force people to fend for themselves on all levels to survive, not something that is inherently tied to any religion or ethnicity.
I cherish being able to have my guard down at almost all times.Per capita GDP in Egypt is $250/month. For a guy on a yacht $5 or $10 dollars is no difference. For the other side, its a substantial percent of their earnings. They understand the differential, which is why they will press for more.
> what do you expect
I think it's less about expectations and more about preferences.
Sure, this might be how it works in that part of the world, but if you're not from there, and you're not accustomed to constantly looking over your shoulder, an experience like this can be harrowing.
Even if you know your counterpart is just doing what they always do and not giving it a second thought, some people would be drowning in anxiety. This seems like a completely reasonable personal limit to me.
This “dance” where they pretend to be your friends when trying to extract that money and cigarettes from you when you are trying to get a service is extremely annoying. Want cigarettes? Put cigarettes on the requirements list.
Not to mention that the informality creates special class of corrupt officials that easily leads to mafia politics. Criminals develop relationships with these people and easily do stuff that they are not supposed to do and the law abiding people stress over the bribes and mood of the staff.
This even goes higher up, as paves the way for higher levels of corruption where things needs to be at scale and yet hush hush, exposing whole nations to political risks(from money laundering to terrorism).
I think you mean you stress over the bribes. There are many people who are accustomed to handling such minor corruption and yet are not corrupt themselves. They know how to handle it with minimum anxiety or disruption to their lives. Obviously it would be preferred it the corruption wouldn't exist, but I think you are also projecting your anxiety on others.
Secondly, the likely reason they can't charge more is that these prices are likely set by some person or system higher up than them, yet they are taking more on top of that official price. Thus, if the price were raised, it wouldn't be going to those who are doing the graft. Your premise of "just charge higher prices" misunderstands the nature of the prices and the market. Again, I'm not saying I like corrupt systems. I very much dislike them and think they are one of the primary causes preventing many developing countries from as quickly catching up to developed countries. But to fix them, we need to understand them, and saying "just internalize the bribery cost into the official price" misses the reason it exists in the first place.
You can pay the pilots and low-level officials more money and implement "There are lots of other people who want your cushy job -- you will be summarily fired if you are caught soliciting bribes" policies as well as surveillance and reporting systems to enforce them.
This requires political will from the people at the top, and often results in anger from the people at the bottom, so it doesn't usually happen until the bribery problem is out of control.
Argentina is a good example. Maritime cargo hold inspectors famously made a habit of soliciting larger and larger bribes. They became an outlier, and eventually the shipping companies started to notice, and they put pressure on Argentina to clean up:
I do have to disagree with you on one point: that there are people who are not corrput themselves who function well within the system. Corruption begins with good intentions. Crime begins with bad intentions. Every single act makes the complicit lose the corrupt because what a non-corrupt person would do is fight it.
Are the complicit less bad? Would they rather have it another way? Yes. Yes. Still, they are corroding every time they choose not to fight (even if it comes at great personal cost)
The normal cost goes to their boss. The bribe goes to them. The bribe is just another version of tipping culture, except a differently coercive one.
I'm familiar with high-bribe environments and used to go through bribery intensive border between Bulgaria-Turkey.
It's a breeze for the regulars, they know why their document is not processed or why the bus is being kept and know the channel, and the expected bribes so they easily pay and go through.
The problem is, when you are not a regular you simply get frustrated because you can't just ask how much since there are anti-corruption measure in place that need to be avoided. You need o go somewhere or give it to someone seemingly unrelated.
It can be somewhat parallel to tipping culture but in tipping they do their job an expect a gratitude payment, which doesn't slow down or block the process. The bribery culture has it's own dark side since you need to be coerced into doing it.
Also, the Turkey-Bulgaria border often gets busted for running large scale duty free alcohol and cigarettes contraband. That's when they get bribed for not doing their job(of preventing contraband), the "pay to get things done" bribery mostly died off because of the digitalisation. Don't search my car, don't inspect my bus in exchange of cigarettes bribery still lives though.
