Category: citizens

Corruption Is A Weed That Is Not Easily Removed

“Invasive, resilient, and growing back sometimes stronger if not pulled out or removed completely, corruption is a weed that is not easily removed from society. Corruption has occurred throughout human systems at different levels throughout history since the dawn of mankind.”

Invasive, resilient, and growing back sometimes stronger if not pulled out or removed completely, corruption is a weed that is not easily removed from society. Corruption has occurred throughout human systems at different levels throughout history since the dawn of mankind. It’s a recurring feature that comes up across the world with examples ranging from post-Soviet oligarchies to Latin American caudillismo to modern lobbying culture without imposed limits or oversight mechanisms.

Corruption has different forms that emerge depending on the permissiveness of both the individual culture and its society. While corruption can’t be permanently eradicated, it must be confronted and diminished as much as possible by both citizens and leaders. A mature society recognizes the existential risk involved in how corruption can permeate a community, a society, a government, and how it must be pruned as much as possible with legal and rule-based consequences.

In my definition of corruption, it’s more than just outright bribery, grift, or stealing, it’s systematic decay in the forms it can take such as persistent favoritism, nepotism, cronyism, apathy, and moral erosion when there are no consequences for breaking the law or not obeying the rules of society. There are psychological roots involved in how corruption first gets planted as a root when greed, survival instinct, permissiveness from the society, and peer pressure takes hold since “everyone else is doing it” and “there won’t be any consequences for me” for flouting the rules or laws on the books that are supposed to stop it. There is fertile soil in any society for corruption to grow and spread as a ‘weed’ when institutions are weak, unresponsive, or don’t push back, transparency is low or non-existent, and accountability is rare for leaders and citizens.

Some examples of corruption digging in are when local or national officials enrich themselves from public projects or are enriched personally from private or backroom deals. They are involved personally in these same deals when they hold public office and do not separate their public role from their private life, which causes obvious conflict of interest issues. In the corporate world, when lobbying is not curtailed or regulated where it turns into legalized bribery. Unlimited money from a company given to a politician or a community leader to influence their decision-making is corrupt in nature, especially when this kind of ‘donation’ is not disclosed to the public. This kind of pervasiveness can spread to everyday life where the average citizen sees that those in power or who have wealth are getting away with the corruption and are not being held accountable. Possibly, you can see certain citizens cutting corners, committing nepotism, or looking the other way in response instead of pushing back and calling for accountability.

There need to be constant ‘gardeners’ on watch who need to get their hands involved to weed out the corruption in their society. Whether it’s civil society actors like journalists, whistleblowers, or reformers, they have a role to play especially when leaders or public officials do not hold themselves accountable. Backlash, burnout, and even threats to their lives are constant risks for these ‘gardeners’ but in a corrupt society, their role becomes increasingly important specifically when dismantling civil society becomes one of the goals of corrupt leadership. However, if society keeps rewarding or ignoring corruption taking place and the soil for it is fertile, then there is only so much that whistleblowers or journalists can do to stem the tide of corruption. The best the ‘gardeners’ can do is bring the corruption to light and to release the papers, reports, and evidence so that the public, likely unknown to them, just what is being done behind closed doors.

Sometimes, corruption is not limited to one leader but rather they can spawn a cascading effect as once it takes place with one central leader, his or her influence within a cabinet, an agency, or an entire government leads to the ‘hydra effect’ where it’s becomes beyond just one person and is institutionalized. Corruption becomes more than just a one-off event or about one leader, it becomes part of the culture itself, and this is when it becomes hardest to bring to light or to remove it easily from the wider society. Societies sometimes are complicit in their comfort with the level of corruption they are willing to tolerate and prefer the “devil they know” to how the system could be possibly change for the better. When you think of some examples here, the Italian mafia interlaced with the politics of the country post-WWII, when you hear of past political leaders in Colombia or Mexico who had known ties to drug gangs and cartels, or when lobbying becomes a revolving door between government and industry in the United States, that’s when it becomes embedded in the institutions themselves and is hard to remove like a cancer.

Technology can both help and hinder corruption as a double-edged sword depending on how it is used by the individual and the institution. It can either lead to more transparency by sharing instances of corruption more widely with citizens and being able to gather evidence to share with more reporting outlets. It can also lead to more digital forms of corruption that are becoming common like crypto scams, online pyramid schemes, and surveillance tools used against whistleblowers and activists. Also, illicit money including use of bogus cryptocurrencies can move faster and be dispersed faster than laws and regulations on the book can track or pinpoint the money laundering origin. Corrupt actors will also use online sources of information to promote disinformation, attack opponents with false information, or flood the zone with different orders and actions that could be considered corrupt, but for which takes time to track, to respond to, and to bring a case against in a court of law.

