In 1975, not long after I left the New York City Department of Investigation, a city building inspector accepted a $50 cash envelope to overlook a code violation. He was corrupt. In 2024, a hedge fund manager donated $10 million to a super PAC supporting the senator who then blocked legislation that would have cost the fund manager’s industry $4 billion. He was a patriot exercising his First Amendment rights. Something has gone wrong with our vocabulary.

Corruption, as currently defined in most legal systems, is a transactional crime: an explicit quid pro quo in which a public official receives a personal benefit in exchange for an official act. The bribe must be traceable. The favor must be documented. The envelope must change hands. This is a fine definition for the 19th century, when the machinery of government was simple enough that corruption had to be equally simple. Today, it is roughly as useful as defining fraud only as “a man in a top hat selling snake oil at a county fair.” The world has grown more sophisticated. So has the rot.