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Suddenly, Not So Sudden
The day after harvest, a farmer drove his cart into town. On the way, he passed over a wooden bridge he had been using for years.
"That's twice as much as last week!" he exclaimed, when he was asked to pay a toll. There was a guard on the end of the bridge near the town. He had been there for six years, ever since the mayor imposed charges for using the road.
"Chief raised it," grunted the guard. He tilted his helmet down low to his eyebrows.
"For no reason?"
"I don't ask questions." The other man's expression turned to a scowl. "You ask. He’s your second cousin, not mine."
"Don’t blame this on me. I don’t know him."
"Maybe if you did you wouldn’t have to pay a toll. But you do. Everyone does." The guard stuck out his hand. "It's twice as much as yesterday, not last week."
With no good choice, the farmer reached into his hidden pockets and found enough to pay. He drove into town and, on the main road, dodged a police officer to whom he would have to pay a bribe if stopped. When he got to the market, he set up next to the other farmers. After they each sold another something for luck, he asked them why the bridge price had gone up. No one knew. They were all angry about it.
Before noon, three farmers paid a priest to ask the chief for the reason. At the town hall, however, the chief barred the doors. His men, after an argument lasting almost an hour, turned away the priest. So, starting the next day, the farmers raised their prices. Townsfolk hated the extra costs. Eventually, though, they adjusted to the consequences of the higher toll.
Two years later, the area experienced its longest season of fine weather in anyone's lifetime. Even the dangerous part of the pre-harvest months saw no large storms. Usually, there were a few and they did some damage to the crops. Not this time. The farmer and his family gathered in their best yields in a decade. Of course, the tax collector knew how to find them. He arrived at the farm one morning as the family was loading carts.
“Collection is on time this year,” said the collector. “The governor wanted to reach everyone promptly.”
“But that’s half again more than last year,” the farmer protested when presented with the bill. “I haven’t got that much.”
“But you will,” said the tax collector. He gestured to the laden carts.
The farmer paid for a priest to travel and plead his case. He enlisted his friends and family. Even his second cousin the mayor chipped in by hiring guards to ride with the priest. Everyone felt the sudden rise in taxes had to be due to corruption. Their little country hadn't started any new services or built any new roads. They weren't used to open extortion from the governor. Even the mayor seemed surprised.
The town sent its delegation but the news that came back from it wasn't good. No other town seemed upset enough to protest. They met no other delegation. The governor didn't care to meet with their town priest, either. He did send someone from his office who talked about patronage for an hour and tried to solicit bribes. In fact, the governor's representative seemed to feel the main part of his job was to accept favors on behalf of the governor.
"Well, I think we could try bribing the tax collector," said the mayor when he learned the news. He held a meeting of farmers and small businessmen. He gave advice to the few men around the table with him.
"He means he already has," whispered one businessman.
"Oh." The farmer nodded, surprised.
"Don't tell anyone who is not in this meeting, though," the mayor continued.
"That means don't raise the bribe price by offering too much or weaken the benefit by spreading the news," clarified the businessman.
"No problem," said the farmer, who wondered what he could afford.
Later that week, he met with the tax collector and, red-faced, he arranged the bribe amount. He wondered about the mayor. His second cousin had kindly included him in the secret town meeting. He felt grateful for it. But he knew in his heart he didn't quite deserve it. He didn't understand how this could go on, how his own relative had proven criminal about the bridge but had protested the corruption in farm taxes, how the man who had barred the doors of town hall and refused to listen to the priest had nonetheless sent the priest to petition against a higher level of malfeasance.
Two years later, the farmer's lands suffered a flood. It nearly wiped him out. The governor refused to assist. He still sent his tax collector with his outrageously high demands, though.
In five years, after a fine harvest, the governor raised the farm tax again. The mayor raised tolls, too.
The greatest disaster, though, took place after eight years more. Then, the country got a new ruler. He didn't rise to power through using violence, although he incited riots in large towns. He exerted just enough unrest to rally his cause. He did much more damage when his reign began. The astonishing thing was he announced he was going to steal from the country. And his followers accepted it. He broke ground on a bridge he didn't intend to build. He laughed about it. He pulled troops from the mountain border and sent them to patrol inland, keeping down any talk of rebellion. He raised highway taxes. At the same time, he said there would be no upkeep spent on any road.
"He has throngs of people on his side," the farmer complained to the priest.
"He does," agreed the priest.
"But he steals from the docks, the roads, the harvest, everything!"
"So it seems to me." The priest nodded.
"He takes money from local taxes and regional funds. He sells bad equipment to the army. That's the same as stealing from them. He says he will make this little nation great and powerful. But how? What does that even mean, really?"
"It is just a popular thing to say, I think," explained the priest.
"He enforces different rules for people in power than for ordinary people. He allows better privileges for his friends and family. It's fascism, they say. He allows the rich to buy themselves immunity from the law."
"That's what corruption is, yes. I'm not sure why there is such a need to call it something else."
"Because it's different?"
"You were quick to notice his frauds. But our country was corrupt before. Many years ago, I remember you complained about it. But you stopped complaining."
"It wasn't this corrupt."
"Did you become accustomed to corruption? Do you now only recognize it because it is worse? When it hurts you more than others? It was complacency about the old level of corruption that got us here. Our country got worse because, little by little, our people grew accepting of our corruption."
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