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.
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
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.
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
It's not an aspect of the Islamic world, it's an aspect of the non-developed world.
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...
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.
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.
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[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.
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.
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."
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 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.