11 ms·

Reason: Why poor countries are poor.

97 points by jyothi 18y ago

yummyfajitas 18y ago
Very true. But it's not just about government banditry, it's also about cultural acceptance of corruption. In a conversation with my Iranian ex girlfriend and her mom, it was revealed that her cousin is relatively wealthy due to being a dirty cop. They just talked about it like it was no big deal, completely expected. Several Africans I've known have similarly remarked "I got my drivers license without a bribe!" In my American family, there are no dirty cops by definition; doing crap like that will get you disowned. Changing the government won't change the cultural attitudes, unfortunately.
- markessien 18y ago
  You are making a very bad assumption here. You are assuming that non-acceptance of dirty cops is something inherent to American culture. Actually, if America were plunged into a huge depression, and most Americans were suddenly thrust into poverty, banks folded and so on, this 'culture' would change in less than a year. Are you going to disown the guy who is doing dirty work but keeping you alive? Corruption is not a culture, the potential for corruption is everywhere, it's in all humans. When it appears to be socially wrong, or when there is strict enforcement, then people will not be corrupt, but as soon as this changes, it comes back. It seems almost as if corruption is the default behavior, and it has to be actively forced away, and not the other way around.
  - jyothi 18y ago
    >> It seems almost as if corruption is the default behavior, and it has to be actively forced away, and not the other way around. Great point. It is also true, as you noted, it is hard to do this in harder times, where people do become more self-centric and would not have time to bother about broader implications or society at large. That is the vicious cycle that has got set up in many poor economies. edit: A short commercial http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=FAe_bZGqU1g http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=FAe_bZGqU1g To get this mobilization going is very hard.
  - pm 18y ago
    I would argue the default behaviour isn't corruption, it's self-preservation. Corruption is only the symptom of a deeper instinctual imperative. When the benefit of individual self-interest outweighs the benefit of communal self-interest, the individual will more often than not act selfishly.
  - Maktab 18y ago
    I disagree. While its true that poverty and desperation drives people to contemplate things they may not have otherwise, I don't believe it as simple as saying that poverty automatically means more people will turn to corruption. There's a basic cultural element to it as well. Living in an African country, there's a far more casual and accepting approach to corruption than there is in Europe and the US. Most people here, including cops, earn enough to get by as it's far from a poor country but corruption is still endemic. Dirty cops are seldom fired when caught and are not ostracised from their families and social groups. As a result, much of the police force is corrupt, to the point where when you're pulled over for a traffic violation you expect to be asked to pay a bribe. And most people, however wealthy, are more than happy to pay one in order to avoid the admin hassle of an official fine. Oddly enough, there seems to be an attitude that corruption is your right if you've managed to get employed in certain jobs. There is no big outcry when politicians are found to have been hugely corrupt, instead the attitude amongst most of my fellow Africans who I've spoken on such occasions is that the guy was 'just taking care of himself', an action considered to be perfectly ok. The real anger usually only happens when people perceive that not enough of the public coffers is being directed their way. So there is a cultural aspect to this, and I've come to believe that the culture of many African countries, with a tolerance for corruption, bad governance and the like, is largely responsible for the continent's poor economic condition. Humans the world over may be the same, but cultures are not. Africa will not develop until its people truly decide they want development and make the necessary cultural shifts and changes to achieve it.
    - markessien 18y ago
      What's with this trend of people blaming things on 'culture'. It's just a way of pushing a problem to an abstract hole. Culture is very fluid and changes very quickly. Is it African to wear jeans? To visit nightclubs? It was not, but now in many parts of the continent, it is. The guy a few comments away on this thread was complaining about the corruption in India. Is that the culture too? When I was in China, the people would complain about the corruption in the government. Is that the culture too? Is it only the richest countries in the world that have the culture to avoid corruption? What you're saying is this: - Richest countries in the world like in Europe and the U.S accept corruption less - Poorest countries in the world accept corruption more And from that, you are drawing a causal relationship, when a correlation relationship seems to be a lot more likely. There is no inherent African tendency towards corruption. Since you live in Africa, go to a village, or some other non-urban and traditional area, and see how much corruption there is there. You'll find that there will be almost none.
  - jerf 18y ago
    > Actually, if America were plunged into a huge depression, and most Americans were suddenly thrust into poverty, banks folded and so on, this 'culture' would change in less than a year. America has been in a depression before. It has also had recessions, and it wasn't even rich until the twentieth century. And yet, we still hate corruption. At the risk of posting something not very Hacker-News friendly, I think the natural thing to credit is widespread Christianity in America. Whether or not you like the whole package, the impact of a huge proportion of the population believing that even if you can entirely get away with it in Earthly terms that there are still consequences for corruption probably can't be understated. In fact, I suspect that your are more right now about how the culture would change under duress than you would have been fifty years ago, and you will continue to be more right over time. Even if you don't like Christianity, it's hard to deny that there are worse dominant religions or worldviews to live under... it takes some pretty damned enlightened rationalism to resist the temptation to corruption.
