Doing Business in Argentina
"Since the 1950s, a series of dictators had devastated the Argentine private sector, concentrating wealth into the hands of politically connected oligarchs, corrupt government contractors, and, most recently, foreign investors. In Argentine Spanish, the word for businessman—empresario—had become synonymous with criminal, and it was widely assumed that the most successful people had robbed and cheated to get where they were. [..] Argentina, like other countries in which tax evasion is widespread, suffers from a "noncompliance equilibrium." People see their neighbors cheating with impunity and conclude they should cheat, too. "In order to change this, they'd have to do some kind of shock and awe and go after everybody," Bergman says. "But that's impossible. You can't audit everybody.""