Welcome back to our course on corruption. This is week two, lecture four, and we're going to call this lecture Corruption Hurts. It's not the most scientific or academic of names, but it's a pretty good description of the sum of the social costs, the aggregate of the social costs imposed by corruption. And corruption hurts in a couple of ways. One, it drastically affects the well being of people, and plants and animals. Secondly, within the well being of people, I particularly want to highlight the psychic costs that are imposed by corruption. The preamble to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, UNCAC, includes this paragraph. Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies. It undermines democracy in the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes the quality of life and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish. Research has verified all of these assertions. We know that corruption is closely associated with a decrease in the quality of infrastructure. Just as a couple of examples, corruption decreases the quality of roads. A very innovative study was done to demonstrate just how extensive this decrease is. A group of scholars, including engineers, took a kilometer of road, that was randomly selected from a road that had been contracted through an open bidding process, and deconstructed the road. What they found was, the materials used to construct that road very, very, very infrequently correlated with the materials that had been contracted for and had been paid for. And subsequent research found that the government officials who'd contracted for that road and the construction company that built that road had financial transactions that pretty much correlated to the difference in value between the road that was actually on the ground, the road that they deconstructed, and the road that was contracted and paid for. Of course, the quality of the road that was actually on the ground was significantly lower than the quality of the road that had been contracted and paid for. There's also a really interesting correlation between corruption and increase in traffic deaths. I'll tell you about another really interesting study, this one done in India. In this study, researchers essentially prepared, or didn't prepare, a group of people who were applying for a driver's license. Within the group that was prepared and within the group that was not prepared, the group that knew how to drive and the group that didn't know how to drive, they subdivided each group into a group that would pay a bribe to the licensing agency and a group that would not pay a bribe to the licensing agency. Now, in a system that protected all of us, a system that didn't put people on the road who didn't know how to drive, a system that didn't entrust people with a couple of thousand kilograms of steel, who didn't know how to drive, people who don't know how to drive wouldn't get licences, that would be the determining factor. But what this study found, almost to a person, was the determining factor was not, does a person know how to drive? But instead, would that person pay a bribe? In other words, the qualification for driving, the qualification for getting on the road, with a couple thousand kilograms of metal, hurdling at other people, wasn't, they know how to drive, it was, did they pay a bribe? It's understandable therefore that there is a measurable and important correlation between corruption and increases in traffic deaths. But we find this in all sorts of things that affects the quality of life, affect the well being of people, plants, and animals. There's a very, very significant correlation between corruption and the quality of health. Understandably, corrupt systems, there's an increase in infant mortality. The distortions, the misallocations moved resources away from infant care and toward that for which bribes are paid. Similarly, there's an increase in adult morbidity. Again, the distortions, the misincentives move resources away from the kind of health care that could actually help people in these places, in these polities toward some other use of resources for which bribes were paid. There's a correlation between a decrease in environmental quality and corruption. Again, this is probably due to misallocations and to the incentives that distort where things go. But it's also related to the fact that there's usually an increase in environmental infractions when there's an increase in the frequency of corruption. Environmental infractions can be excused on the basis of paying a bribe. Environmental infractions can be excused because of some affinity between one actor and a decision maker. The enforcement of environmental rules decreases, and the quality of the environment goes down. There's a correlation between decreases in quality of education and corruption. Again, perfectly understandable, given the fact that corruption is going to create distortions and it's going to create misincentives that move resources away from basic education, or even higher education, and toward other kinds of activities. Activities for which bribes are paid. But it's also because, within the education system itself, people can take what they think is the shortcut. They can take actions that they think are expedient and buy an educational certificate. They can buy certifications without actually putting in the work to learn the material, to acquire the skills. We find that in polities or countries in which there's an increase in corruption, literacy and numeracy decrease. And again, understandable, resources move away from the kinds of activities that would create literacy, would create numeracy, and