Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/02/27/corruption-perception-index-20.html
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Maybe corruption is the default.
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“May or may not work?” Do you not have a Preview feature?
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Is there a reason a navigational map was used to show this data?
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So perception is reality? I’ll have you know there is no corruption in the US. We’re just Making America Great Again.
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It’s my perception that the US is less corrupt than many other countries at lower levels - you don’t have to bribe a DMV clerk to get a driver’s license, for example - but very corrupt at the highest levels, with huge-money donors basically buying Congressional votes and the like
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Pennsylvania’s auto inspection system used to be third-world level corrupt, but I don’t know if it is anymore.
My sister could go to a reputable shop for her yearly inspection, and the mechanic would find something to charge her for ($300 for rust removal and manifold cleaning, ma’am, or no sticker for you!) or I could take her car to a shop where the counterman had grease under his fingernails, and just pay a bribe small fee to get the sticker. The inspection would consist of glancing out the window. Uh, I mean, that’s what I heard.
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Or maybe he just used the right combination of threats and bribes on the people who oversee the corruption index.
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MO has a similar system and it’s used to prey on people who aren’t willing to challenge it.
I had my car inspected and they found ~$1500 worth of things I had to fix to pass inspection, and another $1500 optional things.
Well, I had a mechanic friend help me change break pads, but he said the other two things on the list looked fine to him. So I am taking it to another place for the 2nd inspection and expect it to probably pass (A place that doesn’t normally offer the services the other place offers.)
Still - it was unsettling and stressful before I realized half the things they saw as problems weren’t a problem, and the cost to fix the one thing that for sure was a problem wasn’t that hard or expensive.
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100% agree with your question. I can think of many ways that would be better. One of those cool maps where the country area is proportional to its population would work better. Lots and lots of graphical options, too. e.g. Bubble chart with index on the x-axis, bubble area proportional to population, gdp per capita on the y-axis. Colour for some sort of measure of wealth inequality like a Gini #?. The correlation between poverty and corruption would be interesting. Just spitballing…
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If so, then the willingness of any given government to keep it in check is clearly not. Looking at the list, there seems to be a lot of correlation between governments that see the citizenry as masters to be served and those that see them as sheep to be shorn. The U.S. is slowly trending toward the latter direction.
One concern in the U.S. is that many of those big-money donors are focusing on ways to privatise lower-level bureaucracies, opening the door to bribery and other petty corruption that’s currently difficult with state and federal employees.
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We do have a preview feature, but rinky dinky off brand embeds tend to vanish as time goes by. Hell, most old youtubes we embed are dead.
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We prefer the terms “disincentives and incentives.”
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There was this one tiny mechanics shop north of San Francisco which was rumored around my office to pass every vehicle inspected.
I think california (or maybe this was illinois??) had a system of separation between places that only did the inspections and places that did the repairs. You actually could not get your car inspected initially at the repair places, or something like that. I found this annoying at the time, but perhaps it is needed to avoid it turning into a protection racket.
However, I’m not sure that some of these things would show up as ‘corruption’, partly because its not government officials doing it. Its more like fraud enabled by a regulation. It may well be counted, its certainly essentially the same from the point of view of an individual.
The best emissions inspection regime I have ever experienced was the one in Washington state 15 years ago. The state ran the inspection places. You showed up without an appointment, paid your little fee and they gave you the inspection sheet with all the numbers on it. It was privatized somewhat later. Cost more, you needed an appointment, the sheet didn’t have the numbers anymore, the employees were a bit more surly (probably paid less). In either case inspection was completely separate from any repair. Even privatized this is the way to do it, making the whole thing a little add on business for mechanics is really dumb.
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If so enter advanced settings and uncheck the curruption option.
Don’t forget to save afterwards.
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The state runs the inspection process in Delaware. The quality and level of corruption have fluctuated throughout my lifetime, but there’s never been a built-in economic incentive to shake people down for unnecessary repairs. Right now the facilities are all pretty new and work pretty well to purpose.*
When I was 18 you’d stand** in line in a smelly, dirty building for hours to be verbally abused by an attendant who was a relative of a state senator and thus untouchable, but just providing adequate staffing and facilities seems to have fixed the attitude problem the state’s appointees used to be famous for.
* live video feeds.
** there were some chairs, stained and stale with ancient bodily fluids, that occasionally people got desperate enough to use.
My brother once went to one of the smaller African countries to investigate corruption. They found much less corruption than they expected which should have been good news, but sadly they also found that people perceived corruption to be rampant so everyone refused to pay taxes anyway.
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At least they go through the motions. Indiana doesn’t have any inspections, they just make you do an emissions check because the feds forced them
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Even a geographical map would be fine, just one that shows a decent overview of the entire world, rather than one that deforms everything except direction. Mercator is fine for detail and navigation, but not as a general world map.
Just about every place I’ve lived and owned a car, this is the case. There are government inspection agencies and private mechanic shops to fix any problems found. It seems like a no-brainer to me organize things like this. Maybe it’s only countries that embrace capitalism to the extreme that would consider allowing private mechanics to do their own inspections?
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