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insurance while leaving it up to an individual or their employer to choose between a public, not-for-profit or profit-making supplier of health care. Bridge International Academies offers a radical alternative: fee-paying education at a low price that African families may be able to pay (www. bridgeinternationalacademies.com). After evaluating criticisms by African governments of this alternative, an expert recommended that the more desirable response to dissatisfaction with public schools would be to improve public provision to ‘ensure that every child receives a better education than Bridge can offer–and drive it out of business’ (Pilling 2017). Legalize some payments for public services. When proponents defend public services as free of charge to all citizens, they assume that if a service is free in law it will be delivered without public officials collecting a charge on the side. As long as this assumption holds, the debate about charges can concentrate on political values. If bribes are paid to expedite the delivery of services to which individuals are entitled, this illegal charge can be legalized by adopting the principle of discount airlines: Charge for better treatment, as airlines do for wider seats or drinks in a plane that carries all passengers to the same destination at the same time. Charges are selectively made for public services on grounds that are not always normatively clear. Swimming is good for health and reading library books is good for education yet charges are made for the use of swimming pools but not for libraries. To renew a passport quickly rather than wait in a queue Britons do not pay a bribe: They pay a fee to get their passport quickly. Align public laws and informal standards. By definition, bureaucratic rules governing how public officials ought to deliver public services are legal; however, they are not necessarily fair by informal standards of public opinion. When loopholes in tax laws allow rich individuals and enterprises to avoid the payment of large sums in taxes, such activities are not corrupt in law, but public opinion can regard tax avoidance as corrupt because it exploits public laws for private advantage. Standards are also misaligned when behaviour that is acceptable by private standards is labelled as an unlawful corruption of public morality. In Ireland and Italy for decades after 1945, the Roman Catholic Church had the political power to secure legislation imposing its standards of public morality on the whole population. This misalignment of standards did not prevent women getting an illegal abortion or partners living together without being legally married.
