One might be forgiven for believing that the world has gotten
more corrupt recently. We have always suspected, often with good evidence, that
politicians were corrupt, but in recent years we have found out that teachers
and schools are corrupt (faking test results to make the school look better, and most recently, covering up sexual abuse to preserve the school's image),
brokerage firms are corrupt (running some of the largest Ponzi schemes ever), and
even banks, those institutions who embody and depend entirely upon trust, are
corrupt (most recently tinkering with interbank loan rates to protect their own
investments).
But are people really more corrupt than in the past, or is it
just that the rapid news cycle of the internet has made the existing corruption
more obvious? I suspect we as a nation are (a) no more corrupt than we have
ever been, but (b) more corrupt in general throughout society than we would
like to admit. Like Victorians who were
prudish about sex in public but pretty licentious in private, I suspect
corruption, much it relatively minor but nevertheless corruption, exists at all
levels, from the CEOs who arrange cozy deals with their boards to be overpaid
through midlevel staff who pad their expense accounts to union workers who see
to it that new members don’t hang more sheetrock per day than the union “limit”.
What is different about American corruption is that we seem to have
found ways to be more “genteel” about it, so that it seems more socially
acceptable. Our politicians are less
likely to accept cash in brown bags than to accept cushy jobs after they leave
public service from companies whose contracts they controlled while in office.
Our bankers are less likely to steal directly from customer accounts than to
fiddle the books (or the rates) to cover their own trading losses. Our teachers
are less likely to change test grades to make themselves look better than to
simply teach to the test in the first place.
Contrast this with places like Afghanistan and Iraq, where billions
of America (taxpayer) dollars have gone missing, some of it quite literally taken
right off the backs of the trucks taking it to the banks (and why, one might well
ask, is no one in the American government ever held accountable for this?).
Still, the scale of corruption exposed in recent years is
worrying. For a society like ours that depends ultimately upon trade and
commerce for its economic vitality, trust is essential and corruption at any
level is ultimately a drag on the economy.
Considering the problems we now face in our economy, I guess we had
better start paying more attention to the endemic corruption, genteel as it may be.
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