3 ms·

Obviously, corruption depends on the country -- Slovakia is not Romania, and is not Ukraine. Political corruption lives in most western countries as well, by th

Obviously, corruption depends on the country -- Slovakia is not Romania, and is not Ukraine. Political corruption lives in most western countries as well, by the way, even if you don't notice it. But as it happens, I know quite a wealthy family who got scammed for millions (through a corrupt notary) on a property deal in an EE country. It wasn't even a business dispute, just a scam. When they took the matter to court, which should have been a clear "win" case, the judge(s) (even on appeal) ruled against them, so they had no way to recover their money. From that point of view, it is not unreasonable for me to assume corruption can (potentially) play a part of it. :)

miskin 9y ago
I’d write something long about corruption in Slovakia, but why should I try. It is obvious that corruption exists and must be improved, but I’d bet that this is not the root cause of different ingredients in Milka chocolate. Since we’re part of EU, there is very little (if anything) that needs to be done officially to sell food produced in other EU country, so I can hardly imagine any good reason for rampant corruption. Nobody is even arguing that food that is sold in EE is non-conforming to health codes (another possible reason for corruption). People complain that they get treated differently. Personal anecdote - I visit Austria almost weekly due to business matters and never bothered to buy anything there just because I would consider it of better quality. I always assigned any perceived differences to placebo. I argued that detergent itself, once found and tested, is cheap enough to produce and most of the cost is marketing, packaging, shipping and profit. So why on earth would anyone cheat on detergent content. At most, maybe parfumes would be different due to local preferences etc. But few weeks ago, producers of laundry detergents reacted to public outcry due to these differences with answer that in western europe, people tend to wash clothes on 30C, so they put there much more enzymes (or what) than in EE, where people tend to wash on 40C. Sure they do, when you need to add much more detergent to clean anything on 30C... So go, figure.

miskin 9y ago

I’d write something long about corruption in Slovakia, but why should I try. It is obvious that corruption exists and must be improved, but I’d bet that this is not the root cause of different ingredients in Milka chocolate. Since we’re part of EU, there is very little (if anything) that needs to be done officially to sell food produced in other EU country, so I can hardly imagine any good reason for rampant corruption. Nobody is even arguing that food that is sold in EE is non-conforming to health codes (another possible reason for corruption). People complain that they get treated differently. Personal anecdote - I visit Austria almost weekly due to business matters and never bothered to buy anything there just because I would consider it of better quality. I always assigned any perceived differences to placebo. I argued that detergent itself, once found and tested, is cheap enough to produce and most of the cost is marketing, packaging, shipping and profit. So why on earth would anyone cheat on detergent content. At most, maybe parfumes would be different due to local preferences etc. But few weeks ago, producers of laundry detergents reacted to public outcry due to these differences with answer that in western europe, people tend to wash clothes on 30C, so they put there much more enzymes (or what) than in EE, where people tend to wash on 40C. Sure they do, when you need to add much more detergent to clean anything on 30C... So go, figure.