Poverty and Corruption

"Addressing corruption" ALONE without understanding that IT IS NOT THE ROOT CAUSE and thus not addressing the REAL ROOT CAUSE which is wrong economic policies means you will NEVER really get rid of corruption.

Corruption is actually the result of people trying to cope with a lousy economic system which makes it harder for them to meet their basic needs. However, corruption then feeds back into a feedback loop that exacerbates the lousiness of the economic system and creates a vicious cycle.

Singapore's success resulted from tackling the root causes --- by ensuring the rapid creation of employment opportunities and being very business-friendly AND ALSO stamping out corruption through penalties and a hard-nosed stance towards it.

Tackling corruption alone without them fixing their economic policies to improve the jobs situation and develop the economy wouldn't have been sustainable as it would be the equivalent of simply swatting flies but not getting rid of the nearby garbage accumulation. The way to get rid of flies is to make sure you do not have an accumulation of garbage nearby. (Singapore has collection of garbage EVERYDAY, so nowhere do you have any accumulation of garbage anywhere which end up becoming breeding grounds for flies --- as a result, you don't even need to swat flies in Singapore because there are none found anywhere)

When you successfully fix the lousy economic system and thus make it easier for ordinary people to earn a real living wage - including government workers/civil servants/public servants -- then corruption will go down naturally. And when the corruption level is low enough, it becomes much easier to clamp down on the few remaining cases that exist by making detailed investigation and harshly penalizing those few ones caught. This is what Singapore did.

But if you do not recognize that WRONG ECONOMIC POLICIES and the WRONG ECONOMIC SYSTEM are the real root causes and thus do not address those, and then you try to clamp down on Corruption, thinking that Corruption per se is the one and only one main root cause, you will end up very very very very disappointed because there will be hundreds of thousands of corrupt people and only a handful of people dedicated to investigating and catching corrupt people. If the society has a very flawed economic system that makes it harder for people to make a decent living, if you catch one corrupt person, another person will take his/her place. In the end, the problem never gets solved.

People will continue to resort to corruption if the lousy economic system is still in place because for them, corruption really is nothing but a coping mechanism for them to try to improve their economic standing.

Singapore didn't get rid of their flies and mosquitoes by getting everyone to swat them all...

Instead, Singapore got rid of their flies and mosquitoes by making sure that flies and mosquitoes do not get to breed at all in any places near human settlements. They make sure there is no accumulation of garbage anywhere by collecting garbage very frequently (everyday) so no flies breed, and they make sure there is no stagnant water anywhere near human settlements to prevent mosquitoes from breeding. And as a last precaution, they then do regular fumigation just to make sure flies and mosquitoes that are in the area get exterminated.

This is the mentality we all need to get: GO TO THE SOURCE.

Corruption is not the source. Corruption is a symptom that feeds back into a vicious cycle. Lousy economic policies that make it hard for ordinary people to make a decent living IS THE SOURCE. Tackle that, and corruption will go down by itself. Then the few remaining corruption cases will be so few and so much easier to handle that no one will dare to be corrupt.

That's how it works..

-Orion Perez D. Co-Founder of CoRRECT Movement