[distances]

All countries distancing themselves from Russia and aligning with the EU have managed to reduce corruption. It's a winning formula, so will very likely happen with Ukraine too after the corrupting Russian influence is eradicated.

[spwa4]

As someone whose worked as a consultant for the EU for years, eventually realizing who the sales people of my company were (... related to), I wonder what you mean. I really wonder what you mean.

Government spending is how the Brussels economy works (there's technically 11 and in practice about 7 different governments, all of whom have similar needs), and you get government spending assigned to you by "knowing" government deciders ...

[distances]

> I wonder what you mean

I thought I was clear? I mean the western corruption isn't in any shape or form comparable to Russian corruption, and how it pervaded all the Eastern Bloc. It does take long time to root it out, as it affects and degrades the whole society. You really, really can't compare it to what we have in the west, and everybody is better off when they get to escape it.

[owebmaster]

> I mean the western corruption isn't in any shape or form comparable to Russian corruption

Is this good or bad? Is Russian corruption much worse or much better in the Epstein scale of corruption?

[bulbar]

Yes, Russian corruption is much worse. You only know about Epstein because there wasn't enough corruption to hide it indefinitely. Dozens of people where murdered by Putin for merely speaking out against him.

Corruption is also much more normalized in Russia. Bureaucrats will casually take money to work your case faster (or at all). I know that from old friends as they had to bribe people to get their case processed a few years ago (before Russia started the war).

[owebmaster]

The fact that we know about the Epstein cases didn't change a thing, the people are still in power, there is no scenario that could be worse than that. Are you from the US?

[bulbar]

Nope. But I am convinced that human trafficking (young woman as well as children) is a thing in Russia and my guess would be be that its much more wide spread.

[alexgieg]

It helps to understand how Russian-style corruption works.

The system there is entirely hierarchical. Think organized Mafia as seen in movies, but but much wider both vertically and horizontally.

In that system, as an individual, you have only two path in life: poverty no matter your educational level and talent, or having a patron within the corrupt hierarchy.

If you get a patron, your life is going to be good as long as you remain in his good graces, and he remains on the good grades of his patron, and so on, all the way up to Putin. If any link in the chain above you breaks, you're back to poverty. So you now have a whole set of duties toward your entire "clan", starting with your patron and going all the way up.

There's no justice or fairness anywhere in this system, only loyalty, and the ocasional disloyalty disputes as the upper layers fight for domination.

And there's no private property either. All property is Putin's, who grants access to slices of it to his immediate underlings, who in turn grant access to theirs, and so on, until you too get yours. That grant can be revoked at any time, for any reason whatsoever.

Compared to that, corruption in normal countries is extremely simple, generally having one layer or two, not being so comprehensive that it encompasses the whole of society, and not structured in such a way that your life depends on it, to the point that in most countries you can rise and prosper in society without taking part in corruption, even if it's harder to do so.

In Russia and its satellites this simply isn't the case.