Today, we have a Guest Article from Jack Emery. Jack wished to share his thoughts about my recent article, Bob’s Plan for ending corruption, which was published in the past week. Jack sees it a bit different than what I wrote, and I welcome him sharing his view, the other side of the coin. Thank you, Jack for sharing your thoughts with the LiP Community. MindanaoBob
Mindanao Bob has a plan for ending corruption in the Philippines.
He’s right about it being one of the hottest topics on the blogs, the message boards, and, no doubt, in comments on his site.
I respect Bob’s opinions, but on this one I would like to offer a dissenting view.
First, let me be clear: I am not talking about high level corruption, such as paying off members of Congress or bribing judges. That kind of corruption is bad news, but it happens everywhere. We Americans are hardly in a position to throw stones. After all, we just presided over a trillion dollar rape of the taxpayer, engineered by government officials with intimate ties to the Wall Street bankers who got the money. Nothing in the Philippines amounts to even a blip on the radar screen by comparison.
I’m also not talking about million peso bribes to get government contracts. Again, the Philippines barely makes the minor leagues, as compared to (for one example) the common practice where an American government official hands out a multi-billion dollar boondoggle to a favorite company, and then, a year or so later, gets hired as the new CEO of the same company, complete with million dollar compensation package and stock options.
But that isn’t the kind of corruption that fills the message boards with impassioned moralizing. Most of the “corruption” that seems to set foreigners’ teeth on edge involves the kind of common situation where you need (say) an official paper from a government office, and you find that you have two choices:
- You can stand in long lines for hours, and probably get sent on multiple wild goose chases to other offices miles away, as you try to navigate a complicated system that you don’t understand, in a language that you don’t speak, and (maybe) eventually get what you need for the official fee of 10 pesos. Or…
- You can pay someone — perhaps a government employee, perhaps an independent “fixer” — a few hundred pesos “expediting fee” and get what you need in ten minutes.
This kind of corruption, if you can call it that (I wouldn’t), is actually quite benign, in my opinion.
There are two basic ways to run a bureaucracy:
System A (the U.S and many former British colonies): Government employees are paid high salaries financed by taxes and official fees. The penalties for getting caught accepting a bribe or “tip” are severe, so no one does it. A few bucks extra income isn’t worth blowing a job where you make an average of 70 percent more than someone doing similar work in the private sector. (See Link)
System B (the Philippines and many former Spanish colonies): Lower level government employees derive part of their income from their salaries, which are often very low, not enough to support a family on. They get the rest in “fees” extracted directly from those who need a form stamped or a paper signed.
In economic terms, the outcome for the government employee is about the same. In both cases, the total compensation for the employee’s services is determined by the marketplace, because employees who think that they can get a better overall deal in some other job will presumably do so, under either system.
In System A, the employee’s income is entirely from taxes and official fees, so the taxes have to be high enough to cover the entire cost. In System B, the taxes can be lower, since the salaries are lower, and part of the employee’s income is from “unofficial” charges. Not surprisingly, taxes in System A countries are usually much higher than in System B countries. In the U.S., government taxes rake in 29 cents out of every dollar of GDP, in the Philippines it’s only 7 cents (2008 figures).
But here’s another important effect: in System A, if you’re getting rotten service, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. There is no incentive for a government employee to be efficient, or even polite — he can stonewall you with impunity, safe in the knowledge that no one ever got fired from a civil service job for making the customers unhappy.
In System B, however, the customer who is asked for an “expediting fee” can always refuse to pay it, so here there is a strong incentive to get the job done quickly, even pleasantly. (One of the nice things about the Philippines is that even when bureaucrats are being obstructive, they usually manage to be polite about it.)
Of course, you may not get very good service if you stand on principle and insist on paying only the official fee, but even that is really an advantage, in a way, because you do have the option of (eventually) getting the job done very cheaply as long as you don’t mind standing in a lot of lines. So in System B, we have a choice: cheap but slow, or more expensive but quick and efficient. In System A there’s no choice, we get to pay high taxes and often very high fees, for (usually) consistently wretched service.