    - gaius 18y ago
      I think the natural thing to credit is widespread Christianity in America. Exactly the same is true of the British and Dutch colonial/trading empires.
    - markessien 18y ago
      70% or more of Sub-Saharan Africa is devoutly christian. Does not seem to have helped very much.
    - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
      Russians are Christian and there's a lot of corruption there. Same in South America.
      - jimbokun 18y ago
        Not sure Russia is the best example. Until very recently they were the classic Godless Communists. South America and Sub Saharan Africa (mentioned by another poster), seem to serve as viable counter-examples, though.
  - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
    > if America were plunged into a huge depression, and most Americans were suddenly thrust into poverty, banks folded and so on, this 'culture' would change in less than a year. I don't think evidence supports this claim. The 30s saw some of the lowest crime rates in America ever. In 1800 median living standards were pretty close to the same all over the world but criminality varied a lot. Criminality and corruption are driven by culture, and possible genetics.
    - netcan 18y ago
      Can you provide evidence in support of that claim? A test for culture/genetics might be found in immigrants. Particularly those that do not immigrate to big expat communities. Even those might be interesting to look at. I think you'll find that people bend quite a distance to what their environment is. I dare say American expats participate in corrupt practices. My own take on this is that corruption can hit a point where it is the system of government. It's not that dirty cops are cops that started taking bribes & then got used to it. They take the job in the first place in order to accept bribes. If you take away corruption, you take away the police. Same goes for many other elements.
  - yummyfajitas 18y ago
    I might not disown the guy before finding another job, but I'd certainly be ashamed of it. It's not something I'd ever drop in casual conversation. Incidentally, her family was middle class by US standards. She got her first computer 2 years after I did. The point I'm making is that I don't think you can just change the government, you really need to make corruption a source of shame.
  - bokonist 18y ago
    The homicide rate of modern Washington D.C. is 40X that of London during the great depression. Let me repeat, that's a 4,000% difference. Do you think modern Washington D.C. is 40 times poorer than depression-era London? Source: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111....
  - 1gor 18y ago
    >non-acceptance of dirty cops is something inherent to American culture. That is exactly the case. America would not have succeeded economically without certain traits, relative immunity to corruption being one of them. In game theory a player may have two strategies - to 'cooperate' or to 'defect' (law-abiding behaviour vs corruption). It has been demonstrated that in absence of punishment the defection (corruption) may be the best strategy for an individual, even though it may be harmful for the society as a whole. Americans have developed a virtuous cycle where certainty of punishment (the society and the legal system there as a whole are relatively not corrupt) stimulates intolerance towards corruption among individuals. Remaining non-corrupt and rooting out corruption is profitable in the USA. But in an already corrupt society it may impossible for the individual to remain honest.
- jyothi 18y ago
  Mostly agree with you. A corrupt government and a deaf attitude of people towards a broken system is kind of a cycle. In many of the countries including India where I live it has gone very far on the negative side that it almost seems impossible to break the loop. >> Changing the government won't change the cultural attitudes, unfortunately. But there got to be some way out. I posted this today after going through a terrible experience. I told many of my friends that I give up, and I don't want to waste my life in this corrupted, broken system. I can pledge that I am fair, loyal, committed and hard working. So is everyone in my family and most folks I move around with. We have worked ourselves up economically without compromising on values. That is our end of it, but at times there is no survival unless you bribe the system. They CAN make life hell for you. So the system changes the culture gradually and that in turns reinforces the broken system to be more broken. I am sitting here today with lost hopes of any change. This needs a revolution of sort, strongly opinionated citizens and a mass mobilization on the issues. I don't even know what I can initiate as an individual. I won't even be heard.
  - schtog 18y ago
    So you are from Cameroon? And you work with computers? Do you have a post highschool education?
    - jyothi 18y ago
      No, from India. But the scene is no different. And I as an individual however hard I stand for no-corruption, total fairness would have to succumb to the majority else survival is hard. The other option move out of this system. My latest status msg on IM was "opt brain drain than have brain in drain". That is how bad it gets here.
      - eru 18y ago
        Then move out. After you have made it in another part of the world you can better afford to stand for change.
        18y ago
- nebula 18y ago
