Something in our water?
Our other poll has closed and the results are a little surprising, and unfortunately very discouraging. We know of course given the small number of respondents and no way to verify how the voting took place, these results are only indicative, but if these figures were representative, it would suggest that those who responded believe that given the current level of enforcement, they are more than happy to engage in corruption.
Consider our earlier poll where we said that there was no way in which you would get caught accepting a $200,000.00 bribe, and only 57% were willing to participate. Now if you had notice the earlier poll, there was a hint of a question of principles or moral values playing a role in one's answer because the preceding posting highlighted it. In the second poll, this was deliberately left out so that people were more or less free to choose, without the moral issue to 'cloud' their decision. The staggering 97% of individuals who said they are more than happy to accept a bribe given the current level of enforcement in Brunei - higher than the earlier poll suggest one possibility - the mention of Brunei and its enforcement is somehow enough to push more people to engage in corruption.
Why is this, we ask? One possibility is that somehow some pre-existing condition within our economy or society is encouraging people to engage in corruption, i.e. perhaps within our own mindset, too many people engage in corruption and get away with it that we should all engage in it, i.e. in this so called game (as the economist puts it) the losers are those who fail to engage in corruption, while the winners are those who engage in it and get away relatively scot free.
This is only a theory, and as we said, the poll is hardly scientific, but it does allow us to look at corruption from all perspective and start a fruitful debate over the issue. It should be worrying enough that 97% are willing to accept bribes for us to actually discuss and debate on how to tackle this issue.
Our other poll has closed and the results are a little surprising, and unfortunately very discouraging. We know of course given the small number of respondents and no way to verify how the voting took place, these results are only indicative, but if these figures were representative, it would suggest that those who responded believe that given the current level of enforcement, they are more than happy to engage in corruption.
Consider our earlier poll where we said that there was no way in which you would get caught accepting a $200,000.00 bribe, and only 57% were willing to participate. Now if you had notice the earlier poll, there was a hint of a question of principles or moral values playing a role in one's answer because the preceding posting highlighted it. In the second poll, this was deliberately left out so that people were more or less free to choose, without the moral issue to 'cloud' their decision. The staggering 97% of individuals who said they are more than happy to accept a bribe given the current level of enforcement in Brunei - higher than the earlier poll suggest one possibility - the mention of Brunei and its enforcement is somehow enough to push more people to engage in corruption.
Why is this, we ask? One possibility is that somehow some pre-existing condition within our economy or society is encouraging people to engage in corruption, i.e. perhaps within our own mindset, too many people engage in corruption and get away with it that we should all engage in it, i.e. in this so called game (as the economist puts it) the losers are those who fail to engage in corruption, while the winners are those who engage in it and get away relatively scot free.
This is only a theory, and as we said, the poll is hardly scientific, but it does allow us to look at corruption from all perspective and start a fruitful debate over the issue. It should be worrying enough that 97% are willing to accept bribes for us to actually discuss and debate on how to tackle this issue.
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