Here’s a reality check: many of us have undergone the ordeal of obtaining a U.S. visa for a wife or fiance. For most, it’s a very tedious, arbitrary, expensive, frustrating process that takes anything from six months to more than a year. There is no good reason why it should be so difficult, but it is. This is System A in action: lousy service, massive incompetence, no options, if you don’t like it, too bad. Under System B, though, you would pay someone a few hundred bucks and save yourself the grief. If I had had that option when I applied for my wife’s visa, I’d have taken it in a New York microsecond.
As for the employment of “fixers”, I don’t see what the fuss is about. Getting government approvals that you need is usually complicated — complicated is what bureaucracies do, it’s how they grow and prosper. Someone who already knows what forms to fill out, which boxes to check, and which officials’ approvals are needed can get the job done far better and faster than I can. How is this different from paying a lawyer to handle your divorce, or paying H & R Block to do your taxes?
Of course, we would all love it if dealing with government agencies were always so simple that anyone could get what they need quickly and efficiently merely by consulting the helpful government employees. But that isn’t how bureaucracies work, in the U.S. or the Philippines or anywhere else. You can try to figure out the process yourself, or you can pay someone who knows what they’re doing. Especially at Philippines prices, I’ll happily pay for the help.
Traffic Cameras are the new normal in System A Countries
Another kind of corruption that everyone loves to kvetch about is the ever-popular police shakedown, in which police officers stop motorists or set up roadblocks and look for trivial or even invented violations so as to be able to collect “contributions”. Annoying? Certainly. But in the city where I come from (Tempe, Arizona), traffic cameras are now everywhere, operated by a private company that receives a substantial percentage of the fines collected. The cameras are (naturally) in the locations that produce the most money, meaning that they mostly catch drivers who didn’t even know they were doing anything wrong, and certainly weren’t doing anything dangerous. Everyone perfectly understands that the cameras have nothing whatever to do with traffic safety and everything do to with raising revenue. Would you rather be shaken down once in a while for 50 pesos to provide a few beers for a Filipino cop who probably makes less salary in a month than a typical American makes in a day? Or would you rather be randomly extorted for $190 traffic camera fines to line the pockets of the camera company fat cats every time you don’t slow down quite fast enough when the speed limit changes? Personally, I’ll take my chances with System B and the Filipino cop.
I suspect that the moralistic overtones that often seem to flavor opinions about these things really boil down mostly to cultural differences. If you’re used to System A, System B probably makes you uncomfortable. I’m not suggesting that it’s good for greedy government officials to abuse their authority for profit — we can all agree that it isn’t. But it happens in all systems, and System A isn’t morally superior to System B. It’s just different, in terms of what the culture considers to be acceptable.
Another cultural factor: some people really do prefer to live in a culture where there are rules for every possible situation and everyone follows them without question (I understand Germany is like that, and the U.S. is quickly getting there). Others of us like a more freewheeling culture where people prefer to live life by doing what seems to make sense at the time, rather than continually worrying about what the rulebook says. If you absolutely hate the freewheeling-type culture, you probably aren’t going to like System B, and the Philippines may not be your best choice of places to live.
So I’d say, be careful what you wish for. And keep in mind that when you tinker with the social fabric that determines how people make a living in a country, you may get unintended consequences. Suppose Noynoy really could push a button and put an end to all under-the-table payments? Obviously, the government can’t afford to hand out pay raises to make up for all the lost income. Suddenly you have a million or so government employees who just got a massive pay cut. To see what happens next, just take a look at Mexico, where a few years ago the administration did crack down hard on the long-accepted tradition of “mordida” (the “bite”). One result: an epidemic of police officers who have decided they’d rather sell out to the drug cartels than subject their families to lives of poverty.
