4 ms·

That's a good question almost every major international business struggles with. As far as I know, the usual answers are paying the required bribes quietly and

• Arnt 3y ago
  I'll argue a point I don't really agree with, namely that in this case bribes are fair. Coiuntries are sovereign. Foreigners don't decide, that's a key outcome of the thirty years' war. So if you go to X, the polite, proper, non-imperialist thing is to follow accepted custom. Of course, that raises the question of what "accepted custom" means. It's not clear to me that bribing is really accepted in the countries where it's a custom, widely accepted, rather than being something people do reluctantly.
  • jacquesm 3y ago
    Then you can for moral reasons refuse to do business there because you don't feel like playing in a crooked game. That in turn might have the effect of improving the world a bit.
    • Arnt 3y ago
      Of course you can do that. If you do that, what else will you also do? For example: Will you use oil from Saudi Arabia for your business? You could refrain because so much of the payment gets sidetracked to those 4000 princes, or because refraining brakes the climate changes a little bit, or even both. The list goes on. There's much that's bad in the world. Deciding to be principled about bribes and morally flexible about the rest seems… okay to me. Not particularly bad.