Then, to make things go smoothly, you will have to pay the higher amount as well as a bribe.
> This even goes higher up, as paves the way for higher levels of corruption where things needs to be at scale and yet hush hush, exposing whole nations to political risks(from money laundering to terrorism).
I think you have it the opposite way around. Where there is an effective government that makes sure that laws are written and enforced fairly, and wealth is distributed somewhat evenly, corruption disappears.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-in...
Unless you are saying that US has more corruption and a less effective government than Egypt?
I'm not saying everyone in Egypt is living in poverty, while no one in the US is. But the poverty rate in Egypt is something like 30%, vs 10% in the USA.
Having said that, the US has tipping, so there's that.
I think that basing the definition in bribe on what feels uncomfortable to us personally not a good way to define it. I'm from the Netherlands, and I have heard it said that Dutch corruption exists as much as anywhere, the bribes are just always 0 euro, to ease our consciences. I wish I had a reference or two, but maybe these things are understudied.
Edit: I remember the public transit being quite good so maybe NL doesn't have uber? I also remember waiters not being very easy to find to ask for anything.
It's not that I never tip at a restaurant (however, seldomly in NL), it's just that in the US you'll get bills with a percentage already 'included', and it 'is understood' that you must tip _something_, in a way (to me) very similar to bribes elsewhere.
Uh, no. Not in any sense at all are the two similar. I can't even begin to imagine how you come up with that analogy.
When was the last time you tipped a government official? When was the last time you knew that unless you tipped a government official you wouldn't get your task done, even though your documents were in order?
Tipping in the US is overwhelmingly to directly customer-facing staff in private companies, and it is done after the transaction has been completed.
Bribery/facilitation payment is always done before the fact, and is almost uniformly done with governmental (or quasi-governmental) officials.
Could you expand why you think they are similar rather than just suggesting that the matter is subjective?
Granted, I hope these wouldn't qualify as any kind of criminal wrongdoing, and are pretty minor, but there is at least some bribery happening here!
There was no sign indicating that. And they wear airport staff uniforms.
After checking in. I was asked for a tip but I wasn't able to give one because I had no change in cash. I was given a very angry look but I really had no idea about the tip.
When I arrived to my destination my suitcase's wheels were damaged.
This makes sense because it would be very complicated to try to formalise and market the classes of service, compared to just hashing it out as people with unique relationships to each other.
As much as I love living in one of the least corrupt places in the world, I have to admit that drawing up formal contracts for interpersonal relationships is sort of the weird way to do things. I like it and I think it has many benefits, but when I try to look at it from 10,000 feet it does seem odd from a human perspective.
Haha, no. For the vast majority of cases you can definitely formalize most things.
Especially the already formalized services like passage through a canal.
Then the individual guards and officials then make their own fortune using the position they were given. Think of them more as entrepreneurs or self-employed.
This system of handing out unpaid or poorly paid government positions has existed throughout the world, britain in 1800 worked like this - judges were not paid, they charged defendants whatever price they wanted.
In Tsarist Russia the local officials working for the state" were charging the locals for their services whatever they felt like charging them. That way the state did not have to deal with paying them salaries, it was up to officials to 'make themselves usefull to thw community'
What we call corruption today is just how the world used to work before - it was not structured and not everything had a fixed price.
And those who feel to operate like that should maybe should be more open about the payments so we can skip the negotiation part. A carton of cigarettes is not a big deal but trying deal with the official that tries to coerce you into that payment is. It makes things slow and unpredictable.
Oh and I strongly disagree with the "entrepreneur" analogy, the people who get into these lucrative positions are people close to the politically dominant class. They often "donate" some of that money to their church/mosque/party and take it easy on the people of their clan when making life hard to the outsiders.
A recent case is the case of Reza Zarrab, the guy who laundered Iranian money through Turkey and get caught. He has become a billionaire and was very well connected to the Turkish political class. Erdogan himself pulled a lot of strings with Trump. Very high profile case with a lot of US and Turkish public figures being involved, you should Google it.(Spoiler: Rudolph Giuliani was on his defence team)
Apparently he had an issue with a customs officer called Teoman who refused bribes so he got Teoman fired. Those informal organisations are more like cabals than corporations. It's not about entrepreneurship but loyalty to the higher ups. It does create a business but that business is reserved to the people in power and the bribe takers are simply employees.