Anyway, fortunately, what I or any other foreigners do or think is not likely to change the Philippine way of doing things.
And that’s okay with me, because I like the Philippines just fine the way it is.
About Jack Emery
Jack, I disagree with much of what you have said, factual, conceptual and in your conclusions.
1. The US is a LOW tax country among high income (OECD) countries. As well, you first place the US as a high tax country with high government salaries, and then later complain about the poor service you receive (just like in a Filipino government office, without the expediting payments).
2. Your tax figure for the Philippines is also WAY too low. Total government revenues as a percentage of GDP is on the order of 14% the last time I looked. BTW, this does NOT detract from your point: the Philippines is a VERY low tax country, even among developing countries and even among “Spansih style” developing countries.
3. Conceptually, you might try the distinction between a “bribe” and “grease.” A bribe is to get a government worker to do something that he/she should not do, e.g., issue a driver’s license to someone who cannot drive, clear a package duty and tax free through customs instead of paying the mandated duties and taxes, and so on. Grease is a payment for getting some government worker to do what he should do, but doing it faster. There is an obvious overlap, but the distinction can be conceptually useful. Much of what you are talking about comes under the heading of grease, a more benign form of bribery, but see below.
But what about those payments for drivers licenses by non-drivers? payments for building permits for unsafe buildings? Payments to reduce taxes and divert them from government revenues such that the government cannot pay for schools and medical care? Are these so benign? payments to the police so that karaokes and girlie bars can operate with impugnity? and on and on and on.
4. And remember, YOU have the option of paying and getting things done faster and waiting for the “proper” procedures to be followed. What about poor Filipinos who have no option but to wait. Of COURSE you like the ability to expedite your transactions. you might remember, however, that for every time you go to the front of the line for a payment, everyone else in the line who is waiting his/her turn must wait that much longer. Ok for you, but what about them?
5. To say that petty corruption as you describe has no impact on the economy is just plain WRONG. The World Bank has a yearly report “Doing Business” in which it rates and ultimately ranks countries in the ease of doing business. in large part the indicators concern the ease of dealing with government regulation: taxes, customs, permits and licenses, and so on. Would it surprise anyone that the Philippines is in the bottom quarter of countries and that over the five years that there have been country rankings the Philippines has fallen further and further down the list? And a country’s ranking does matter: countries in the top quartile of the list grew on average by 2.5% more per year than countries on the bottom quartile. Compare this HUGE difference (for relatively little expenditure in cleaning up government regulations and corruption in administrating that regulation) with a 0.4% growth difference between countries in the top quartile in educational expenditure/quality and those in the bottom quartile. Same, more or less for infrastructure quality.
6. Government workers in the Philippines may seem to be low-paid to you, but they are NOT low-paid when compared with other countries at the same or higher income levels. Actually workers in the Philipinnes are relatively highly paid compared to those in other developing countries. Study after study has shown that paying government workers more (your alternative to petty corruption) would not help reduce their “rent seeking” behaviour.
7. Where do you draw the line between petty corruption, that you seem to think is benign, and major million peso corruption, of which you seem to disapprove. Take the example of crime. Is it ok for a patrolman to levy a small personal fine if you are speeding speeding, but not ok for the chief of police to receive a multimillion peso payment to drop a murder charge? Is it ok to pay to jump the line in the tax office, but not ok to pay to have your taxes reduced? Where do you draw the line?
8. I reject your dumping on the US for its level of corruption compared to the Philippines. There are many organizations that use objective measures to determine corruption levels. The US is not at the very top of their lists, usually about #10 0r so, but the Philippines is way down these lists – and falling further each year. Yes, without a doubt there is corruption in the US. But the statements implying “there is corruption in the US and there is corruption in the Philippines, hen
Sorry, hit the wrong button. to continue: “hence, they are the same” is wrong. Yes, we have corruption in the US with congressmen and senators in jail, and soon a governor too, but in general corrupt politicians and bureaucrats are caught and punished. Not here. As far as high-level corruption in the US a la this current economic fiasco, do you really credit this to corruption or to misguided policies. Hard to think of Greenspan as corrupt, easy now to think of him as misguided. I abhor W Jr. and think he will be seen as the worst president ever of the US, but corrupt in the sense of personally benefitting from this financial mess he helped create, hard to imagine.
