Money doesn’t corrupt people; it’s more like a truth serum for the morally flexible. It’s not that money changes people; it just gives them a megaphone to broadcast their inner used car salesman.

Suddenly, those “creative accounting” skills you never knew you had emerge faster than a politician’s promises during election season. It’s like money has a magical power to turn “I would never” into “Well, just this once” quicker than you can say “offshore account.”

No one is perfect, and money reflects the not perfect side very well in many!

Most things emerge from complex systems.

“A causes B” or “B causes A” sounds tidy, but obscures the reality.

I grew up near an area where a large number high net worth people. For example as a kid I thought Lamborghini was a common car because I saw them all the time.

In my experience lots of money brings out your true self and let’s you act the way you want. So if you are inclined to be self centered and an asshole you can be a massive asshole. You can also be generous and kind.

Most rich people are pretty normal. However the normal ones do try to not make it known that they are rich. So you often don’t notice the normal rich people.

It’s also hard to tell the difference between a person who lives on a 200k a year income and a person with a double digit millions net worth.

I had a friend as a teen. I invited him to go diving with me as he had never been. He showed up with a 20k wetsuite.

This is the wrong question in my opinion. What is being corrupted? One’s morals and ethics? The purity of the human soul? What is the nature of the corruption? Any time we start thinking about “purity” and “corruption” we are moving in dangerous ontological territory.

What is money? Well, it is a stand in for value. Then what is value? Where does it come from? Value comes from exchanging commodities in the marketplace. These commodities are created with human labor power, in other words, money is the crystalized time+energy that it takes on average to produce commodities. New value is created when a commodity costs less to produce than it can be sold for in the market.

In our current historical mode of production, capitalism, the labor that is used to mass produce a commodity is socialized, which means instead of a single craftsperson creating a commodity from start to finish, the production process is broken down and simplified so that it takes many workers to mass produce commodities, each worker specializing in their part of the production process, with the assistance of machines to speed up or simplify this process in order to be more productive.

In contrast, even though the production process has been socialized for the first time in human history, which was in it’s time a progressive if cruel human advancement, the fruits of that production are privatized meaning that goods become the private property of the legal “owner” of the productive apparatus, who can sell those commodities to market for more than they paid to produce them, producing profit from the perspective of the capitalist, or surplus value from the perspective of the workers.

This creates distinct classes which is where we will interrogate the effect of money on the human spirit. There are the owners of capital, who have commodities to sell at the market and workers who have little or nothing to sell but their labor to the capitalist in a labor market. This can be taken even further: there are large capitalists who own a great deal of capital and exploit many workers, small capitalists who own a small among of capital and exploit a few workers (or maybe they even self-exploit,) intellectual or specialized labor that is able to demand higher value in the labor market, and simple or unspecialized labor who’s labor can be easily replaced. A side effect of this creates another class: the reserve surplus population which can be used to threaten simple laborers with replacement hence driving down the cost of labor and increasing profits for the capitalist. The larger this reserve population, the lower wages can be made, and vice-versa.

Every atomized member of society is then thrown into competition with each other, with a very real threat of losing their class position, with the possibility of being thrown into the reserve population unable to find meaningful work that can support themselves and their family. A large firm can be gobbled up by a larger firm, and its specialized workers eliminated due to “redundancies”. A specializrd worker can be replaced by another unspecialized worker who has the qualifications to do their job or some technological advancement transforms that role into unspecialized or less-specialized labor.

This competitive drive forces individuals to do whatever they can to maintain or increase their class position. If company A refuses to pollute the rivers for increased profit, but company B is willing to, this makes company B more profitable, forcing company A out of business, or acquired by company B; unless the board of directors of company A (pressured by gains-seeking investors) replaces the individual demurring eco-conscious executives with people who are willing to pollute for profit; unless some outside political force steps in to regulate the entire market, creating the necessity of a governing state to manage the market and resources, lest the whole system collapse into complete anarchy. Individual workers must remain “productive” such that they continue to create profit for their capitalists or risk replacement themselves, although they can always be replaced by technological advancements or monopolizing forces as discussed above. The reserve surplus population competes for their very survival or risks starvation, homelessness and death.

