That's a feature, not a bug, and generally true in any country.
If regulators were correctly funded and staffed, they would have time to look into the shady dealings of the rich and powerfull. That will not do.
Yes. Most of the corruption stats are measuring “perception” of corruption and they are also using the traditional, blatant meaning of corruption where money is exchanged for favours.
But corruption in the West have evolved to be much more subtle and essentially impossible to catch (at least without major reforms). And as you said, they hold the power to fix this :)
It's just the way things are done there, and it's so entrenched that people cannot step back and see it rationally. Unless they are, say, from a country where the corruption has taken on a different form, or from Mars.
There is evidence that they wouldn't use the resources in the public interest: since we know that the NSA is well funded with a budget that isn't up to public inspection and it has used its surveillance powers for the fulfillment of its staff's prurient interests.
"We just don't have a way to solve this via authority" is also a possible answer.
It's fundamentally a question of scalability: Asking a regulator to protect everyone just doesn't scale, in anything but the most draconian police state there will always be more crooks than regulators (and in a police state the crooks become police). So the primary defense must always be an individual and personal responsibility, as irritating as that is. The regulator then exists to backstop people's personal protection, dealing with what slips through and helping to keep the personal costs tolerable.
Doesn't mean that our regulators couldn't do better. I think they could. But there is only so much you can expect via regulator and law enforcement action.
Yea no - if they were more funded and staffed they would audit you and other small players - big players leverage connections to dodge stuff like this all the time.
Are they catching the biggest Panama-paper level players? No those people have too much sway. But they can be very effective against the “ordinary” rich people.
Once regulators were correctly funded and staffed, they would become the rich and powerfull.
You know what a time honored way to make dysfunction worse is? Add money.
The incentives in these organizations are set up all wrong for delivering "good for society" outcomes beyond some local minimum of catching the smallest fish. Money won't change that.
Look what happens when you put white collar crime on a "bad neighborhood" map:
https://whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com
A mugger will take your wallet. Those people will take your life savings.
It is better to have NO regulation and have people know they need to look out for themselves, then to have the fake supervision that we have.