Nations can still control or minimize corruption through using their institutions’ digital systems in the modern age to counteract the growth of corruption because of the cyber world with their own digital tools. Whether its transparency laws on the books, or secure data regulations (the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), these institutional tools recently developed can help assist in the fight against corruption online. Strengthening an independent judiciary or legislative body is also key to push back against overreach by executive power.

Legislating for stronger whistleblower protections as well as removing threats against civil society are other ways to stem the tide of corrupt actors from lashing out against accountability measures. Another key component that relates to preventing corruption from reaching the average citizen is encouraging more civic education about how to prevent or remove it from society by focusing on trust-building within different communities including having town halls, open hearing and sessions by government officials, and encouraging public input on referendums, propositions, and leadership matters such as term limits for politicians. It’s no secret that more developed nations in Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway), Singapore, and in Oceania (Australia, New Zealand) have strict enforcement measures against corruption. In these countries, there is high trust in institutions, transparency in government actions, and social shame for citizens who engage in corruption or encourage corrupt behaviors.

The roots of corruption are there in each one of us and it’s not just out there as a distant term that applies to only the rich and powerful who are affected by its presence. How we conduct ourselves and how we relate to others has a direct impact on the kind of society you live in. When small personal compromises like lying, favoritism, or abuse of power take root, they spread throughout society little by little. “Weed management starts in your own garden” so if you want to fight corruption, hold yourself to a high standard and don’t engage at all with those people you may encounter in life who have acted corruptly or encourage it in your society.

The fight against corruption is also about the fight against one’s ego or greed or appetite for power or influence. Corruption, while it can’t be 100% eradicated, it can be minimized and kept under tight controls with constant vigilance by both the individual and the institution. It’s not just “liberty that requires our constant vigilance” as abolitionist Wendell Phillips once wrote in 1952 but also about maintaining our integrity and preventing others from falling into corrupt practices. Societies that understand the existential threat of corruption and how endless yet necessary the work of ‘weeding’ it out will be are the ones that will prosper, be just, and keep the weeds at bay.

Gross Domestic Product v. Gross National Happiness

“Most of us know what Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is having learned it at some point in high school or in college. The total value of all finished goods, products, and services produced within a country’s borders over a specific time period such as a quarter (three months) or a year. Economists commonly use GDP as a model for economic health when it comes to an individual country.”

Most of us know what Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is having learned it at some point in high school or in college. The total value of all finished goods, products, and services produced within a country’s borders over a specific time period such as a quarter (three months) or a year. Economists commonly use GDP as a model for economic health when it comes to an individual country. If GDP grows positively or increases over time, then generally you could assume that the economy is doing well or is at least maintaining its equilibrium. However, when the GDP of a country is declining or has been stagnant for multiple years, economists are likely to assume there is a problem of some sort.

There are economic terms related to Gross Domestic Product as a recession (two straight quarters of negative GDP growth) leading to an economy to contract rather than grow. We also know of an economic depression where an economy contracts for years and is often associated with double-digit negative growth and/or high unemployment, inflation rates. What is less talked about is how do we measure the health and well-being of citizens within a country’s borders.

What other measurement besides GDP could measure a country on a national scale? While GDP measures the economic health, the actually mental health of a country’s citizens has been measured by a little-known survey conducted by the small land-locked, mountainous country of Bhutan, which is a Buddhist kingdom that is located at the eastern part of the Himalaya mountains. This national survey is given out only every five years to the citizens of Bhutan, of which there are only 750,000 people living in the small country. Instead of a simple 0 to 10 survey on if you are happy on a scale, the survey is quite comprehensive in its questions.

The government of Bhutan asks over 300 questions in the survey and can take multiple hours to complete. Questions are compensated a day’s working wage to answer the questions and it strives to measure all forms of human capital and not just the economic capital measured by GDP. The survey has nine different domains, 33 social indicators, and hundreds of variables. The categories of the survey include education, health, culture, time use, psychological well-being, community development, environmental practices, and overall living standards. This GNH survey has become a cornerstone of Bhutan’s presence on the world stage and has gained notoriety since it was introduced in 1998 as a form of alternative human development.

About 8,000 households in Bhutan answer the survey every five years, which is conducted by the Centre for Bhutan Studies and GNH research. Questions can range from being general about prayer and/or meditation habits to being specific about if you ‘trust your neighbors’ to if you ‘fight with your family at all.’ The measuring of the country’s happiness began in 1972 when the fourth king of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, declared that the “Gross National Happiness is more important than gross domestic product” for the country.

