People all over the world worry about big problems like hunger, like climate change, like bad or inefficient government; and many others that affect most or all of us. But no one seems to worry about the fundamental problem driving the rest.  Corruption.

If justice can be bought. If governments can be bought. If everything can be bought then nothing has any value except for the 00.1 per cent of the world that has the money to buy whatever it wants.

This is not a plea for expropriation or super- penal taxation or anything else of that sort which is often popularly, and understandably, called for. It is, rather, a plea to all of us to recognise the basic role that corruption plays in misgovernment and injustice all over the world.

If corruption were to be attacked wherever it raises its head and those responsible subjected to the most severe punishment available, in additon to seizure of all their assets, legally or illegally gained, much of the motivation behind corrupt practices would disappear. Murder of an individual attracts extreme punishment in any civilised society whereas corruption is rarely punished at all and its perpetrators are as often admired as despised.

That ought to change and change now and radically, not only because of the harm to society that it causes but because whole national policies and actions can be and are framed for corrupt reasons; to the detriment of most of us.

In a world increasingly motivated by personal gain the quest for wealth sharpens daily.  So it is essential to the wellbeing of any society that this quest is conducted honestly and not by crime; of which corruption is a major component.

To those who think all this is mere moralising take a look at just one prime example; Malaysia. A once prosperous and democratic country has been transformed into a corrupt dictatorship by bribe taking politicians who, unsatisfied with their gains from that, have turned to whoesale theft of public money and imposed a dictaorship; in what will prove to be a vain attempt to cover up their crimes.

If that is the sort of society in which you want to live you have only to go on looking the other way.