Zarrab also gave a master class in bribery. His motto was "You pay prostitutes afterwards but public officials beforehand", apparently. Good to know.
But it is unfortunately the way of life in a lot of under-developed countries (nothing to do with Islamic countries as another comment pointed out elsewhere). Feeling uncomfortable around this behaviour is also a very typical Western outlook on this. Having grown up in the middle east, bartering and the "give and take" is just going with the flow. Its endemic.
You know what I don't do? Try to harass, intimidate or rob them. Do you know why? Because I am not an animal.
The fact that this is expected in Egypt does not speak well of their culture. This person lives in a poor country, yes, but I don't think it is likely he is starving.
Some countries and cultures are just more corrupt. Some rich, some poor.
I think you should gey off your high horse, comparing people to animals is not cool.
For starters, you misunderstand the basics - are you actually sure you could harras a person with billions of dollars, connections and lawyers?
Because, doing that in Russia is a good strategy to end in beried in the forest.
In Brutain in 1800 judges were not paid by the state, the people being judged paid them. And the more they paid, the 'better' they were judged. That was official policy. Now obviously we call that corruption.
Assuming you mean Britain, this is false. Judges in Britain have been paid by the state since the 13th century, and their oath to "in no way accept gift or reward from any party in litigation before them" dates to 1346.
"I will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this Realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will."
Almost as if the UK had multiple legal systems!
Since you asked, I'd expect that professionals would do their job, not require me to bribe them to do their jobs. Which is why I wouldn't feel comfortable making this kind of trip.
It is not a way of life. And the adverse effects of this are very long term in nature.
What we should not justify is corruptuon in rich countries, because folks there aren't doing it to survive, they do it to get ahead.
You're phrasing this as if it is OK and should be the expectation.
It’s understandable that this makes people who aren’t used to it uncomfortable, so does going barefoot, or not using a toilet.
People are a product of their environment.
My point is, it’s easy to proselytize when you are a comfortable wealthy person, adapted to and living in a state with a functional justice system.
I would argue that the US allowing infinite money on politics and our forms of lobbying, regulatory capture, and rent seeking are way worse than this minor corruption.
Generally countries where petty corruption is rife aren't healthy democracies.
The article infers that the measurer "measures" around half a dozen yachts a day, so they'd be collecting somewhere around $1,200 a month in bribes (which coincidentally is the same amount as the US minimum wage).
That's not a substantial percent of their earnings, it's their primary income. Their government salary is just lunch money.
As someone that lived in Cambodia where "tea" money (a nice way to say bribe) is very common. It was unsettling every time.
https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html
In chapter 7 he goes into his trip through the Suez Canal. Mind you, this was in the late 80's, and it didn't sound very pleasant.
Paul is a fairly prolific commenter on Reddit. Over the years there have been a few hilarious exchanges between him and some unfortunate know-it-alls on the platform.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q9qzn/iama_former_nas...
Dana's Two Years Before the Mast[1] is another good voyage book. Dana is a recent Harvard grad that makes his way out round Cape Horn to California in last days of the Ranchero era. Any SV people will recognize the place names, but not the places, so to speak. His young, but refined, voice is very special on a long distance fur trading ship.
[0] http://www.myharvardclassics.com/downloads/20120213_14/downl... Free here
[1] http://www.myharvardclassics.com/downloads/20120213_8/downlo... Also free here
These days, there's a lot more security.
They all told me that the clear organizational structures and reliability in the West are a big relief for them personally. They loved this aspect of the western country.
And I remember the stressed faces of the local victims when they were stopped by the highwaymen (the traffic police) in Azerbaijan.
So I believe everyone hates the corruption and would love to live in a place where you can rely on the official rules.
