As everything else in the Science of Economics, corruption has a very well defined function. Not a positive function, to be sure, but very well defined. Corruption is in fact viewed as a barrier to economic development, a relic of the past wherein ambition and goodwill are impeded to flourish for the common good of society. As such, unfortunate people that live in a corrupted society are locked into a never-ending cycle of misery.

Corruption is economically defined as a practice or set of practices of dishonesty so widespread and powerful to interfere with the natural flow of process and equilibrium of free-market economic forces such as supply and demand. Whereas dictatorships or other undemocratic forms of government are by their own very nature corrupted, corruption is very much real in democracies as well. The general tendency of corruption is to create