It's impossible to do business in Africa without bribing people, all these laws do is put Western companies at a tremendous disadvantage compared to Chinese ones.
Why?
> all these laws do is put Western companies at a tremendous disadvantage
While attempting to address a serious problem. You could say this of any law.
> compared to Chinese ones.
Not a standard I care about or am willing to be held hostage to. Moral sacrifice to capture international business is pretty gross. Probably why it wasn't even hard to pass the law.
The explanation I've heard before is that when you need anything from a thoroughly corrupt government, as simple as a building permit or a visa for a foreign employee involved in a project, officials will simply not process your request without a bribe. They believe it is owed. End of story.
I don't like the explanation in the slightest. But I do see how it might shut down opportunity if you can't overpower the obstacles, and aren't willing to bribe.
The utility of US laws against bribing foreign officials is to break down the expectation by those officials of a bribe. But, from a game theory point of view, if China is willing to bribe, this becomes much less effective.
People just assume Africans are the same as Europeans and Asians, etc. because they’ve had it hammered into their minds all their lives, but reality is that we are all quite different and that’s good in some ways and bad in others, but it’s different.
It’s usually the opposite…powerful governments rule with an iron fist but are internally marred by corruption and incompetence.
We are not talking about North Africa here, we are talking about South Africa and South Africa like places, which would mean sub-Saharan Africa, not Egypt or Algeria or Tunisia. You lack refinement and do not contribute anything useful, and may want to reflect on why you have that contrarian compulsion. No one is talking about North Africa. All the intelligent people here know we are talking about Africa in the context of South Africa. You clearly lack fundamental skills to distinguish such things.
and: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674979796
to my christmas list. I don't think the law or war are appropriate tools for establishing international morality, but maybe the right ones are somewhere in these.
There are several examples of bribes being publicized and the guilty company losing out on big contracts as a result (e.g. from ECHELON spying).
Is that the same ExxonMobile that was caught in a bribery corruption scandal in Liberia in Africa? [1]
Or perhaps you're talking about the same ExxonMobile that was caught bribing government officials in Kazakhstan in Asia? [2]
[1] https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/full-rep...