@deadculture said in RL Anger:
@Vorpal Interesting. Was that why Ecuador switched to the American dollar as their national currency? To make money laundering easier, anyhow. How come there hasn't been a government to at least clean things up? Is it a shameless, kleptocratic oligarchy as with the rest of the continent?
Not really- the switch to the dollar was organized by a rather unqualified president who thought it would solve inflation. But considering the government's level of corruption was a large driving force behind the inflationary problem... well. That didn't help one bit, as you can imagine.
As to why there hasn't been a government to clean things up? It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't lived in the country... but as a native who got the fuck out of there a few years ago, I can tell you this:
Ecuador is a corrupt culture. It suffers from severe soul-rot. The pervading cultural attitude is not "how can I make things better?' but rather "How can I take advantage of something?"
Let me give you an example. My father worked in the government for several years- he was one of the people who fought to bring updated hydroelectric energy to the country. After many years of that, he returned to the private sector to work. For many years the rumor that kept going around in my father’s circle of acquaintances was “Nicolas is very smart! He’s keeping all that money he stole while in his government position hidden. Very clever of him.”
Eventually, after a decade of that alleged money not surfacing and my father’s lifestyle not reflecting that of a millionaire’s, those acquaintances realized that my father had, in fact, not stolen any money while in the government.
The consensus? That my father was an idiot. For being honest.
This is not an anomaly. This is part and parcel of the Ecuadorean experience, where a phone company (state owned) employee will ask you for a bribe, while you are standing in line at the office, in front of everyone, so you can have a phone line assigned to you. The fact that my father refused to bribe anyone is the reason why we had to wait five years for us to get a new phone line.
Ecuador is a rapacious culture that constantly elects politicians who are more and more populist by the term, and there is no such thing as outrage on the cultural level. The pervasive attitude is “You can’t do anything to change anything, so you might as well take advantage of it.” It’s the kind of sense of life that allows corruption to breed like a fungus. Living there, being part of the culture, is like having an enormous lead weight of a sky baring down on you. It is living with people who see all of these things happen and not give one shit about it- because everything is “can’t do.”
The financial and political situation in Ecuador is a direct result of its culture and the values that culture promotes. There will never be a government that will attempt to ‘clean things up’ for as long as that attitude remains the pervasive Ecuadorean attitude.
That's why I got the fuck out of there faster than the speed of can't.