  To all those who are linking culture and corruption: The reason that some societies seem to accept corruption is not because of their culture; It's because of social behavior resulting from "learned helplessness" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness). Most of the governments in third world countries are designed to facilitate corruption, so that the elite few controlling the government can benefit. After spending decades under corrupt regimes, people get used to it.
justindz 18y ago
I kept thinking they missed one interesting point when discussing why Biya might still be neglecting the roads after 20 years--the point at which it's supposed to become in his interest to rebuild them so he has more to steal. If the World Bank or other agency keeps giving them development money, they can take from that instead of building the roads, so the incentive is gone. But, if you remove the outside donations and the infrastructure is useless, you remove all incentive for them to stay. Thus, you get a chaotic power vacuum. If you were callous, you could think of this as a reboot, but with nasty humanitarian consequences. If you keep donating from the outside, then you are pretty much just funding the dictator. Is that about right?
- cabalamat 18y ago
  Make donations conditional on a certain level of good government. More importantly, make the president's Swiss bank account conditional on the same.
  - eru 18y ago
    The IMF loans often come with strings attached.
- markessien 18y ago
  Your statement is a bit ignorant. You really think that the camerounian government is financed by the world bank? You really think that the world bank are just giving money to someone who is obviously using it all up? You think that the president of the country as well as the entire team of economists at the world bank have missed this great discovery you made? The world bank is not a development fund, they lend money, they don't give it. And countries like Cameron have a GDP of 40 billion USD a year, external money is totally irrelevant to its survival. Most of these countries don't need external money for the government to stay in power, they just take it because it's free.
  - justindz 18y ago
    Yes, this is definitely out of my area of expertise. Fair criticism. Is there a good resource to understand how the loans are repaid and what enforcement exists? That would be crucial to understanding the degree to which they aren't donations or couldn't be treated as donations even if they weren't. And, no, I don't think Cameroon is financed by the World Bank. I just wrote that poorly. I was interested in understanding whether the natural incentive to build an economy to increase the scale of possible graft (not my theory, from the article) could be killed by getting outside funding that, perversely, wouldn't result in a more successful economy if it were being hoarded. Perhaps that just doesn't happen.
pragmatic 18y ago
If you want an in depth exploration of this I recommend "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else" by Hernando de Soto (the economist, not the explorer) The basics: Corruption and lack of property rights lead to poverty.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  "A Farewell to Alms" convinced me. But you're not going to see its conclusions widely repeated because it basically boils down to eugenic and dysgenic forces.
- jimbokun 18y ago
  "Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else" When was this written? I do not think that China, Korea, Taiwan, India, Japan can be considered part of "the West," and they are certainly employing capitalism to great advantage.
  - huherto 18y ago
    2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_(economist) In the book he focuses in the third world and countries just out of communism. It is a very interesting work worth reading.
- paddy_m 18y ago
  I did a report on that in an economics class. I explained how there are extra legal businesses that exist in all of these countries, they are extra legal because becoming legal is impossible if not overly expensive. Then I asked the class, who here supports child labor laws? Most people raised there hands. Then I said your all wrong. I ran an extra legal business in the US. It was extra legal because I was 14, mowing lawns, had I followed the rule of law I would have been deprived of business operating opportunity.
  - geebee 18y ago
    Is it really illegal for a 14 year old to make money mowing lawns in the US without paying taxes or establishing a business? I wonder if there's an exemption, or if this is just handled by gov't looking the other way. I like your term "extra legal." You may be right - that to truly comply with the law (ie., pay taxes, register as a business, and so forth), it's functionally impossible for a 14 year old to mow lawns for cash. I completely disagree with your take on child labor laws. I can support the laws that banned using children to climb into hard to reach areas in coal mines without supporting onerous restrictions on mowing lawns.
eru 18y ago
If we could only virtualize the economy.. (Like in a VM for a computer.)
- quantumhobbit 18y ago
  I've always wondered if this was possible, and whether it would be accurate. With modern computers we could easily simulate 1000's of consumers and producers. If the individual behavior of consumers could be modeled accurately, we could have a realistic model of an economy. Granted modeling consumers accurately is easier said than done.
  - LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
    There is a large amount of study currently on virtual markets in things like MMOs. What I haven't seen much in virtual economies is the ability to loan or speculate, which drastically reduces some of the possibilities for economics simulation. The one counterexample there was the Eve Online player who ran one of the largest banks in the game, then absconded with everyone's money. The lack of any sort of enforceable contract law made any sort of repercussions difficult. Though, I wonder if his ship got blown up after that... Personally I found it interesting when a game I play went through a large deflationary period when the game developers cut down the currency in circulation by aggressively banning exploiters and bots. It gave me a feel for what the economic commentators are talking about now with the possibility of impending deflation in the US.
