How does corruption actually destroy countries, especially developing countries ?
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A lot of the answers here are focusing on material and economic corruption, which is 100% the case. The more corruption you have, the less money actually go to what its intended for, and therefore services and infrastructure is ‘hollowed out’, as roads, education, utilities, healthcare, and so on, is failing.
But there’s also an important sociological aspect to why corruption is bad. Essentially, what makes countries work is that people have a broad feeling of ‘belonging’. You identify as part of that country and its culture, and you want to support it. This goes all the way from rooting for the national team, to being willing to fight and die to defend your country. It also means you’re (somewhat) willing to pay taxes, and generally abide by the rules and norms.
However, if you keep seeing money being stolen by a corrupt government, or the police and legal system only benefitting the elite. Or if you see members of certain families or klans being given hand outs for no reason – then you can quickly loose that feeling. And then there’s not far to go before you start stealing or cheating yourself, because ‘thats what everyone does’.
This can quickly spiral out of control, and soon you’ll have a country where the social order has broken down, and everyone is just fending for themselves.
Enter the multinational oil companies….
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