Bhutan has seen numerous changes over almost fifty years since the movement towards measuring GNH began. The same king helped ensure a parliamentary democracy was established in 2008 with the constitution and political reforms putting him in a more ceremonial role. Bhutan has strived to actually use the survey to help improve certain aspects of the lives of its citizens such as having free education, health care, and getting electricity at no extra cost. Bhutan’s new democracy is messy like any young democracy would be, but Bhutan is known for attracting increased numbers of tourists before the COVID-19 pandemic began and for being largely self-sufficient in terms of food production and for being a peaceful, inwardly looking nation.

The concept of Gross National Happiness is related to the country’s prominent religion of Buddhism with the focus on being content with less, not being so concerned with materialism or economic gains, and to be calm, cool, and collected when facing life’s many challenges. Seeking harmony with one’s friends, family, and neighbors is also another key part of the GNH survey. Bhutan is a beautiful, land-locked country, which has provided its citizens with a number of basic needs such as education, health care, and peaceful relations with its neighbors with having a smaller GDP than many other nations.

The paradox of a country such as Bhutan is that it may be the only country to internally measure happiness in some formal way, but it still ranks in the median in terms of national happiness by outside surveys. Norway was ranked 1st by the United Nation in its 2020 World Happiness Report, which had a different format and questioning style than Bhutan’s, but for which is a relatively new kind of survey that Bhutan’s GNH survey helped to inspire. While Norway topped the list, Bhutan ranked 97th out of the 153 nations surveyed, which may not inspire much confidence, but the country does face ongoing challenges especially with its GDP.

Bhutan ranks as a ‘least developed’ country by the United Nations and is dealing with the effects of climate change, high income inequality, increasing youth unemployment, and an uncertain energy future due to the effects of environmental degradation. Bhutan’s GDP is only $2.2 billion and while material wealth and economic growth are not integral to the GNH survey, it likely has a role to play in affecting the happiness of its citizens.

The 2015 GNH Survey by Bhutan reported that “91.2% of people reported experiencing happiness, and 43.4% of people said that they are deeply happy.” From my reading of the survey, Bhutan is committed to improving the happiness of its people by having such an insightful and detailed survey and while their national happiness has room for improvement, they have taken that crucial first step to actually evaluating if its citizens are happy or not, which is quite unique when compared to other nations around the world.

The first step to solving the problem is realizing there is one. If a country focuses only on GDP as a measure not only for economic health but for the health of their citizens in other ways, then they are making a false dichotomy. Economies are naturally going to rise and fall in growth rates but the same can be said of people’s own happiness over time. The key is to first be aware of how happy people are by having a comprehensive yet accessible way to measure that elusive emotion as best as you can. Bhutan is a model for not seeing only its Gross Domestic Product as a sign of national progress.

Any nation can be wealthy and still be extremely unhappy and a nation can be poor but still be happy. The same could be also for a poor nation being unhappy as a rich nation being very happy. The key to 21st century economics will be to figure out how to find that balance between economic success and people’s happiness. You can have the average citizen make a lot of money and be considered a ‘success’ but what if the schools in their town are lousy, the health care is too expensive and of low quality, and the community is distrustful of one another.

Bhutan has taken the initiative as a country for seeing happiness as being an important part of a nation’s well-being, which can be measured in various ways. While their GDP is very small, they recognize that economic growth is not simply everything that a country should be known for. If you have a certain amount of money in the economy, where are you putting the national product towards? How will you know how to spend the money gained from your citizens through taxes without knowing what their grievances are and what they unhappy with?

Having Gross National Happiness be part of a country’s consciousness involves asking difficult yet necessary questions from the population on different aspects of their lives. Bhutan has taken that crucial step towards asking their citizens what they are happy with, what they are not happy with, and what could be improved in their lives. When you have that necessary information coming in, the government can then take steps to allocate the tax money and other revenue they have available to put it towards where its’ needed most. If government services need to be improved, they’ll know from their citizenry that it’s a priority. If living standards need to be improved such as providing more housing, better food, or less pollution, they will have that awareness from knowing more from the GNH data that they are receiving.

Lastly, a government like Bhutan’s can work closely with the parliament, civil servants, non-governmental organizations, and civil society leaders to take the survey’s results and work together on a common set of facts and figures to start to improve the country in needed areas where people are unhappy about. If other governments can learn from Bhutan when it comes to Gross National Happiness, it’s that it can be measured from your citizens in a comprehensive way and that each government can learn from its citizens how their people’s lives can be improved and in what ways beyond just how much money their people are producing each year.

Sources:

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/12/584481047/the-birthplace-of-gross-national-happiness-is-growing-a-bit-cynical

https://www.grossnationalhappiness.com

https://www.happiness-report.s3.amazonaws.com/2020/WHR20.pdf