    - eru 18y ago
      Interesting. I thought more about the line of using online services like eBay's reputation system to build a private at least semi-enforcable judical system. (The anarcho-capitalists dream come true via the internet. eBay is a bad example, but I hope you see what I mean.)
    - whatusername 18y ago
      Second Life had banking scams as well.
    - 18y ago
mynameishere 18y ago
Because of the elephant in the room.
MaysonL 18y ago
"Cities and the Wealth of Nations" by Jane Jacobs provides a much better analysis of the causes of wealth. Poverty is the natural state: wealth is the anomaly in the human condition. Most people in most places have always been poor.
rapind 18y ago
I really liked this article. Gave some great examples. Anyone ever work on building a library that leaks? I bet most who've been in IT for 5 years + have, and you knew it, even railed against it privately if not vocally. Granted the direct negative effect it had on others may not have been as dire as the example in this article, but I find it very similar in principle. I've see millions of dollars wasted on bad services and products, while everyone implementing, selling, and promoting them knows it. It's ignored though, because they are hoping to spin it or sell it regardless (and often do), or they feel they don't have enough influence to make a difference. How many school books could be bought for these wastes? I see a lot of comments about culture and corruption. I think it has far less to do with culture than it does with species. I like simple answers though.
kqr2 18y ago
I think the "broken windows" argument which was recently discussed in this forum also comes into play. In an environment where bribes are common place, this opens the door for more corrupt behavior.
zupatol 18y ago
I spent 3 weeks in Cameroon this year. It's not as bad as this article says, but almost. Some roads in Douala have been fixed, some new roads have been paved. I didn't see a working telephone line, but several competing mobile phone companies are doing a good job of connecting almost everybody. The corruption is still there. My stepmother lives in a new house without running water. My wife has paid all the fees to have water months ago, but no one from the water company ever came to do the work. Obviously,a bribe has to be paid to someone, but we don't know whom. A distant cousin claims he knows someone at the water company, but the close family doesn't know the cousin well enough to trust him. The hope that the privatisation of the water company would lead to a rooting out of corruption by its new american owners has faded long ago. However the railroad seems to have taken steps to root out corruption by making every employee wear a uniform with his name on it, and putting posters in the train station to ask people do denounce bribery. This was a good surprise. Before that I couldn't even imagine anything that could be done to fight corruption. I don't know how well this works, but we had no trouble when taking the train. The north of the country, which is mainly muslim, seems to be less corrupt. A christian told me he wished the president was a muslim because it would reduce corruption. Several unconnected people also told me about something else than corruption that slows down private initiative. They speak of jealousy. Apparently when someone succeeds, many of those around him get so jealous they try to make him fail. I don't know what to make of this. I also heard a lot about sorcery.
- socmoth 18y ago
  I live in Cameroon for three years as a child around the ages of five. In a town smaller than Douala. I was small, but I don't remember it being bad. There was a country resort down the street which I used to bike to and go swimming in their gigantic swimming pool. I was allowed to bike everywhere in the city by myself. The food was insanely fresh having been killed and cooked hours before you ate it. We always had water, and called home long distance pretty regularly. When my brother broke his arm, he had a local doctor in the hospital put a cast on it, and then saw it off. I may have been too small to experience the corruption first hand, but everything seemed fine to me.
  - 18y ago
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
nazgulnarsil 18y ago
Corruption: 1. What happens when bad incentives aren't identified and eliminated.
dilanj 18y ago
When in Mumbai, you send your driver to the DMV to get you a drivers license, along with the standard bribe for the inspector. This would not happen if the cost of putting a bad driver on the road was so high that the society would fight to prevent it. That would be the case if the legal costs, repair costs and above all medical costs of an accident were enormous. Like it is in the US. But no, in India the government will bail you out if you get in a road accident. They do that by providing free healthcare, maintaining low fines, leaving glaring legal loopholes for your convenience and in most cases keeping motor mechanics in a low income tax exempt category, so you can fix your vehicle for dirt-cheap. Hence you don’t care if a terrible driver is permitted to drive. Neither does society at large. Strong economies are driven by the duality of strong incentives and costly penalties. Weak ones are undone by cultural and economical ecosystems built solely for saving each other’s ass.
- shiranaihito 18y ago
  > Hence you don’t care if a terrible driver is permitted to drive. Neither does society at large. That's weird, because a bad driver can still kill people. You'd think they'd like to avoid that.
known 18y ago
"A country is not made of land; a country is made of its people." -- G.A.Rao
binarycheese 18y ago
Having been to Douala myselft, I could'nt agree more. There is so much money going around but the city (which happens to be one of the most expensive in the world) is in ruins. This is because of the centralized governments that France instituted in its African colonies. Before a road is contructed/repaired, you must first get authorization from central command (Yaounde)

