This is of course assuming that politicians aren't largely duplicitious and actually believe in a word they say. I grew up in Indonesia, and the number of politicians who were extremely anti-porn getting caught watching porn in parliament is frankly staggering, yet alone the ones who are pro death penalty for drugs caught as being part of massive drug smuggling rings.

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throwaway2037 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You raise an interesting point: One question that I think about developing countries: Most of them have higher perception of corruption compared to highly developed (OECD) nations. How do countries realistically reduce corruption? Korea went from an incredibly poor country in 1960 to a wealthy country in 2010. I am sure they dramatically reduced corruption over this time period... but how? Another example, in the 1960s/1970s, Hongkong dramatically increased the pay for civil servants (including police officers) to reduce corruption. (It worked, mostly.)

	▲	K0balt 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I live in a developing country. What I find is that the corruption is generally easier to navigate here that it was in the USA. The corruption in the USA is much more entrenched, in the form of regulatory capture. At the local level this can look like a local ordinance where “only a contractor with xy and z (only one of which is needed for the job) can bid, favoring a specific contractor. Here you just figure out compliance with the person in charge.