"The only difference is the blue-collar mafia is way more visible as they solve their difference with valence, while the white-collar mafia doesn't need to resort to barbaric acts but simply lobbies their political friends in power to put enough laws and regulations in place to stop any newcomers entering their turf."

Ah, Brujah vs Ventrue.

Similar experience here, and from your name we’re either neighbors or from the same country originally. People from our region usually have some idealized fantasy about western countries. After I moved to the US I was shocked to find out that it is just as corrupt as the Balkans, just in a different way.

My pet peeve is hearing how I don’t understand corruption because I live in a functioning country now.

To be fair, it IS different, and I think Canadians cannot fathom the concept of taking a bottle of booze / carton of cigarettes / box of chocolate with you for normal bureaucratic activities. Similarly, it took me a while to understand where Canadian corruption lies and I'm sure I only understand and am aware of tiny percentage - I happily live a straight and narrow, middle class, ignorant kind of life. As such I'm only sure there's many other types of corruption in other places I'm blissfully ignorant of :-: