Just think of this:
During the recent Philippine Councilors League-Bohol elections, the councilors (who are addressed as honorables) allowed themselves to be bought with hot cash. Councilors buying votes of fellow councilors. Honorables selling votes to honorables. The price was P2,000 plus per vote.
And the world is watching. The general public is gawking at them. Now we have perfect models for our children.
The hoipoloi has a perfect excuse why his or her vote is always on sale.
In the US, there is something called "pork". Pork is money going to specific projects in your district. If you are a California senator, for example, you have a list of projects. A West Virginia senator has a list of their own projects. They then swap votes - the California guy votes for the West Virginian's projects and vice versa.
As you can tell, then, this have very little to do with the merit of the projects and everything to do with hte desire of the various people for projects. It's called "bringing home the bacon".
I think you can see that while the purchase and sale of votes is more blatant than this, it's still effectively what's going on, right in the US.
In many respects, your system is superior to ours. One quick example should prove the point. You have a public transport system that actually works. Jeepneys take people down major roads, and Trikes go from major roads to individual houses in a subdivision. Jeepney fares are around 7.5 pesos and trikes around 5. So if you have a trip where you take a trike to a Jeepney and it gets you to your destination, you are paying about P12.5 or about $ 0.30.
In the USA, busses are government monopolies. They require that busses be a certain size and that they are driven by unionized drivers who get paid a lot. The bus system in Pittsburgh has a fare of US$2.75 per trip, or approximately 10 times what it costs to provide the same service in the Philippines. The bus companies lose huge amounts of money even at those fares and they are heavily subsidized by the government. So your typical bus ride actually costs from $4-5 to provide.
So you can see that the Jeepney system is far superior to the bus system in the US. In the US, it's almost a necessity to have a car because the car is far cheaper to run and faster than the bus system is. In the Philippines you get surprisingly similar transportation services to having a car while spending much less.
So there is the truth. Some things America does are better, and worthy of emulation. Some things done in the Philippines are better and they are worthy of emulation too.
I might add another thing. The corruption in the Philippines makes personal relationships, and harmonious relationships between people, very, very important. People in the US are far ruder and far less nice to others. Certainly in the US I am almost never treated with the friendliness and courtesy I was in any Filipino store, however humble it might be. I think the coruption makes the relationships better because they are more important than in the US.
If you throw away the corruption, you might lose some of the things that makes the Philippines a great place to live, too.
D
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