He told the local staff, they told the train driver, and at his next stop he passed it to the driver of a train going the other way. The guy had his valuables back withing 40 minutes.
He tried to offer some cash to the guy as a token of gratitude and he got offended. The dude was left feeling very uncomfortable and not sure what to do or how to soove over the situation.
That guy is reasonably aware of how europe works, but old habbit die hard. Also switzerland is probably one of the most orderly places around
They are not particularly expensive (about 85 EGP or 6 USD a pack) so I wonder why they seem to prefer them over money.
Are they just being hypocritical and thinking that just because they are asking for a pack of cigarettes (instead of money) they are not engaging in bribery?
In short, maybe cigarettes are a better money than whatever fiat bank notes could replace them.
(Though the text does seem to indicate that payment was often made in a combination of fiat and cigarettes, so maybe they're about equal in value after all.)
[0] https://www.finance-watch.org/the-perfect-draw-when-cigarett...
While it is annoying to pay, even more annoying thing is the entitlement of authorities. People here are so used to the informal tax they wouldn’t bother resisting in anyway.
The fact that these practices are technically legal doesn't make them less odious, IMO.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitating_payment
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act
Reminds me of the ironic case of university admission legality - bribing the institution itself with say donations large enough to get your name on a building wing gets your lazy idiot kid into a prestigious university but doing so directly is bribery. The funny thing is that it is so transparently selfish yet it actually makes sense from an incentives letter. If the dillution from lazy idiot rich kid's admission allows for funding to do more positive things to improve quality overall if spent wisely. Doing directly just lines their pocket.
Now government vs private university is apples to oranges but it hints at a source of harm from corruption other than just unfairness is skewing decision making towards personal benefits instead of who they should be operating on behalf of.
Reminds me of a pretty sad episode I had in Mexico. After hearing about it from friends a few times, the time finally came for me (and my wife) to meet a corrupt police officer on our way to the airport.
Long story short... I ended up paying $100 to have him let us go. I then regretted it, but... What could you do in these situations? Is it worth the trouble? Can a proper behavior (refusing to bribe) change things?
Unfortunately the article isn't dated but from the navigation bar I assume the transit was before 2003. Does anyone know what a transit in a small yacht costs today, or know even the formula the article talks about?
I don't think that would improve with worse visibility.
Second note is that it's easy to notice how windy it is and how easy it would be to get stuck in the side if you're not paying 100% attention. At many points in the video you can see the ship it's filmed from pointing in one way, but actually travel a different way.
For some of the canal north of the lake, there are two channels and ships go both ways, one in each channel: https://zoom.earth/#view=30.510825,32.344757,16z/layers=esri
https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/
The Suez Canal is featured in Chapter 7:
https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/Chapter_7_--_Sri_Lanka_to_Tel...
(I read the whole book years ago and found it very vicariously entertaining.)
The author is Paul Lutus:
In tech, there is a certain kind of project manager who will try to extract date commitments from engineers by browbeating them like a prosecutor looking for leverage, and the reason is they want to get you submit and "lie," so they can make a fake commitment to their boss and blame you for it. It's the result of a similar kind of corruption in the organization. Corruption itself isn't cultural, and the WASP version of it is a weirdly oblique gaslighting, but it certainly infects cultures, and it's anathema to what any culture would consider its ideal.
The police there were Soviet-style horribly corrupt. And, some years ago, this changed from one day to the next. They fired all the old officers and started with better training and better payment for the new ones. And with punishment for bribery and criminal behavior at duty.
The society decided to do this and it worked very well. I personally experienced encounters with police in Georgia and they were nice and friendly. They helped me instead of robbing me. Very impressive.
Romania took a lot longer to get to that state than Poland though. In general Poland's progress over the last 30 years has been extremely impressive.
But in "boat world", delaying a trip a few days is no big deal. So things move slowly, there's time for all this cigarette song and dance, etc. This story has some old world charm in some sense.
Of course bribery is not cool, but in other ways I'm glad the whole world isn't (wasn't.. 2003) so homogeneous, and would prefer it to remain that way because its more interesting.