97 points by jyothi 18y ago

Very true. But it's not just about government banditry, it's also about cultural acceptance of corruption. In a conversation with my Iranian ex girlfriend and her mom, it was revealed that her cousin is relatively wealthy due to being a dirty cop. They just talked about it like it was no big deal, completely expected. Several Africans I've known have similarly remarked "I got my drivers license without a bribe!" In my American family, there are no dirty cops by definition; doing crap like that will get you disowned. Changing the government won't change the cultural attitudes, unfortunately.

markessien 18y ago
You are making a very bad assumption here. You are assuming that non-acceptance of dirty cops is something inherent to American culture. Actually, if America were plunged into a huge depression, and most Americans were suddenly thrust into poverty, banks folded and so on, this 'culture' would change in less than a year. Are you going to disown the guy who is doing dirty work but keeping you alive? Corruption is not a culture, the potential for corruption is everywhere, it's in all humans. When it appears to be socially wrong, or when there is strict enforcement, then people will not be corrupt, but as soon as this changes, it comes back. It seems almost as if corruption is the default behavior, and it has to be actively forced away, and not the other way around.
- jyothi 18y ago
  >> It seems almost as if corruption is the default behavior, and it has to be actively forced away, and not the other way around. Great point. It is also true, as you noted, it is hard to do this in harder times, where people do become more self-centric and would not have time to bother about broader implications or society at large. That is the vicious cycle that has got set up in many poor economies. edit: A short commercial http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=FAe_bZGqU1g http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=FAe_bZGqU1g To get this mobilization going is very hard.
- pm 18y ago
  I would argue the default behaviour isn't corruption, it's self-preservation. Corruption is only the symptom of a deeper instinctual imperative. When the benefit of individual self-interest outweighs the benefit of communal self-interest, the individual will more often than not act selfishly.
- Maktab 18y ago
  I disagree. While its true that poverty and desperation drives people to contemplate things they may not have otherwise, I don't believe it as simple as saying that poverty automatically means more people will turn to corruption. There's a basic cultural element to it as well. Living in an African country, there's a far more casual and accepting approach to corruption than there is in Europe and the US. Most people here, including cops, earn enough to get by as it's far from a poor country but corruption is still endemic. Dirty cops are seldom fired when caught and are not ostracised from their families and social groups. As a result, much of the police force is corrupt, to the point where when you're pulled over for a traffic violation you expect to be asked to pay a bribe. And most people, however wealthy, are more than happy to pay one in order to avoid the admin hassle of an official fine. Oddly enough, there seems to be an attitude that corruption is your right if you've managed to get employed in certain jobs. There is no big outcry when politicians are found to have been hugely corrupt, instead the attitude amongst most of my fellow Africans who I've spoken on such occasions is that the guy was 'just taking care of himself', an action considered to be perfectly ok. The real anger usually only happens when people perceive that not enough of the public coffers is being directed their way. So there is a cultural aspect to this, and I've come to believe that the culture of many African countries, with a tolerance for corruption, bad governance and the like, is largely responsible for the continent's poor economic condition. Humans the world over may be the same, but cultures are not. Africa will not develop until its people truly decide they want development and make the necessary cultural shifts and changes to achieve it.
  - markessien 18y ago
    What's with this trend of people blaming things on 'culture'. It's just a way of pushing a problem to an abstract hole. Culture is very fluid and changes very quickly. Is it African to wear jeans? To visit nightclubs? It was not, but now in many parts of the continent, it is. The guy a few comments away on this thread was complaining about the corruption in India. Is that the culture too? When I was in China, the people would complain about the corruption in the government. Is that the culture too? Is it only the richest countries in the world that have the culture to avoid corruption? What you're saying is this: - Richest countries in the world like in Europe and the U.S accept corruption less - Poorest countries in the world accept corruption more And from that, you are drawing a causal relationship, when a correlation relationship seems to be a lot more likely. There is no inherent African tendency towards corruption. Since you live in Africa, go to a village, or some other non-urban and traditional area, and see how much corruption there is there. You'll find that there will be almost none.
- jerf 18y ago
  > Actually, if America were plunged into a huge depression, and most Americans were suddenly thrust into poverty, banks folded and so on, this 'culture' would change in less than a year. America has been in a depression before. It has also had recessions, and it wasn't even rich until the twentieth century. And yet, we still hate corruption. At the risk of posting something not very Hacker-News friendly, I think the natural thing to credit is widespread Christianity in America. Whether or not you like the whole package, the impact of a huge proportion of the population believing that even if you can entirely get away with it in Earthly terms that there are still consequences for corruption probably can't be understated. In fact, I suspect that your are more right now about how the culture would change under duress than you would have been fifty years ago, and you will continue to be more right over time. Even if you don't like Christianity, it's hard to deny that there are worse dominant religions or worldviews to live under... it takes some pretty damned enlightened rationalism to resist the temptation to corruption.