ProfDon:
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. If you’re in the Davao area, consider this a standing invitation to debate this over a beer some time. Let me add that I certainly acknowledge that reasonable minds can differ on these things, mine are just one person’s opinions.
The country rankings that you mention on ease of doing business and corruption levels raise some interesting issues. I find many of those rankings hard to square with what I see on the ground, at least in the few countries that I have some experience in (mostly US, Mexico, and Philippines).
For example, ease of doing business: In the case of small businesses, I see people setting them up all over the place in Davao, everything from sidewalk stands to tiny grocery stores to repair shops — and they don’t seem to have any trouble doing it. I have worked with quite a few small businesses in Arizona, and I can’t think of any that didn’t involve enough regulatory and tax paperwork to require at least one full time employee to deal with it. As for large businesses, I don’t have the impression that, for example, Intel found it any more difficult to set up their chip fab in Luzon than the one in Arizona. So I’m not sure what those surveys are measuring — it would be interesting to dig into the details. I’m a little bit suspicious that what they’re really measuring is “how different is this country’s system from the way we’re used to doing things in the U.S. or Europe”? And if the answer is “a lot”, then the country is considered hard to do business in.
Regarding the country rankings on corruption, I would say that clearly the problem is that the organizations doing the rankings are doing them according to “System A” rules. Paying of some “grease” in the Philippines counts as corruption; handing $100B of taxpayer money to AIG doesn’t, because under “System A” rules, it was legal, or at least so complicated that no one can prove it wasn’t. But in moral and practical terms, I would regard (say) the AIG bailout as at least equally reprehensible, and vastly more damaging in the long run. You could call it merely “misguided” rather than corrupt — but isn’t that really, again, just applying System A definitions? Isn’t it really still just a ripoff, carried out by more sophisticated means?
Will be in Davao for the festival August 20-22. Would love to talk with you. FYI, the ratings for the Doing Business ratings are done by domestic persons in each of the countries. Take a look at the website. As for the ese of opening a business, the ones to which you are referring are in the so called “informal sector”, meaning that they have no licenses, no permits, pay no taxes, violate minimum wages laws, pay no PhilHealth or SSS, violate all safety and environmental regulations, and so on. In part this is because this is because the Philippine regs. are so extensive, complex and convoluted (and hence a breeding ground for graft by the regulators). Takes about nine months to register a business here, compared to one phone call in the US. Bottom line, Philippine investment/GDP is one of the lowest in the world (and foreign investment/GDP is the lowest in ASEAN except for Mynmar and Brunei). Big surprise that the growth rate here has been so low. Business systematically cite three factors for not investing in the Philipppines: corruption, poor infrastructure (in large part due to lack of financing itself due to a low tax yield due to corruption, and corrupt infrastructure processes) and government regulation.
Love you talk to you and Bob about this. I am VERY pessimistic about any positive change in corruption. A number of comments have cited a change in attitude. I agree, but not attitude toward corruption, a change in attitude in how they relate to each other. Not TAHT’s a toughie.
Jack;
2 July I went to re-new my Philippine Drivers License, drug test and medical took 20min. Then I’m in line at window #one, the people behind the windows had air/con, we had hot and muggy. Then I moved to window #two, and waited some more, I slid on down to window #three and paid my fees, all is completed, yet I waited at window #four, the longest to receive my finished license.
Total time after medicinal /drug test 3.5 hours, if I could have found a fixer I would have paid him, and it would have been my first time to do it. But do it, yes, I gladly would have.