toward other activities for which bribes are paid. Now, I wonder if you can see something in common between all of these activities. And that thing in common is that the people who are harmed tend to be people who don't have power. Tend to be people who don't necessarily have the affinity or the connection that can be used, perhaps duly, perhaps unduly to influence policy, to influence decision makers. And what we tend to find, in corrupt polities, is that this decrease in well being is not uniform. It most severely affects those who are most vulnerable, and most severely affects those who have the least power, and it most severely affects those who are going to be most harmed by these decreases. There's also a really important and unfortunately not well measured, because it's very hard to measure, it's very hard to get data, relationship between corruption and terrorism, corruption and narcotrafficing. You either know or should know about Boko Haram in Western Africa. Boko Haram has acquired an inordinate amount of weapons. Turns out that, although some of these weapons were stolen, or some of these weapons were acquired from rigs on government facilities, a shocking number of these weapons were essentially sold to Boko Haram by corrupt officers in West Africa. That's the kind of terrorism that manifests itself in pretty horrible ways. That's the kind of terrorism that deeply effects people on the ground in those polities, but it's not limited to Western Africa. Imagine, hypothetically, a customs agent who passes goods on the basis not of them meeting the qualifications for goods coming into this particular customs territory, but instead on the basis of a bribe. That customs officer has no incentive to determine whether or not what's coming in are goods that can be used by terrorists. Weapons, bombs, biochemical terrorist material. Instead, that customs officer is only looking at the quality of the bribe, and therefore corruption creates a gaping hole in what otherwise might be a bulwark against these kinds of material. And it's the same with people, and information, and other things used or consisting of terrorism. Narcotrafficking, the same, when an officer is looking at the quality of the bribe rather than the material, narcotics can pass through. That creates a very large incentive on behalf of people who are trafficking in narcotics, people who have inordinate amounts of money to try to corrupt these decision makers. And so we know there's a very strong link between terrorism and corruption, and there's a very strong connection between narcotrafficking and corruption, even though we can't measure it. And, of course, terrorism and narcotrafficking both profoundly can affect the well being of the people, as well as plants and animals. Within the overall sphere of well being, there's one injury I want to highlight in particular, and that is the psychic damage that's caused by corruption. People who are in a position of power, or who are in a position of being relatively well-off, people who have not experienced endemic corruption, particularly petty corruption, often dismiss corruption, often dismiss extortion, often dismiss the daily kind of tick-tack demands that are made as, well, that's just part of the background. That's just something I sail through as I go through my days here. That's something that shouldn't bother them very much. In reality, what we're learning, and we're learning this through firsthand accounts, we're learning this through testimonials that are given by people who've long lived under these systems, is that the psychic damage can be profound. Remember what we're talking about here, we're talking about people who have been entrusted, or people who have been given power. These are people who have control over something that should be available to everyone. And these people are abusing or misusing their power. They're using their control over others, and that highlights the vulnerability of these others. That places these others in a position where they no longer have control. And this happens in some polities day after day after day, for the most mundane things. This places these people in a position where they may appear weak to their families. This places these people in a position where they may feel helpless. This places these people in a position where they are the victim. It may be a small victim, and may be a victim of a small thing, but they are the victim. And cumulatively, this creates a condition similar to traumatic stress, similar to a long going traumatic event. The psychic damage is something we're only starting to recognize, but the psychic damage that is caused by corruption appears to be profound. And if there is no better expression of it, if there's no more compelling reason for us to understand the psychic damage, I want you to go back and think of those people we talked about on the very first day. People who are willing to risk their lives, people who are willing to sacrifice almost everything, willing to stand in the rain, willing to stand under the sun, the darkness of night, to protest these violations, to protest their vulnerability. They are rebelling against the psychic damage that's caused by corruption. So in terms of corruption causing damages, in terms of the hurt that corruption causes, corruptions inflicts a magnitude of damage on society. It drastically affects the well being of the people, as well as plants and animals. And that is why the United Nations says that corruption may be considered a human rights violation. That corruption has risen to the level of affecting basic human rights. Thank you and I look forward to our next lecture.