  - gaius 18y ago
    I think the natural thing to credit is widespread Christianity in America. Exactly the same is true of the British and Dutch colonial/trading empires.
  - markessien 18y ago
    70% or more of Sub-Saharan Africa is devoutly christian. Does not seem to have helped very much.
  - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
    Russians are Christian and there's a lot of corruption there. Same in South America.
    - jimbokun 18y ago
      Not sure Russia is the best example. Until very recently they were the classic Godless Communists. South America and Sub Saharan Africa (mentioned by another poster), seem to serve as viable counter-examples, though.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  > if America were plunged into a huge depression, and most Americans were suddenly thrust into poverty, banks folded and so on, this 'culture' would change in less than a year. I don't think evidence supports this claim. The 30s saw some of the lowest crime rates in America ever. In 1800 median living standards were pretty close to the same all over the world but criminality varied a lot. Criminality and corruption are driven by culture, and possible genetics.
  - netcan 18y ago
    Can you provide evidence in support of that claim? A test for culture/genetics might be found in immigrants. Particularly those that do not immigrate to big expat communities. Even those might be interesting to look at. I think you'll find that people bend quite a distance to what their environment is. I dare say American expats participate in corrupt practices. My own take on this is that corruption can hit a point where it is the system of government. It's not that dirty cops are cops that started taking bribes & then got used to it. They take the job in the first place in order to accept bribes. If you take away corruption, you take away the police. Same goes for many other elements.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  I might not disown the guy before finding another job, but I'd certainly be ashamed of it. It's not something I'd ever drop in casual conversation. Incidentally, her family was middle class by US standards. She got her first computer 2 years after I did. The point I'm making is that I don't think you can just change the government, you really need to make corruption a source of shame.
- bokonist 18y ago
  The homicide rate of modern Washington D.C. is 40X that of London during the great depression. Let me repeat, that's a 4,000% difference. Do you think modern Washington D.C. is 40 times poorer than depression-era London? Source: http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.pdf http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111....
- 1gor 18y ago
  >non-acceptance of dirty cops is something inherent to American culture. That is exactly the case. America would not have succeeded economically without certain traits, relative immunity to corruption being one of them. In game theory a player may have two strategies - to 'cooperate' or to 'defect' (law-abiding behaviour vs corruption). It has been demonstrated that in absence of punishment the defection (corruption) may be the best strategy for an individual, even though it may be harmful for the society as a whole. Americans have developed a virtuous cycle where certainty of punishment (the society and the legal system there as a whole are relatively not corrupt) stimulates intolerance towards corruption among individuals. Remaining non-corrupt and rooting out corruption is profitable in the USA. But in an already corrupt society it may impossible for the individual to remain honest.
jyothi 18y ago
Mostly agree with you. A corrupt government and a deaf attitude of people towards a broken system is kind of a cycle. In many of the countries including India where I live it has gone very far on the negative side that it almost seems impossible to break the loop. >> Changing the government won't change the cultural attitudes, unfortunately. But there got to be some way out. I posted this today after going through a terrible experience. I told many of my friends that I give up, and I don't want to waste my life in this corrupted, broken system. I can pledge that I am fair, loyal, committed and hard working. So is everyone in my family and most folks I move around with. We have worked ourselves up economically without compromising on values. That is our end of it, but at times there is no survival unless you bribe the system. They CAN make life hell for you. So the system changes the culture gradually and that in turns reinforces the broken system to be more broken. I am sitting here today with lost hopes of any change. This needs a revolution of sort, strongly opinionated citizens and a mass mobilization on the issues. I don't even know what I can initiate as an individual. I won't even be heard.
- schtog 18y ago
  So you are from Cameroon? And you work with computers? Do you have a post highschool education?
  - jyothi 18y ago
    No, from India. But the scene is no different. And I as an individual however hard I stand for no-corruption, total fairness would have to succumb to the majority else survival is hard. The other option move out of this system. My latest status msg on IM was "opt brain drain than have brain in drain". That is how bad it gets here.
    - eru 18y ago
      Then move out. After you have made it in another part of the world you can better afford to stand for change.
      - 18y ago
nebula 18y ago
To all those who are linking culture and corruption: The reason that some societies seem to accept corruption is not because of their culture; It's because of social behavior resulting from "learned helplessness" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness). Most of the governments in third world countries are designed to facilitate corruption, so that the elite few controlling the government can benefit. After spending decades under corrupt regimes, people get used to it.

