Under conditions of bureaucratic dysfunction typical of a party-state, corruption isn’t a problem, it is the solution.
That was certainly my experience living in China, a party state of the sort he is describing. I had the wrong kind of visa to be employed, but I had a job. I didn't worry about it; the man who got me the job was the same man who signed for my visa renewal. I've told the story about getting paid in China before (although if you don't remember reading it, you should: it's one of my better stories). It was many months after I'd been working before I saw any of my promised pay. The problem wasn't that they weren't going to keep their word about paying me, it was that they had to build out a slush fund first. Once they'd solved the practical problem of arranging a corrupt solution, they paid me every single thing they promised.
As our system becomes captured by interests basically hostile to the people and the nation, we are all going to end up having to adopt these ways. They are like the illicit economies that prisoners develop, as a means of escaping the control of the guard towers. They are, in a way, a moral duty to embrace: just as a prisoner of war has a duty to try to escape out of loyalty to the country of his birth, so too do we.
2 comments:
Yeah, this is the disturbing thing. People always find a way around odious laws/regulations/whatever like the freed slaves that then managed to buy their relatives "as slaves".
But the entire system will eventually collapse, either like the Soviet Union did, or the old South, when a single election didn't go the way they wanted, or even witness the 'anti-corruption' campaigns recently in China, which probably have more to do with solidifying Xi's rule than with cleaning up corruption.
“…the entire system will eventually collapse…”
Well, one hopes. The counter example is North Korea, where so far a totalitarian party state has held on for generations.
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