Corruption How Do We Stop It
Corruption is Fiscal Terrorism? I have seen this argument and we have a good deal of empathy for the assertion and legitimacy in the assertion of the argument.
The difference between them is that the objective of terrorists is to terrorize a given population into making concessions to change – whatever their agenda might be. They use terrorism in that they lack either an effective political ideology or a credible military force in order to implement or enforce their ideology.
Corruption, on the other hand, does NOT want any changes at all. Perpetrators have found a way to make money in the system and they do not want the system to change. They will become the tyrants of the status quo.
I believe it is better to work very hard within a community to eliminate the incentives to take and/or offer bribes. These incentives can, and usually are, multi-variate. As the incentives for bad behavior are removed, warnings about the impending penalties should be circulated. The type and size of penalties should come from the community, in essence the penalties should be crowd-sourced from the community. Discussions should be had about blacklisting a business or professionals from an economy. There should also be a process for rehabilitation of offenders.
Criminalizing this process or making the penalties great is not going to stop the process. The exchanges of goods for favors will just get more creative and subtle as the incentive for the exchange of goods and favors has not been addressed. In short the participants will get even better at hiding corruption than you are at detecting corruption.
Addressing the incentives toward corruption and stepping back – bit by bit from the day-to-day practice will take time. But done it must be. Failure to address corruption leads to the economic failure; whether local, regional and even national.
