Not sure whether I prefer your description or the more elaborate scheme of "Road costs $1.2Billion? Have my brother-in-law build it and my cousin will build you a house for almost free on land you can buy for really cheap from a childhood friend of mine!"
It's not that the 1st world is less corrupt, it's just that some schemes are more evolved.
If you honestly think that the first world is no less corrupt you need to travel more. Switzerland is very different from Turkey, and Turkey’s very different from Eritrea.
I will try to do that, in between my permanent traveling that I have been doing for a few years now. Any hints who might provide a more correct picture than the employees of UN, GIZ, Red Cross, Medicines sans Frontieres etc give over and over again?
Try to find a normal priced taxi as a white person in Haiti: 5 minute drive = $100. Or "You give me $150, I give you a receipt over $300." This scam was brought to you by... drumroll the UN! (It's a nice way to make one or two additional salaries while on an "educational visit").
Forgive me for assuming someone with such odd views could only have come by them through lack of experience. Obviously highly biased experience works just as well.
Opportunity makes thieves, as the Germans say. You’re using an organisation with close to zero effective oversight, that is without exaggeration a law to itself, and which for political reasons has many staff from really corrupt countries as an example of corruption. The UN is not clean and no one who knows anything about it thinks it’s clean.
For similar reasons aid organisations are also not paragons of probity. They work in poor, corrupt countries and they have access to both budgets and people who are willing and eager to get some of that money by helping them defraud their employers.
What does this prove about corruption in more developed countries? Either very little or that systems are important.
In Sweden your political career can end for putting hundreds of dollars of private expenses on a ministerial card.
And petty corruption in either country is much less than anything aid workers deal with regularly, basically absent. Living in China has made me far more cynical and accepting of the fact that corruption happens all the time but I know perfectly well that petty corruption is very limited in Ireland, my home country.
Interference in civil service exams or school leaving exams is unremarkable in China and would bring down a government in Ireland.
The difference in corruption between developed, developing and undeveloped countries is so large that it’s not just a difference in quantity but in kind.
> The difference in corruption between developed, developing and undeveloped countries is so large that it’s not just a difference in quantity but in kind.
Uhm, yes. The more money at stake, the higher the "quantity"; I don't argue that because it is obvious and irrelevant. The ~"difference in kind" is what I was pointing out.
Nope, the real money is with %. States, even poorer one have billion dollar budgets. But even the favorite contractors, after dividing the money as per instructions, have to spend money on reelecting Dear Leader. They established autocracies get complacent and sloppy and don't care to launder the money. Who's gonna check? A smart way would be to bill for consulting /subcontracting work and pay taxes on that
It's not that the 1st world is less corrupt, it's just that some schemes are more evolved.