In Bob’s article I mentioned my wife had a friend who worked there, and was going to help, but Mr. Murphy’s, Law kick in, and they were not working that day. (Thank the gods they didn’t close for lunch!)
Your reasoning is flawed on so many levels. “It works so lets not fix it” is not logical and leads only to stagnation not growth.
Hi Jack – I can’t help thinking of an old saying when I read your last sentence: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” I truly can’t say what is right or what isn’t, nor can I identify problems and solutions. I can only observe and try to make what little sense I can out of things around me.
Providing “grease” in the Philippines has been around for over 400 years. It was legal when introduced by Spanish colonizers as a method of increasing the speed and productivity of early native “workers” (whether impressed or volunteer).
Too, early tax collectors – those called “barangay captains” now – earned their income from the taxes they collected, not by any salary or wage. These tax collectors were responsible for providing the taxes every year. If they didn’t collect enough, they had to make up the difference with their own money, and go hungry. If they “broke even” with tax collection, they still went hungry. Obviously, they and their families enjoyed eating, so they’d collect more than the taxes owed with the difference being their “salary” – totally allowed by the Spanish governments who were only interested in receiving the taxes they demanded and not one centavo more.
Early customs officers received remuneration for their services in the same way. The early Spanish governments regarded the customs officer’s appointment itself as the reward of the job. Customs officers were required to generate a specific amount of revenue for the crown for the different items (and people) being allowed “landing privileges.” They were allowed to collect as much as they wanted so long as they provided the crown with what was due the crown. They could keep any excess collections.
All of these continued into the American period. With so many generations living by these rules for so long, such practices became innate to the local mindset. So, there’s a question provoked: Is it corruption or custom?
Nice summary of some of the history. Corruption or custom? Maybe some of each?
“I’m also not talking about million peso bribes to get government contracts.”
To me the worst kind of corruption is, after the million peso bribe to get the government contract to, say, build a road, the company builds the road below specifications (probably bribing an inspector as well) to save money and everyone suffers from poor infrastructure.
IMO I think your both right. Its clearly wrong to brib and accept bribs in any way shape or form. But.. Does the little stuff really hurt anyone? In the long run it may or may not.
Hummm Now im torn. Thanks guys lol.
Hi Jack- I refuse to accept your logic on this topic as I have seen in a former British colony Nigeria corruption at its most depraved and just look at the state its in along with most of Africa. Whether its the presidents office or the lowly clerk involved in taking a bribe its wrong because its theft, and it leads to poor productivity and ultimately inflation with little or no investment from big business which leads to slow growth for the economy.(Are you with me ……..just look around you).
The only way the Philippines which I incidentally enjoy living in will prosper is to take Singapore as a model and draw a line in the sand and outlaw once and for all CORRUPTION!!!.
Regards.
Jim.
Thanks to a very corrupt police force in Hong Kong Colony, Governor Murray MacLehose in 1974 set up an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) with incredible powers to investigate corruption and prosecute bribers and bribees. Unfortunately, the ICAC is still needed as there are always people who think that they can get away with a back-hander or two – it seems to be endemic in human nature – but thanks to the ICAC they all get caught eventually. Perhaps we need an ICAC here with, for the first few years the members being selected from overseas law-enforcement agencies.
Steven –
The Singapore model is really interesting, I think, especially to those of us based in Davao. Davao under the Duterte mayoral administration (in power for the last 10 years or so) reminds me a lot of the way Singapore was back when Lee Kwan Yew took over. You can do that kind of thing in a city; I’m skeptical you can do it with a whole country. But Davao is definitely prospering as compared to the way things were in the mid-90s, and Duterte has managed to do it even in a place where there is ongoing separatist insurgency in the surrounding provinces.
