Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find this response, and the suggestions, exemplifying why Kazakhstan justice (as expressed in the story, I don't know how it's in general) is superior to American justice. It's the ability to take the law and regulations lightly, when they're not that serious, and be humane about it. I mean writing: "YOU CHOSE to violate it", with added emphasis, as if having a visa expiring on the same day you leave a place (and l…
All this does is provide random and selective justice for those who can pay the bribe. What about the visum expiring the day before you leave? Two days? The law has to draw a line somewhere. It is the obligation of the person to stay clear of that line. If the visum duration is too short, just make all visa valid for 16 days rather than 15 days, and then enforce that line equally for everybody. Once corruption has ta…
The ability to pay your way out of it, usually comes together with the ability to talk your way out of it, and with the ability of police and such to bend some things on their discretion if they seem BS.
[addition] To quote John McAffee's guide on the matter:
"In order to make the most of your travels, you need to first understand that, throughout much of the Third World, there is a smoothly functioning “system” in place that has evolved over centuries. From the First World perspective it is a “corrupt” system, and indeed, at the higher levels there is no other word for it (...) at the lower levels, however, the system contains an element of grace and humanity, and this lower lever is all that most people will ever encounter. You might still call this lower level “corruption”, but that’s not a helpful word if you want to acquire the most effective attitude for dancing with it. I prefer “negotiable”."
>What about the visa expiring the day before you leave? Two days? The law has to put a line somewhere. It is the obligation of the person to stay clear of that line.
And it's an attribute of a good attitude towards the legal system to not be jerks about it, since "expired last day and I'm on a train leaving the country" is just as good as "it will expire after I leave".
Even if the "law must put a line somewhere", people should be served by the law, not be slaves to it, and enforce it according to its spirit, not merely its letter.
Of course with this mindset you don't get to be 4% of the world's population but have 25% of it's prison population.
There's a name used in some parts of Europe for the kind of legal anal retentive mindset that everything must be 100% according to the letter (and not the spirit) of the law, that someone is like "Javert" (from Les Miserables).
He ends like that in the book, btw (spoiler alert):
For the first time in his life, Javert is faced with the situation where he cannot act lawfully without acting immorally, and vice versa. Javert is unable to find a solution to this dilemma, and horrified at the sudden realization that Valjean was simultaneously a criminal and a good person—a conundrum which reveals deep flaws in his ethical system, and suggests to him the existence of a superior moral system. He feels that the only possible resolution for himself is in death, and— after leaving for the prefect of police a brief letter addressing lapses in the Conciergerie— he drowns himself in the river Seine.