> Obviously, they are playing “hard to get” to get me to pay some bribe and initiate the process. But after going through all this, I am not going to pay any bribe to anyone.
And:
> And they openly demanded bribes after waiting for four months.
> So the Gram Panchayat NOC is stuck because of non payment of bribe.
Money paid illegally to gain an unfair advantage, that will result in local prosecution if discovered and is not the usual practise is a "bribe". No one should pay those.
Money paid illegally to gain normal access/approvals/licenses etc, where it is entirely normal to pay and unlikely to lead to local prosecution is "extortion".
Op isn't really paying a bride, he's being extorted.
Duh?
Not really. If normalized, it's part of their expected compensation package. Practically speaking, I think I'd suck it up and pay the bribe in the author's position. But I'd know I was doing wrong.
But it already is normalised. I think this is morally difficult because it is customary, expected and if you refuse you will not get anything done but also won't change anything. So what have you gained?
I don't think you can fight corruption this way, you just can't do it alone.
The FCPA basically says that as a representative of a US corporation (in my case, anyone at a Staff Engineer level or above), it's illegal to bribe an official of a foreign government.
It does try to make a distinction (sort of) between the kinds of bribe you're talking about but in my FCPA training, that "distinction" boils down to "go ask your lawyer." The lawyer will just tell you how to do it in a way that doesn't look like a bribe, even though it still is.
It just adds yet another layer.
Just as an FYI it’s very hard to be convicted of under FCPA if you’re just operating in a personal capacity. So don’t worry about bribing policemen in foreign counties.
> Duh?
It's only "Duh" because you snipped the qualifier out. It's not "Duh" if you read until the end of the sentence like you normally do:
> in an area where bribery is customary
See?
To bring it to the extremes: If I found myself visiting Germany during World War 2, I would still strongly object to killing jews, even if it was "customary" there.
And since know this is a reductio-at-hitlerum, I will try again: I would not seek or consent or engage to having pedophilic sexual intercourse if I found myself in certain neighborhoods of Thailand, where apparently it is commonplace.
Perhaps a bit less extreme: I would not expect someone who is a convinced vegetarian to start consuming meat when they arrive to my country just because meat is consumed in almost every meal here.
As I see it, cultures are different and one thing that is considered an absolute taboo in one culture might be customary in another. Tips in the US are customary yet at the same time they are offensive in Japan. Bribes are killing the economy in my country yet it makes economy moving in India.
PS: I personally hate corruption more than anything.
Do you have any first hand or second hand experience with it?
From my experience most people working these jobs prefer the tips system the way it is because a lot of times it's in cash so they can fudge their tax numbers if they want (might not be true nowadays as less people use cash), and also because often they make more money through tips than minimum wage, and they think if tips were removed the restaurants would only pay them minimum wage.
I think my shock was greater when I discovered that lobbying in the US means "literal legal bribery". In a lot of the western world that word it means things "having meetings" and perhaps "organizing PR campaigns". Straight up giving money to politicians is against the law.
This is what the internet thinking lobbying means because they just want to be angry at a thing without bothering to learn about it because that would expose their own political apathy. Lobbying in the US means the exact same things that it means in the rest of the world. Companies will donate a few thousand dollars, so that a legislature will hear them out, but the legislature doesn't have to listen to them. There is some sketchy stuff going on with campaign finance for sure, but it's no where near as bad as "legalized bribery."
You might want to revise that assumption.
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-spenders
I believe that’s at least 4 orders of magnitude higher than “thousands of dollars”. I rest my case
These are just some recent examples of federal politicians who have run afoul of these laws, but they apply at all levels of government, as well as to staff (both campaign staff and the official staff of elected officials).
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_D._Hunter
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson_Jr.
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Grimm_(politician)
Up to 1 year in prison.