Does Money Corrupt?

For the picture fans, this little otter was splashing next to the waterfall along with his snuggly otter family who shortly thereafter doggy piled onto the rock.

So the question of the day is, "does money corrupt?" Recent headlines suggest that it does. There is the Cunningham bribery scandal and the Tom Delay money laundering scandal. This is all on the heals of the Enron trial. Here in San Diego, the City seems to be sailing towards bankruptcy while they bill for water and sewer and slip the money into other departments through deceptive cross billing while the sewer system remains badly in need of repair.

People doing corrupt things with money doesn't necessarily mean that it was the money that corrupted them (i.e., it could be non-causal). Perhaps they were corrupt to begin with and the money just amplifies tendencies that were already there. Still, we've all heard stories of people winning the lotto and having their lives filled with people they haven't heard from in years all angling for money. There are the people that marry for money and still others that divorce for money. Recently, today's NPR interviewee pointed out that one of the few stable, progressive democracies in the Middle East was in a country with no oil revenue. If I were to guess, I'd say that money certainly has something to do with all this messy behavior.

So what is it about money that causes seemingly decent people to betray their friends and family or the constituents that trust them? Is it the need to have more money that corrupts? Is it the desire to show off things that money buys to convince others that you are somehow better than them through the strength of your bank account or the cost of your car? I'd like to think that money is just a tool, something that makes bartering unnecessary. However, something in the way many people equate status and success to money, Americans notwithstanding, seems to cause otherwise decent people to abandon their moral values in search of more greenbacks. What do you think? Does money corrupt?