Yesterday on the plane ride back to Dallas, I noticed a young man, maybe 30, take a seat behind me as we were boarding. I noticed him because he was reading "The Tibetan Book of the Dead." After we got underway, the older couple sitting next to him in the row struck up a conversation. He told them he is a Brazilian, and that he was in New York on business. He explained that he'd just opened an art gallery in Brazil. The older couple praised Brazil.
"Well, we've got a lot of problems," the Brazilian said.
"Oh, we've got a lot of problems here too," said the older woman, a distinct note of social anxiety in her voice.
"Yes, but you handle them differently," said the Brazilian. "I really admire America. When you have a problem, like a politician taking bribes, and people find out about it, they aren't satisfied to live with it. They take action until the problem is solved. It's not like that in Brazil. We have a lot of corruption, and people either don't want to know about it, or they figure they can't do anything about it anyway, because that's how life is. People are very passive. It's not like in your country."
The Brazilian lowered his voice a bit, making it more difficult for me to eavesdrop. I think he started to talk about the difficulties of getting his business off the ground, with regard to bribing the right officials, and so forth. I couldn't see the faces of any of these people, because they were right behind me. But I noticed the Americans got quiet after that. I think they were embarrassed. I wish the Brazilian had been sitting next to me. I would have liked to have talked this out with him, and tried to figure out what cultural factors led to the passivity of the Brazilians in the face of corruption, and compared that with the relative passivity of Louisianians (compared to most other Americans) in the face of same.
I know it's an age-old topic, but why are cultures in or derived from northern Europe less tolerant of corruption than cultures in or derived from southern Europe?
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To find out where corruption is hidden, you must investigate, monitor. Mr. Madoff has been freely stealing money in Wall Street and your authorities hasn't disclosed him. You won't punish corrupts if you don't search for them: that's obvious. I assure you that in Brazil the financial authorities are much more efficient in monitor and punish such corruption cases like we've seen in Wall Street. There's not been such large-scales corruption cases like Enron or Madoff in all Brazilian history.
Hey guys,
I've seen a lot of prejudice in your opinions. "(They're also kinda dark and greasy)" is a unaceptable offense, don't you think so? Remember you Americans are not perfect. Mr. Maddoff has bribed a lot of SEC's authorities in Wall Street - otherwise how could he perpetrate such a crime for decades? You American prefer to lie to yourselves that your country is corruption free - so go ahead. Mr. Franklin Evans wisely wrote about unabated corruption which is manipulated in USA through propaganda. There are thousands of such examples known worldwide.
You American prefer to lie to yourselves that your country is corruption free - so go ahead.
No one's maintained that America is "corruption free." We've been referring to notorious pockets, like Chicago and Louisiana. What we are saying is that the United States is less corrupt than a lot of other places, and that's pretty self-evident. For all the evil someone like Madoff or Blagojevich commit, they're penny ante compared to what you'd find in a place like Brazil or Mexico, where its seems as if every government staffer expects some sort of pay-off as a normal part of doing business..
somebody ought to tell this brazilian guy about Chicago politics. Sure, Blago got picked off, but that's like---one down, 1000 to go, y'know?
why indeed...
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