The Economics of Corruption

Just wondering about the effects of corruption. The aim of money in society, it seems to me, is the redistribution of wealth, originally in the form of natural resources, among its members according to certain criteria. In the past physical might seems to have been the primary factor deciding property. Then it was innovation and cunning. Now intelligence and popularity are high on the list. Whatever be the criteria(and they change with time, which is to say they are arbitrary), if somebody is good(or bad?) enough to bend the rules of society in their favour, which is what corruption is essentially, the end of redistribution is achieved though according to a more radical means. People who are not entitled to much, as per the standard rules of society, get more than their fair share. The main problem is not that there is not enough for others or even that it goes against our sense of fairplay and rightness, but, more fundamentally, this creates an instability. The rules of organized society are undermined and the money, though in circulation, which is good in the immediate sense for the economic structure, works against itself. The rules of society give value to the means of exchange of resources within society - money - and now the value of these rules is brought down by money itself. In an anarchy money will lose much of its value and it is towards this form of arbitrariness that corruption leads. By making money all-important, corruption leads us on to a society where money is not important. This alone should make corruption bad. But, in another sense, corruption might just make us re-evaluate our ideals and principles, creating a new meaning and value for money. It was a corruption of the chivalric code of conduct that led to the upsurge of the mercantile class in the medieval period and now, all but the most dreamy-eyed, decidedly laugh down as absurd the ideas of Ivanhoe and his band of knights. Now, we have the software engineer and the Wall Street broker. We might just see corruption change our way of evaluating success and well-deserved prosperity.