Do you want a recipe for a thoroughly corrupt state?
Here you go.
To begin with, let’s understand what the essence is. punishments The essence of punishment for a crime lies in making the harm to the criminal from the committed offense unacceptably disadvantageous compared to the benefits gained from committing the crime. Of course, this assumes that the criminal is caught. Thus, it follows that the less likely it is to catch a criminal, the harsher the punishment should be.
Now, let’s imagine a bureaucrat. The larger the territory or resource he controls, the greater the benefits he gains from corruption. Moreover, the punishment is almost always the same, whether for a “controller” of a small resource or for a “controller” of a large one. Yes, in some countries, corrupt officials, if caught, are executed.
Let’s stretch our imagination once more and consider which official is more likely to get caught red-handed. Is it the one who is very far removed from the resource suppliers, or the one who sees the resource suppliers every day? In other words, there are taxpayers and a minister who manages part of the budget. The further the taxpayers are from the minister, the harder it is to catch the minister taking bribes.
It turns out that for corruption to flourish, a large and unified country is necessary. There needs to be a centralization of power, with money flowing into the center. It should be the case that the local police officer is paid by the Minister of Internal Affairs, rather than by the residents of the area he patrols. The budget should be managed as far away from the taxpayer as possible. And in this country, it’s preferable to have difficulties with communication and transportation—so that traveling from one end of the country to the center becomes a challenge. The recipe is complete.
After creating the necessary conditions for the flourishing of corruption, everything else will follow automatically and in a well-trodden manner: power will become less accessible to the people and increasingly opaque. Laws cease to function. A certain “elite” forms, which is, in reality, just a tightly-knit circle of like-minded individuals who have built an iron curtain around themselves. There is a final detachment of power from the taxpayers who, at one time, essentially hired it.
And what’s worse is that there is no non-violent way out of this vicious circle.