That said, personally, if Davao did turn into Singapore, I’d probably look for another Davao. I like Singapore as an interesting place to visit, but it’s very expensive and crowded and everything is totally focused on working as hard as possible and making as much money as possible. Some would also say that the economic success isn’t worth the loss of personal freedom. I like the generally more relaxed Philippine culture, with the strong family life and more emphasis on people and relationships rather than everything always about money. Of course, as many have pointed out in these comments, that’s easy for me to say since I’m not in the situation that many poor Filipinos are in.
BTW im not the Jack in the article im the one in the post above Jims two different people
I cannot agree with your article. If everything remained status quo nothing would every get any better. If there was not so much poverty in the Philippines and so many people suffering and anxious to get out of the Philippines and your suggestions would solve that problem I would be on board, but the system is not working for the poor.
I would say the system might work for those of us that are expats and can afford to pay the bribes to get what we want, but we are guest in this country and the country should be for the people of the Philippines. I do not think what is good for us, expats, should be the real issue.
I wonder if we have an attitude that corruption works for us, therefore it is okay without looking at the lives of the majority of the Philippine people who are suffering if we are not becoming callous. The present system in the Philippines produces too much pain for the majority of the people and I find it difficult to be indifferent to that.
Too bad we could not have a system that accomplished what everyone needs, but I know that would be utopia and utopia does not exist.
Tom –
Believe me, I’m very sympathetic to the problem of poverty in the Philippines. I just don’t see government as the solution. Does anyone seriously think that the plight of the poor in the Philippines would be improved if all Philippine laws and regulations were suddenly enforced to the letter? My guess is it would bring the economy to a standstill.
The way I look at it, government everywhere is essentially a parasite whose main function is to divert resources away from productive uses to unproductive ones (e.g. useless bureaucracy) or even counterproductive ones (obstructive regulation, wars, etc.). To me, the best system, whether for relative affluent foreigners or for the local poor, is the one that extorts the least and imposes the least restriction on people’s freedom to run their own lives. On that score, I’d say the Philippines ranks pretty well.
Obviously — I hope it was obvious — I’m not at all a fan of the Philippine bureaucracy. But given that governments everywhere always create endless useless regulation, it seems to me that there are some advantages to having a relatively inexpensive mechanism for short-circuiting some of the worst of it.
I got your back, Jack! I always like looking at both sides of the coin and you presented a well thought out flip side. Be well.
You all might be interested in a quote from Solita Collas-Monsod, former Dean of the UP Economics Department and PhD economist in yesterday’s Inquirer:
“If the Philippines has lagged behind in growth and in reduction in poverty in all its dimentions, it has not been slow in increasing corruption. On a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 the most corrupt and 10 the least corrupt, the Philippines moved from 3.3 in 1998 to 2.4 in 2009 in Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Perception Index. . . . .
“The Philippines has also deteriorated (between 1998 and 2008) insofar as five of the six governance indicators published by Governance Matters . . . . voice and accountability, political stability, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. the one improvement was in goverment effectiveness.”
The Philippines has had the lowest economic growth rate of any of the ASEAN countries since 19 (with the exception of Brunei whose economy is totally dependent on how much oil/gas is pumped) since 1990 (note the post Marcos era, so can’t blame it all on him). One stat of note: in 1977 thailand and the Philippines had more or less the same level of GDP/capita. Today thailand’s GDP per capita is almost twice that of the Philippines.
Winnie also shows that under previous presidents tthrough Ramos, the absolute number of the poor declined by 700k families. Fron 1997 to 2006 (the latest stats available), the number increased by 900K.
so corruption does matter – and it matters most to the poor.
I’m keeping out of it! Interesting points though. The most interesting and perhaps a critical point being the highlighted difference between “grease” and “a bribe”.
“Grease or Bribe?”
