This “dance” where they pretend to be your friends when trying to extract that money and cigarettes from you when you are trying to get a service is extremely annoying. Want cigarettes? Put cigarettes on the requirements list.

Not to mention that the informality creates special class of corrupt officials that easily leads to mafia politics. Criminals develop relationships with these people and easily do stuff that they are not supposed to do and the law abiding people stress over the bribes and mood of the staff.

This even goes higher up, as paves the way for higher levels of corruption where things needs to be at scale and yet hush hush, exposing whole nations to political risks(from money laundering to terrorism).

I think you mean you stress over the bribes. There are many people who are accustomed to handling such minor corruption and yet are not corrupt themselves. They know how to handle it with minimum anxiety or disruption to their lives. Obviously it would be preferred it the corruption wouldn't exist, but I think you are also projecting your anxiety on others.

Secondly, the likely reason they can't charge more is that these prices are likely set by some person or system higher up than them, yet they are taking more on top of that official price. Thus, if the price were raised, it wouldn't be going to those who are doing the graft. Your premise of "just charge higher prices" misunderstands the nature of the prices and the market. Again, I'm not saying I like corrupt systems. I very much dislike them and think they are one of the primary causes preventing many developing countries from as quickly catching up to developed countries. But to fix them, we need to understand them, and saying "just internalize the bribery cost into the official price" misses the reason it exists in the first place.

You can pay the pilots and low-level officials more money and implement "There are lots of other people who want your cushy job -- you will be summarily fired if you are caught soliciting bribes" policies as well as surveillance and reporting systems to enforce them.

This requires political will from the people at the top, and often results in anger from the people at the bottom, so it doesn't usually happen until the bribery problem is out of control.

Argentina is a good example. Maritime cargo hold inspectors famously made a habit of soliciting larger and larger bribes. They became an outlier, and eventually the shipping companies started to notice, and they put pressure on Argentina to clean up:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22581590

I do have to disagree with you on one point: that there are people who are not corrput themselves who function well within the system. Corruption begins with good intentions. Crime begins with bad intentions. Every single act makes the complicit lose the corrupt because what a non-corrupt person would do is fight it.

Are the complicit less bad? Would they rather have it another way? Yes. Yes. Still, they are corroding every time they choose not to fight (even if it comes at great personal cost)

The normal cost goes to their boss. The bribe goes to them. The bribe is just another version of tipping culture, except a differently coercive one.

I'm familiar with high-bribe environments and used to go through bribery intensive border between Bulgaria-Turkey.

It's a breeze for the regulars, they know why their document is not processed or why the bus is being kept and know the channel, and the expected bribes so they easily pay and go through.

The problem is, when you are not a regular you simply get frustrated because you can't just ask how much since there are anti-corruption measure in place that need to be avoided. You need o go somewhere or give it to someone seemingly unrelated.

It can be somewhat parallel to tipping culture but in tipping they do their job an expect a gratitude payment, which doesn't slow down or block the process. The bribery culture has it's own dark side since you need to be coerced into doing it.

Also, the Turkey-Bulgaria border often gets busted for running large scale duty free alcohol and cigarettes contraband. That's when they get bribed for not doing their job(of preventing contraband), the "pay to get things done" bribery mostly died off because of the digitalisation. Don't search my car, don't inspect my bus in exchange of cigarettes bribery still lives though.

Then the individual guards and officials then make their own fortune using the position they were given. Think of them more as entrepreneurs or self-employed.

This system of handing out unpaid or poorly paid government positions has existed throughout the world, britain in 1800 worked like this - judges were not paid, they charged defendants whatever price they wanted.

In Tsarist Russia the local officials working for the state" were charging the locals for their services whatever they felt like charging them. That way the state did not have to deal with paying them salaries, it was up to officials to 'make themselves usefull to thw community'

What we call corruption today is just how the world used to work before - it was not structured and not everything had a fixed price.

And those who feel to operate like that should maybe should be more open about the payments so we can skip the negotiation part. A carton of cigarettes is not a big deal but trying deal with the official that tries to coerce you into that payment is. It makes things slow and unpredictable.

Oh and I strongly disagree with the "entrepreneur" analogy, the people who get into these lucrative positions are people close to the politically dominant class. They often "donate" some of that money to their church/mosque/party and take it easy on the people of their clan when making life hard to the outsiders.

A recent case is the case of Reza Zarrab, the guy who laundered Iranian money through Turkey and get caught. He has become a billionaire and was very well connected to the Turkish political class. Erdogan himself pulled a lot of strings with Trump. Very high profile case with a lot of US and Turkish public figures being involved, you should Google it.(Spoiler: Rudolph Giuliani was on his defence team)

Apparently he had an issue with a customs officer called Teoman who refused bribes so he got Teoman fired. Those informal organisations are more like cabals than corporations. It's not about entrepreneurship but loyalty to the higher ups. It does create a business but that business is reserved to the people in power and the bribe takers are simply employees.

Zarrab also gave a master class in bribery. His motto was "You pay prostitutes afterwards but public officials beforehand", apparently. Good to know.

