Post AcdGBbK4hv7dGePUdU by kravietz@agora.echelon.pl
 (DIR) More posts by kravietz@agora.echelon.pl
 (DIR) Post #AcdGBbK4hv7dGePUdU by kravietz@agora.echelon.pl
       2023-12-09T11:57:34.462863Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       #Ukraine National Agency for Countering Corruption (NAZK) summarized polls where 17% Ukrainians reported being impacted by corruption, reminding that in 2019 that indicator was 27% and in 2010 — 60%.  https://zn.ua/ukr/anticorruption/u-nazk-zaj...Note that corruption is a very complex social phenomenon. A popular whataboutism wisdom is that "corruption is everywhere". This is a half truth:  rigging a road construction tender to be 10% more expensive to benefit a chosen company of course is corruption, and is present in EU and elsewhere.But the corruption we're talking about in the context of Eastern Europe is however a completely different experience: imagine a construction tender where the road is never really built, but "on paper" it's not only first-class asphalt road but also with annual maintenance budget, repainting of markings, snow removal etc, where in reality it's an old gravel track. That's a real example, from Russia in this particular case.We're talking about an omnipotent culture of bribery, where people from position of power extort bribes from you at school, hospitals, roads, government offices and everywhere else. Poland had this first-hand, but now it's mostly gone. It took 10-20 years to eradicate this kind of aggressive bribery. The worst thing is that its overwhelming character makes it an individual heroism to refuse giving bribes: not only you're bullied by the officials, but your relatives look at you like some kind of idiot who "doesn't understand the world".As I was driving through Ukraine periodically between 2002 and 2020, there was a slow but consistent improvement and I'm pretty confident Ukraine will join EU not worse and likely better than Poland or Romania was in 2004 when they joined.
       
 (DIR) Post #AcdJP4ym3Yvss9Z7Xk by slaeg@mastodon.online
       2023-12-09T12:12:02Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @kravietz I share your assessment of this.Ukrainian friends have explained it to me in a generational context; whereas the grandfather's generation had to pay bribes all the time ie to receive medical treatment at the hospital, the father's generation would encounter it regularly but not always, and today's generation meet it rarely and often just refuse and find it deeply unacceptable.
       
 (DIR) Post #AcdK6Q7tJ9nGuXUqIq by kravietz@agora.echelon.pl
       2023-12-09T12:41:27.076215Z
       
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       @slaeg100% experience of Poland, except I saw that generational change first hand :)
       
 (DIR) Post #AcdP13gfo8wPdm1oBs by jrychter@mastodon.social
       2023-12-09T13:34:00Z
       
       1 likes, 1 repeats
       
       @kravietz Having visited Bulgaria and Hungary and compared them to Poland, I am now firmly convinced that corruption is one of the biggest things that can seriously harm development. It does damage in many ways and on many levels, directly and indirectly.Fighting corruption is one of the most important things that can be done to help a country develop quickly.Poland is far form perfect, but seemed to have done much better than some other former-communist-bloc neighbors.
       
 (DIR) Post #Acf5h1u9DTgZVUzEGG by bluGill@kbin.social
       2023-12-10T01:52:26+00:00
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @jrychter@kravietz most people agree until they discover the corruption is helping them.