At one time in another life I was a police officer in a state police department in Australia. As a street cop (patrolman) I sometimes went to take out joints for meals. Usually they were busy but I was always happy to wait my turn but usually once the owner saw the uniform he called us to the head of the line for immediate service which drew knowing looks from all present. Then later after paying for the food and leaving we would find our money placed neatly in the bottom of the food sack. To be honest I found this practice embarrassing because even though I had provided no service to the store owner I was receiving preferential treatment because of my line of work, not to mention payment for no service rendered! This, whichever way you cut it is corruption and any form it takes it cant help but erode even the simplest of systems in an unfavourable way. The real problem is that after a while all who employ the grease method come to expect it and once started the ball starts rolling it gets to the point where every transaction and process has a price rather than a standard procedure. So no matter how archaic or bogged down in bureaucratic regulations the system may be and regardless if its a third world country or not the choice is with the individual to either stay with the system or provide a bit more grease to facilitate the downward slide into a much deeper problem.
Mr. Emery has a point and quite poignantly make sense in a certain way. So is ProfDon whose interest/opinion is based on facts and writing of people who despite the fact that they are talking about corruption and poverty in the philippines never experience it themselves. Here in our lowly barangay, people whose lives are decided by bureaucrats/politicians and to say the least by the leader of the church who insist on imposing their outdated religious dogma on everyone, has been discussing the same problem and voicing their own opinion on the matter. To them, the government is doing it very best to provide for the needs of their people as they expect it to be but can only do much because they are always doing a catch up business with regards to what the country needs and to what they can deliver. One thing for sure that us in the barangay agree is the government must control the ever increasing population.
“The Government is dividing the ever decreasing revenue supporting the ever increasing population” is what the lowly barangay people are voicing out because they know that an ever increasing population is not good socially and Environmentally irrespective of what the their Church says.
I have no isses with what you wrote about except perhaps with the law enforcement bribes. However, I think you missed reporting the kind of corruption that is really hurting this country. This is about the money that is suposed to go to fixing infastructure and instead goes into politician pockets. Like the 10 million peso budgeted for a road repair and 5 million goes into politicos pocket and 5 million goes into cement so diluted the road repair job lasts barely a year at best and then we are back to driving on pot hole filled roads. This is the kind of corruption that really robs this country of a future. Infastructure corruption is the worst by far.
I had to re read this post to make sure I understand it. Very interesting take. A nice lady American lawyer explained to me once that ethics is above the law. There are absolute values but when it comes to man made rules and regulations, a lot would depend on the cultural and social norms. Giving gifts is a common practice in many societies as part of doing business; getting a “fixer” is far more common in many societies than we think. Isn’t that why we have lawyers to represent us?
I was thinking that they should “professionalize” and “license” the fixers, get them to pass a test and it becomes legal. I notice in Toronto we have legitimate parking ticket fixers. If you want to contest a parking ticket and don’t have the time to go to court, you pay them to represent you. Same as people who do people’s tax return. At the bottom of our tax return, there is space for the person’s info who did the tax return for you.
Singapore is a very poor example. It is so regulated (from chewing gum to the length of one’s hair), micro managing people’s lives. In Florida, it’s like the difference between a place called Celebration and St. Augustine.
But I still think, the Philippines should use more automation for direct government transactions, like paying taxes, payroll, etc.
Alex
I have to admit I wanted to write something much like this blog post, but I didn’t for fear of people jumping on me about it. I’m glad Jack did it first! I pretty much agree with this post! Good job!
interesting way of looking at it
“Here’s a reality check: many of us have undergone the ordeal of obtaining a U.S. visa for a wife or fiance. For most, it’s a very tedious, arbitrary, expensive, frustrating process that takes anything from six months to more than a year. There is no good reason why it should be so difficult, but it is. This is System A in action: lousy service, massive incompetence, no options, if you don’t like it, too bad”
I actually work at the U.S. Embassy so I can attest that the service is hardly lousy or incompetent. There are very good reasons why it takes that long…not the least of which is the unbelievable frauds perpetrated by the “System B” folks.
