Bribery is largely subject to circumstance: study

This article hints at, but doesn&#x27;t fully dive into, the perspective of personal ethics. Many people who would never steal money from an individual would happily steal money from the government. As humans we tend to view these acts very differently.<p>Relatedly, such people are more likely to steal money from a government they see as evil&#x2F;corrupt, than a government they see as good. This probably drives a large part of the &quot;contextual&quot; corruption effect the article discusses, where a non-corrupt individual starts working for a corrupt government and suddenly becomes corrupt.

So corruption is cultural.<p>I&#x27;m a European currently living in Mexico and this has always been obvious.

All human moral behavior straddles the line betweeen selflessness and selfishness, at some particular scale, from the personal to the societal&#x2F;cultural.<p>Racism? Selfishness for the group. Religious bigotry? Selfishness for the group. Misogyny? Need I say? Corruption? Selfishness for one&#x27;s personal gain at the expense of the system, itself.<p>Goodness? Virtue? Honor? Positive cultural evolution? Selflessness in service to the whole.<p>That is why the world has been tending towards the negative for soooo long. We have been inculcated into belief systems that separate us from each other along some boundary, be it cultural, racial, religious, gender identification, sexual preference, country, neighborhood, ... whatever.<p>We are all one human race, of many ethnicities and cultures, but we will only begin to heal our blessed Earth and end all conflict, by recognizing that we are the only creatures capable of self-evolving a world culture of universal care.<p>The goal must be universal compassion towards one another, selflessly, except when such kind, selfless behavior would contradict the paradox of tolerance. In those instances, we must be unyielding, but as gentle as good outcomes allow. Only a compassionate society can know how and when to prosecute the vermin among us, who come from all walks of life. We must endeavor to teach the ignorant, while protecting the innocent.<p>Just systems of law, enforced fairly, are the bedrock of such a society.

<i>&gt;largely subject to circumstance</i><p>Peoples&#x27; entire behavior thought their life is largely influenced by their circumstances in which they grew up in. Corruption is just one of them.

So, corruption can be fixed. Change the circumstances and people will stop being corrupt. Fairness is intrinsically human. Inequality and in general the perception of an unfair system makes people misbehave (as they try to compensate for injustices).<p>This is very important as corruption is one of the major causes of countries poverty. (Taking as base-line the country natural-resources).

One of the core problems with human behavior comes from a lack of thinking.<p>If people would consider their actions in the context of, “what I do, others will do”, then they would realize that many actions they deem as insignificant or harmless (throwing a small piece of trash on the sidewalk, taking two items from the “take 1 free” basket, etc. cause real problems when everyone does it.<p>It may seem insignificant to the individual, but in principle if they do it, others are also doing it, and it has a large scale impact. This applies in the positive direction too, such as when people perform random acts of kindness (which encourages others to do the same).

The article talks about corruption like it&#x27;s just a clearly bad thing and people either do the bad thing or not, but it&#x27;s a blurry line between engaging in corruption and the normal ways that organizations work. Examples:<p>If you pay a speeding ticket, isn&#x27;t that like participating in corruption by buying your way out of punishment for endangering people? Is it really morally any different from paying a bribe to the policeman who catches you speeding in a country where that&#x27;s the common way? In both cases, you pay for speeding and your money ends up going towards the policeman&#x27;s income.<p>Forming a personal connection with the interviewer when applying for a government job. Now you&#x27;re suddenly like his friend and he&#x27;s more inclined to select you. Maybe he expects to have a good relationship with you in future and gain intangible benefits from that if he hires you.<p>In my country, teacher jobs have to be publicly advertised, presumably to combat nepotism. But schools regularly hire internally and their advertisement includes a statement like &quot;no actual vacancy&quot; telling people not to waste time applying. I guess they&#x27;re following the law but still corrupting the ideal of not favoring your friends.<p>It seems like you have to have a deep understanding of how and why the systems works the way it does to figure out if a particular action is morally corrupt or not. You can just follow the law but that seems to allow some society-harming corruption and nobody feels guilty about it.