Then, to make things go smoothly, you will have to pay the higher amount as well as a bribe.

> This even goes higher up, as paves the way for higher levels of corruption where things needs to be at scale and yet hush hush, exposing whole nations to political risks(from money laundering to terrorism).

I think you have it the opposite way around. Where there is an effective government that makes sure that laws are written and enforced fairly, and wealth is distributed somewhat evenly, corruption disappears.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-in...

Unless you are saying that US has more corruption and a less effective government than Egypt?

I think that basing the definition in bribe on what feels uncomfortable to us personally not a good way to define it. I'm from the Netherlands, and I have heard it said that Dutch corruption exists as much as anywhere, the bribes are just always 0 euro, to ease our consciences. I wish I had a reference or two, but maybe these things are understudied.

Uh, no. Not in any sense at all are the two similar. I can't even begin to imagine how you come up with that analogy.

When was the last time you tipped a government official? When was the last time you knew that unless you tipped a government official you wouldn't get your task done, even though your documents were in order?

Tipping in the US is overwhelmingly to directly customer-facing staff in private companies, and it is done after the transaction has been completed.

Bribery/facilitation payment is always done before the fact, and is almost uniformly done with governmental (or quasi-governmental) officials.

Could you expand why you think they are similar rather than just suggesting that the matter is subjective?

Edit: I remember the public transit being quite good so maybe NL doesn't have uber? I also remember waiters not being very easy to find to ask for anything.

It's not that I never tip at a restaurant (however, seldomly in NL), it's just that in the US you'll get bills with a percentage already 'included', and it 'is understood' that you must tip _something_, in a way (to me) very similar to bribes elsewhere.

Granted, I hope these wouldn't qualify as any kind of criminal wrongdoing, and are pretty minor, but there is at least some bribery happening here!

There was no sign indicating that. And they wear airport staff uniforms.

After checking in. I was asked for a tip but I wasn't able to give one because I had no change in cash. I was given a very angry look but I really had no idea about the tip.

When I arrived to my destination my suitcase's wheels were damaged.

I'm not saying everyone in Egypt is living in poverty, while no one in the US is. But the poverty rate in Egypt is something like 30%, vs 10% in the USA.

Having said that, the US has tipping, so there's that.

This makes sense because it would be very complicated to try to formalise and market the classes of service, compared to just hashing it out as people with unique relationships to each other.

As much as I love living in one of the least corrupt places in the world, I have to admit that drawing up formal contracts for interpersonal relationships is sort of the weird way to do things. I like it and I think it has many benefits, but when I try to look at it from 10,000 feet it does seem odd from a human perspective.

> what do you expect

I think it's less about expectations and more about preferences.

Sure, this might be how it works in that part of the world, but if you're not from there, and you're not accustomed to constantly looking over your shoulder, an experience like this can be harrowing.

Even if you know your counterpart is just doing what they always do and not giving it a second thought, some people would be drowning in anxiety. This seems like a completely reasonable personal limit to me.

Since you asked, I'd expect that professionals would do their job, not require me to bribe them to do their jobs. Which is why I wouldn't feel comfortable making this kind of trip.

The article infers that the measurer "measures" around half a dozen yachts a day, so they'd be collecting somewhere around $1,200 a month in bribes (which coincidentally is the same amount as the US minimum wage).

That's not a substantial percent of their earnings, it's their primary income. Their government salary is just lunch money.

It is not a way of life. And the adverse effects of this are very long term in nature.

What we should not justify is corruptuon in rich countries, because folks there aren't doing it to survive, they do it to get ahead.

You know what I don't do? Try to harass, intimidate or rob them. Do you know why? Because I am not an animal.

The fact that this is expected in Egypt does not speak well of their culture. This person lives in a poor country, yes, but I don't think it is likely he is starving.

Some countries and cultures are just more corrupt. Some rich, some poor.

I think you should gey off your high horse, comparing people to animals is not cool.

For starters, you misunderstand the basics - are you actually sure you could harras a person with billions of dollars, connections and lawyers?

Because, doing that in Russia is a good strategy to end in beried in the forest.

In Brutain in 1800 judges were not paid by the state, the people being judged paid them. And the more they paid, the 'better' they were judged. That was official policy. Now obviously we call that corruption.

Assuming you mean Britain, this is false. Judges in Britain have been paid by the state since the 13th century, and their oath to "in no way accept gift or reward from any party in litigation before them" dates to 1346.

"I will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this Realm, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will."

Almost as if the UK had multiple legal systems!

You're phrasing this as if it is OK and should be the expectation.

It’s understandable that this makes people who aren’t used to it uncomfortable, so does going barefoot, or not using a toilet.

People are a product of their environment.

My point is, it’s easy to proselytize when you are a comfortable wealthy person, adapted to and living in a state with a functional justice system.

Generally countries where petty corruption is rife aren't healthy democracies.

I would argue that the US allowing infinite money on politics and our forms of lobbying, regulatory capture, and rent seeking are way worse than this minor corruption.