[thatcat]

Would you say the scarcity is what starts the corruption?

Like you can't get a plumber so you have to use your personal network or there aren't enough tickets so you have to obtain one through your personal network, etc?

[pixl97]

It's probably better to look at a system wide level than any one shortage. For example is there no plumbers because school loans to learn apprenticeship were robbed by the rich, and the actual plumbers aren't able to get more licenses because of the graft they' have to pay for an additional one.

It's never just one thing.

[btilly]

This kind of corrruption goes as far back as we can find records.

I think that the real question is not how the corruption started. But, rather, how in some places rule of law came to be established instead.

That said, I don't have a good answer to that question either.