[pclmulqdq]

Even in places that have reasonably good and democratic government, officials take bribes. This happens in Italy, Greece, Spain, India, and many more (almost all of South and Central America). The US and UK are pretty unique in that they aggressively prevent low-level corruption.

[notch656a]

Stopping low-level corruption while allowing high-level corruption to pass through (i.e. with high-dollar lobbying) is IMO less democratic than at least letting those with less money buy off at least their small part of government to let them do what the high-dollar people tried to outlaw.

[bigbacaloa]

There is no routine bribe paying in Spain. What occurs is similar to what occurs in the US - bribes to get government contracts. Day to day bribes are unheard of and Spain is no more corrupt than the US in that sense (in fact, probably less so - I know of people having to pay small "fees" at a county sheriff's office to get some routine document processed).

[jstarfish]

Fees paid for document processing are annoying and regressive but are not bribes.

They are there to stop you from wasting department resources with requests for 500,000,000 copies of an incident report whose content you disagree with.

[bigbacaloa]

I said "fee" not fee ... This was a cut and dried under the table twenty dollars to get someonw to do something ...

[williamcotton]

Motte: All governments are like criminal organizations.

Bailey: Even some Western governments have issues with low-level corruption.

[pclmulqdq]

Umm... those are two completely different statements, not a Motte and Bailey fallacy. I am happy to defend my position that governments use force the same way mobs do, but they give you more of a say in how the force can be used and they give you some written protections (that they are happy to infringe when convenient).

Also, I never said that we would be better off with a despot or a gang or anything of the sort, as the original reply tried to claim.