So now we have uncovered the forces that cause the “corruption” of money. There is a whole other thread we could pursue here that shows how this system abstracts things like “polluting a river” into numbers on a balance sheet, hiding these forces from anyone who might observe them, and lending a plausible deniability to anyone who would be responsible and hide the real lives of anyone who would be affected. I’ll call this process objectification, which is a huge topic unto itself.

But in my opinion, what this system corrupts is the natural inclination for most people to cooperate with one another, and work creatively. When i recognizes that another person has subjective experience like me, I’ll become more likely to identify and then help them if they need it, as I can relate my own experience to theirs. Our system creates cooperation through competition, since the drive of all productive relations is to pursue profit, the mechanisms of which I’ve already described. There is a constant objectification of the outside world as a function of this pursuit for profit and others which dehumanizes and keeps us in our little competitive consuming silos.

Tldr: does money corrupt? Yes, but it doesn’t corrupt the individual so much as it corrupts the entire social superstructure that is inherent to a functioning society in which people can thrive and self actualize.

Edit: just one note on “objective fact”. Object/subject duality is only one way to look at things, and in fact separating them out like this is a form of “corruption” in that it hides certain truths and leads to certain conclusions. While this has contributed to the development of many kinds of human scientific and technological advancement, we must also understand that all things concerning humans and their experiences need to be understood by unifying subject and object. Pure objectivity is as incomplete as pure subjectivity and while both are useful to increase our understanding we have to put the pieces back together to see the whole picture.

I’ve heard the maxim that money doesn’t change who you are, but it amplifies. I think that tends to be true. However, the people you are exposed to in light of that money I think definitely can change who you are.

So yes, money can lead to corruption, but generally it’s in an indirect way.

Source: trust me, bro.

Both and a spectrum mix in-between. There are no simple answers to things.

The weird thing is that people still believe in the trickle-down effect.

Musk is due to become the world’s first recognised trillionaire. Putin was probably the first.

Very rich people are not philanthropic in any way that is noticeable.

Money magnifies who you are. I’m over the hump in wealth and I pay my people well, give to causes that matter to me, and follow my interests.

Both but I believe to a certain degree a person can have a certain amount without it corrupting them. Beyond that point, everyone is corrupted. There are no truly benevolent billionaires because a person must engage in various questionable practices to keep growing their wealth at such an exponential rate. Basic market economics dictates that a business entity competing for a limited market share must repeatedly find new ways to make more profit by using strategies their competitors aren’t. This includes but is not limited to skirting around regulations and laws, and somebody unquestionably runs those companies.

I also think most people massively underestimate the impact that conditioning puts on a person’s outward demeanor, but that leads into a deeper tangentially related discussion. Regardless, people are complex creatures.

—To put it simply, to become a billionaire or even a typical* megamillionaire a person must invariably step on someone else.

*The only exception I can think of are SOME lottery jackpot winners.

all people are questionable. the love of money is envy manifest.

envy is the most destructive compound human emotion.

I firmly believe greed comes from two thought processes: A sense of fear, or a desire for authority. I don’t know if wealth will make you a monster, but it will certainly show what you really are.

I don’t think money itself corrupts, but power does and power comes with money. Im currently reading a book “Human Kind” that argues that people are generally pretty decent, but that even a little bit of power almost always starts changing people’s behaviour, affecting their empathy, etc.

I think it seperates people, and that can have a harmful effect on people.

You slowly whether living for the good of all mankind (in your mind), excessive pleasure, or avoid the world more and more, just start living an experience that doesn’t make sense to more and more people.

It happens on small scales too. Like a trip to Hawaii or Disney world, or being able afford only “ethically” sources goods and having time to volunteer at your local animal shelter. These are experiences that people have seen have wanted but ultimately never afforded.

Like having time and money to travel to you families for thanksgiving, that is just not going to happen for some people, and the experience of begging for overtime to stock before black Friday is something those people may never experience or even think about.

Just like that stocker may never experience taking the kids to dump to sort through trash to find things to sell to help make it to next year’s seasonal work.

We view world through our eyes alone and can only fathom the rest.

Yes. Most people stop making more when they have enough.

People who don’t stop are already broken and corrupted. They have nothing better to do. No better idea. No other desire. Than to accumulate more. It’s degenerate, sad, to keep wanting more, to feel that hunger when it is already satiated. Like a rat addicted to cocaine, still pushing itself to push the button for more and more.