It isn't quite right to say that money corrupts.
Corruption is spoilation. Moisture corrupts iron. Mold corrupts bread. Maggots corrupts flesh.
Money, by contrast, sterilizes. Money neutralizes. Money flattens. Money numbs. Money, above all, connects. (It is almost possible to say that money is pure, abstracted connection in metered, persistent form.)
It is then, after the monetary connection, that something corruptive floods onto the sterilized, neutralized, flattened, numbed object, and it corrupts. Money only prepared the way.
That's why I try to say, not that money corrupts, but that a payment corrupts. Because it emphasizes the hand that conveys the money, because it implies the purpose behind the monetary priming of an object, that, very likely, is about to be shellacked.
(Yes, I know I am pushing analogies too hard. But remember, these posts are partly me horsing around.)
