How does corruption actually destroy countries, especially developing countries ?
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From a capitalistic point of view, a country grows by producing “value” in some form. Corruption often leads to money that needs to invested into generating value to be used less efficiently and therefore sabotages the growth of the country. This can range from politicians taking the money for themselves to them spending the money in bad ways such as ordering a product from a friend’s company at an elevated price in return for a favour, or for example taking away money from public education for political reasons which then cripples the long-term potential for growth.
Corruption hurts every country, developing or not. I just think corruption is much more widespread in developing countries because these countries are not robust enough to have proper anti-corruption or because the countries are built upon corruption and can therefore no longer work without it.
It doesnt destroy the content, but it weakens the parts that are corrupt.
Say that the ruler installs his brother as the head of emergency response, and then his brother spends most of the money on jet skis and cocaine instead of emergency preparedness. Everything is fine until an earthquake hits, and then the country has no rescue equipment and nobody actually qualified to run the response.
This can lead to especially bad situations with the police and military, and if they become corrupt enough then criminals can essentially take over. Want to run a store, or a restaurant? Make sure to pay (bribe) the local crime syndicate or else they’ll burn your place down.
If enough pieces become thoroughly corrupted, the government basically loses control entirely and you end up with criminals / militias / similar groups running everything from law enforcement to schools, eg the taliban and ISIS, or just terrorizing the people for their own profit.
Let’s take a public school system funded by taxes as an example.
The point of the school system is to educate the people so they become more skilled and competent and will be able to do high skilled jobs which usually generate more money, which in turn gives more money to the country through taxes.
If the country is corrupt and individuals in position of power sneak (steal) money that is supposed to be invested in the school system into their own pockets, this means that the school system will not get enough funding. Overtime, this will hollow out the school system where more and more savings and cost reductions have to be made, and eventually the school system will be very lacking or may collapse entirely.
The effect of this is that the people don’t get educated, meaning they will be unable to gain competence and work high skilled jobs. For the country this means that you will have fewer companies driving innovation and competing on the global market, which in turn means the country will generate less money as a whole, which in turn means less money from taxes.
As a next step, maybe the healthcare will get affected by this as now there isn’t enough money in the school system left to steal, so now they start taking from the healthcare. This leads to the health of the people declining, meaning more and more people get sick and are unable to work as efficiently or for as long, which again results in loss of labour and in turn less money to the state via taxes.
And so the cycle continues to slowly hollow out the country. A hollow system is usually unstable, so with higher corruption you also have higher risk of civil wars, uprisings etc. because people are desperate and the government doesn’t provide or help them. So, instead people will form their own communities or groups to try to take care of themselves.
The very simplified answer is that basically all the money going into the country basically “evaporates” as those in power are able to simply take it for themselves. This creates a problem that cannot be simply solved with more money. Even if a benevolent entity decided to help a poor country by giving them money that money would never get to where it is supposed to. Money for public works and infrastructure ends up in official’s pockets. Money for government institutions and services ends up the same. Any surplus from the economy also inevitably ends up there so worker’s wages remain low. So a rising level of corruption leads to a stagnant economy and ultimately deterioriation of infrastructure as well as government function. A developing nation is basically stalling an unable to grow due to this corruption acting as a parasite to its growth. Eliminating corruption is harder than it sounds, not just because the corrupt are usually also those in power but because it is often multi layered and benefits many people. Sure an elected official may get filthy rich from bribes and siphoning public money away but a regular citizen may also benefit from this status quo, or sometimes even just hope to benefit from it which is enough for them to not want to enact change, which is a long and hard road.
Corruption either happens because someone in government decides money that should have been going to the people is better in their pockets, or that being bribed to vote/act in a way which benefits someone other than the people of that country is the best way to go.
This deprives the citizens of maintained roads, functioning government services (police, post office, etc.), and regulations that can protect them. It’s worse in developing countries because they need these things more.
It destroys countries because it involves people in the government preying on the people (by demanding bribes at every possible opportunity, for example), rather than serving the people
Let’s say you want to build a new street somewhere. Now instead of giving the job to the company that is the best you give the job to the company that gives you the most money for receiving the contract. That company is not gonna do a good job because it doesn’t have to. You’re not gonna complain about them because you’re not interested in having a nice street, you’re just interested in receiving the most money. So the company will build a shitty cheap street that will break after a few years and the process repeats.
Every year you give your country large sums of money to develop things for you as a citizen, to maintain a good level of infra so you can live with dignity, etc.
When someone is corrupt, they take your money but instead of using it for you, they improve things for someone who paid them more. In essence, someone’s cutting in line just because they paid more.
[Rules for Rulers](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs&pp=2AEAkAIB)
While not a DIRECT answer to your question it covers the overall concept of power struggles (and resources) within a government structure. With the info in the video you can easily see how corruption just makes a government more fragile and weak.
The first 3 minutes lays out where corruption fits in the system (how you distribute the wealth you control)
Say a country has $1mil in its budget to build a hospital which should last for 50yrs. A corrupt politician gets a kickback of $20k from a bad builder to award him the construction contract. The builder cuts corners to siphon off $20k for the politician and $20k for himself and uses substandard concrete. The hospital falls apart after only 30 years.
So, all for a stupid tiny corrupt $20k, the nation finds itself short $1mil to build a replacement hospital. The people have to do without.
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