The problem is that corruption is contagious. When you assent to it, you are compromised as well. It's a kind of collateral blackmail people use. You can see it

The problem is that corruption is contagious. When you assent to it, you are compromised as well. It's a kind of collateral blackmail people use. You can see it in politics and even corporate management in the west, it's just a little more nuanced and refined. While I think bribe culture is disgusting, and it's infuriating in Canada to see how dirty money effects neighbourhoods and how every level of government is in on it, the way corruption works in companies is when your boss tells you, "I want to be honest about this statement," it can often mean he wants you to hold the risk even if it means lying. In tech, there is a certain kind of project manager who will try to extract date commitments from engineers by browbeating them like a prosecutor looking for leverage, and the reason is they want to get you submit and "lie," so they can make a fake commitment to their boss and blame you for it. It's the result of a similar kind of corruption in the organization. Corruption itself isn't cultural, and the WASP version of it is a weirdly oblique gaslighting, but it certainly infects cultures, and it's anathema to what any culture would consider its ideal.