justindz 18y ago

I kept thinking they missed one interesting point when discussing why Biya might still be neglecting the roads after 20 years--the point at which it's supposed to become in his interest to rebuild them so he has more to steal. If the World Bank or other agency keeps giving them development money, they can take from that instead of building the roads, so the incentive is gone. But, if you remove the outside donations and the infrastructure is useless, you remove all incentive for them to stay. Thus, you get a chaotic power vacuum. If you were callous, you could think of this as a reboot, but with nasty humanitarian consequences. If you keep donating from the outside, then you are pretty much just funding the dictator. Is that about right?

cabalamat 18y ago
Make donations conditional on a certain level of good government. More importantly, make the president's Swiss bank account conditional on the same.
- eru 18y ago
  The IMF loans often come with strings attached.
markessien 18y ago
Your statement is a bit ignorant. You really think that the camerounian government is financed by the world bank? You really think that the world bank are just giving money to someone who is obviously using it all up? You think that the president of the country as well as the entire team of economists at the world bank have missed this great discovery you made? The world bank is not a development fund, they lend money, they don't give it. And countries like Cameron have a GDP of 40 billion USD a year, external money is totally irrelevant to its survival. Most of these countries don't need external money for the government to stay in power, they just take it because it's free.
- justindz 18y ago
  Yes, this is definitely out of my area of expertise. Fair criticism. Is there a good resource to understand how the loans are repaid and what enforcement exists? That would be crucial to understanding the degree to which they aren't donations or couldn't be treated as donations even if they weren't. And, no, I don't think Cameroon is financed by the World Bank. I just wrote that poorly. I was interested in understanding whether the natural incentive to build an economy to increase the scale of possible graft (not my theory, from the article) could be killed by getting outside funding that, perversely, wouldn't result in a more successful economy if it were being hoarded. Perhaps that just doesn't happen.

pragmatic 18y ago

If you want an in depth exploration of this I recommend "The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else" by Hernando de Soto (the economist, not the explorer) The basics: Corruption and lack of property rights lead to poverty.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago
"A Farewell to Alms" convinced me. But you're not going to see its conclusions widely repeated because it basically boils down to eugenic and dysgenic forces.
jimbokun 18y ago
"Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else" When was this written? I do not think that China, Korea, Taiwan, India, Japan can be considered part of "the West," and they are certainly employing capitalism to great advantage.
- huherto 18y ago
  2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernando_de_Soto_(economist) In the book he focuses in the third world and countries just out of communism. It is a very interesting work worth reading.
paddy_m 18y ago
I did a report on that in an economics class. I explained how there are extra legal businesses that exist in all of these countries, they are extra legal because becoming legal is impossible if not overly expensive. Then I asked the class, who here supports child labor laws? Most people raised there hands. Then I said your all wrong. I ran an extra legal business in the US. It was extra legal because I was 14, mowing lawns, had I followed the rule of law I would have been deprived of business operating opportunity.
- geebee 18y ago
  Is it really illegal for a 14 year old to make money mowing lawns in the US without paying taxes or establishing a business? I wonder if there's an exemption, or if this is just handled by gov't looking the other way. I like your term "extra legal." You may be right - that to truly comply with the law (ie., pay taxes, register as a business, and so forth), it's functionally impossible for a 14 year old to mow lawns for cash. I completely disagree with your take on child labor laws. I can support the laws that banned using children to climb into hard to reach areas in coal mines without supporting onerous restrictions on mowing lawns.

eru 18y ago

If we could only virtualize the economy.. (Like in a VM for a computer.)

quantumhobbit 18y ago
I've always wondered if this was possible, and whether it would be accurate. With modern computers we could easily simulate 1000's of consumers and producers. If the individual behavior of consumers could be modeled accurately, we could have a realistic model of an economy. Granted modeling consumers accurately is easier said than done.
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
  There is a large amount of study currently on virtual markets in things like MMOs. What I haven't seen much in virtual economies is the ability to loan or speculate, which drastically reduces some of the possibilities for economics simulation. The one counterexample there was the Eve Online player who ran one of the largest banks in the game, then absconded with everyone's money. The lack of any sort of enforceable contract law made any sort of repercussions difficult. Though, I wonder if his ship got blown up after that... Personally I found it interesting when a game I play went through a large deflationary period when the game developers cut down the currency in circulation by aggressively banning exploiters and bots. It gave me a feel for what the economic commentators are talking about now with the possibility of impending deflation in the US.
  - eru 18y ago
    Interesting. I thought more about the line of using online services like eBay's reputation system to build a private at least semi-enforcable judical system. (The anarcho-capitalists dream come true via the internet. eBay is a bad example, but I hope you see what I mean.)
  - whatusername 18y ago
    Second Life had banking scams as well.
  - 18y ago

mynameishere 18y ago

Because of the elephant in the room.

