cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47165348
I noticed many people believe, that Western countries ranking low on corruption indexes, shows they aren’t corrupt as hell.
To me this just means it’s at a higher, much harder to prove level.
Instead of starting at the cop level (which is still possible with connections), it starts at the points where multi-millions can be made without anyone really noticing.
E.g. farm land > residential use, construction projects, sale of government properties, favors for corps etc.
Yes, I was looking into indexes like that, it’s just funny to me that in many western countries in billions of dollars disappear in one “dirty lil deal”, the witnesses get silenced, the evidence disappears, the investigations stop, while many of those “red ones” probably total that amount in a year ;)
Note that very few countries have what is considered a low level of corruption (which they seem to define as 80+). Additionally, they note that corruption is increasing in many of these “western” countries, like the United States, Canada, France, and the UK.
But these indexes generally aren’t very helpful, as I have highlighted in my comments. There’s a lot of criticism on these kinds of indexes that generalise these big issues.