Miguk –
Thanks for your comment. I’m glad you brought this up, because I want to be clear, I’m not taking shots at the individual employees, and I’d have to say that the customer service individuals I’ve dealt with at the US embasssy in Manila were all very nice and seemed to be doing their best to be helpful. And that, I think, is the problem with bureaucracy in a nutshell — you can have a system in which all the employees are doing their best, and all the rules are in place for what seem like good reasons, but the end user experience is a nightmare. I’m guessing that if you polled 100 guys at random who have gone through the spouse/fiance visa process, at least 90 of them would agree with me that, from the applicant’s standpoint, it’s about the equivalent of a six month root canal. (When my wife got her fiance visa at the Manila embassy, for example, which was after the application had been all approved, she had to get in line shortly after midnight and wait for the place to open, in order to have any chance of getting it done in a day. And her paperwork got lost twice during the process, and I finally had to make an otherwise unnecessary trip from the US to Manila and spend a morning at the embassy in order to get it found again.) It’s a shame that the employees tend to take the blame for a system that just isn’t designed to handle the job — it’s mostly the system that is incompetent (in my opinion), not the employees.
Line up after midnight? When was this? I am not trying to be combative but that just doesn’t happen. Everyone is issued an appointment through the call center and you show up at that time — simple as that. With over 2,000 applicants a day I am not saying that paperwork doesn’t get lost occasionally, but for someone’s paperwork to get lost twice is stretching the limits of credulity. I went through the system also (this was years ago before I ever worked here) and it was efficient and did what it was supposed to do. If someone applying doesn’t have any red flags in their application the process is quite fast. If they were married before but didn’t reveal it, have kids they didn’t report, put addresses down where they never lived or occupations where they never worked these are all non-starters. The process is very thorough and everything is checked. There is even a specific unit (the Fraud Prevention Unit) that visits every address someone puts on their application. So to any future applicants just tell the truth the first time and make it easier on everyone.
All you folks who are jumping on Mr. Emery ……. have any of you set foot inside any U.S. State DMV office recently to try to get a driver’s license for someone here on a fiance visa?
My father used to argue with me, taking the stance that pretty much everything we do here in the U.S. is above board, fair-and-square, and the rest of the world should emulate our lack of corruption. That is, until he got a bogus speeding ticket in some backroads, armpit town in northern Florida.
Many local municipalities are facing budget shortages, due in large part to excessive pensions paid to ex-government workers. (How’s that for corruption!) If you’re doing a lot of driving in the U.S. these days, be careful!
As for Embassy employees being helpful ……. I don’t know if Immigration, (or USCIS, or whatever they call themselves these days), comes under the same government grouping as the various embassies, but here in Charleston I witnessed an Immigration employee yelling at someone who obviously hard a difficult time understanding English, and was trying to understand what to do.
The Customs and Border Protection “professionals” are the worst. The last time I came back to the U.S. they held me for 2 hours with no explanation — and this was after I showed them my diplomatic passport and my badge that I work for the same agency (Homeland Security). What a bunch of ass clowns
Having seen a little of the territory first-hand during my engineering career in the U.S. federal civil service, I am squarely in Mr. Emery’s court on this issue. If you don’t like theft, bribery, extortion, fraud, or waste, then creating yet more prohibitions, restrictions, rules, regulations, laws, and the additional councils, commissions, committees, and agencies to enforce them is not only the wrong thing to do, but precisely the opposite of the right thing to do. The best hope for freedom and prosperity for both natives and guests is to radically reduce the size and scope of government and let folks take responsibility for their own lives.
The ongoing “bail-outs” and “stimulus” here in the U.S. have become history’s biggest heist – corruption writ large – and were made possible by the collusion of big government, big corporations, and fiat central banking. Having witnessed it and now understanding some of its inner machinations, I must say that over the long haul system B poses a far lower threat to the people’s well-being than system A.
My wife and I are looking to move to the Philippines.