MaysonL 18y ago

"Cities and the Wealth of Nations" by Jane Jacobs provides a much better analysis of the causes of wealth. Poverty is the natural state: wealth is the anomaly in the human condition. Most people in most places have always been poor.

rapind 18y ago

I really liked this article. Gave some great examples. Anyone ever work on building a library that leaks? I bet most who've been in IT for 5 years + have, and you knew it, even railed against it privately if not vocally. Granted the direct negative effect it had on others may not have been as dire as the example in this article, but I find it very similar in principle. I've see millions of dollars wasted on bad services and products, while everyone implementing, selling, and promoting them knows it. It's ignored though, because they are hoping to spin it or sell it regardless (and often do), or they feel they don't have enough influence to make a difference. How many school books could be bought for these wastes? I see a lot of comments about culture and corruption. I think it has far less to do with culture than it does with species. I like simple answers though.

kqr2 18y ago

I think the "broken windows" argument which was recently discussed in this forum also comes into play. In an environment where bribes are common place, this opens the door for more corrupt behavior.

zupatol 18y ago

I spent 3 weeks in Cameroon this year. It's not as bad as this article says, but almost. Some roads in Douala have been fixed, some new roads have been paved. I didn't see a working telephone line, but several competing mobile phone companies are doing a good job of connecting almost everybody. The corruption is still there. My stepmother lives in a new house without running water. My wife has paid all the fees to have water months ago, but no one from the water company ever came to do the work. Obviously,a bribe has to be paid to someone, but we don't know whom. A distant cousin claims he knows someone at the water company, but the close family doesn't know the cousin well enough to trust him. The hope that the privatisation of the water company would lead to a rooting out of corruption by its new american owners has faded long ago. However the railroad seems to have taken steps to root out corruption by making every employee wear a uniform with his name on it, and putting posters in the train station to ask people do denounce bribery. This was a good surprise. Before that I couldn't even imagine anything that could be done to fight corruption. I don't know how well this works, but we had no trouble when taking the train. The north of the country, which is mainly muslim, seems to be less corrupt. A christian told me he wished the president was a muslim because it would reduce corruption. Several unconnected people also told me about something else than corruption that slows down private initiative. They speak of jealousy. Apparently when someone succeeds, many of those around him get so jealous they try to make him fail. I don't know what to make of this. I also heard a lot about sorcery.

socmoth 18y ago
I live in Cameroon for three years as a child around the ages of five. In a town smaller than Douala. I was small, but I don't remember it being bad. There was a country resort down the street which I used to bike to and go swimming in their gigantic swimming pool. I was allowed to bike everywhere in the city by myself. The food was insanely fresh having been killed and cooked hours before you ate it. We always had water, and called home long distance pretty regularly. When my brother broke his arm, he had a local doctor in the hospital put a cast on it, and then saw it off. I may have been too small to experience the corruption first hand, but everything seemed fine to me.
- 18y ago

deleted 18y ago

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nazgulnarsil 18y ago

Corruption: 1. What happens when bad incentives aren't identified and eliminated.

dilanj 18y ago

When in Mumbai, you send your driver to the DMV to get you a drivers license, along with the standard bribe for the inspector. This would not happen if the cost of putting a bad driver on the road was so high that the society would fight to prevent it. That would be the case if the legal costs, repair costs and above all medical costs of an accident were enormous. Like it is in the US. But no, in India the government will bail you out if you get in a road accident. They do that by providing free healthcare, maintaining low fines, leaving glaring legal loopholes for your convenience and in most cases keeping motor mechanics in a low income tax exempt category, so you can fix your vehicle for dirt-cheap. Hence you don’t care if a terrible driver is permitted to drive. Neither does society at large. Strong economies are driven by the duality of strong incentives and costly penalties. Weak ones are undone by cultural and economical ecosystems built solely for saving each other’s ass.

shiranaihito 18y ago
> Hence you don’t care if a terrible driver is permitted to drive. Neither does society at large. That's weird, because a bad driver can still kill people. You'd think they'd like to avoid that.

known 18y ago

"A country is not made of land; a country is made of its people." -- G.A.Rao

binarycheese 18y ago

Having been to Douala myselft, I could'nt agree more. There is so much money going around but the city (which happens to be one of the most expensive in the world) is in ruins. This is because of the centralized governments that France instituted in its African colonies. Before a road is contructed/repaired, you must first get authorization from central command (Yaounde)