Is corruption mostly a good thing?

[FlatAssembler]

I'm guessing that it's an issue of construction standards in housing. We have laws like that here, too. If the building isn't up to code, you can't electrify it.

Paying a bribe doesn't bring the building up to code..it doesn't make anything "better" - it just lets you sell a firetrap to some unwitting rube who expects an electrified house not to turn into a bonfire while they sleep. That also happens here.

So..yeah, getting rid of that particular bit of corruption would make things demonstrably better - to the tune of that many fewer houses burning down with the occupants inside. Every nitwit and their brother complains about codes when they want to sell a house, but ofc the tune is different when they're buying.

Those laws that were made up by the bureaucrats in Zadar, as far as I can see, have little or nothing to do with making electricity in houses safer. One such law, for instance, says that the distance between your house and the house of your neighbour must be at least 1 meter. What does that have to do with electricity? And quite a few houses on the island of Vir, including my summerhouse, don't conform to that rule... and the only way to make them conform to that rule is to rebuild many of them basically from ground up.