What does it mean if you live in a corrupt society?

Answer 1

The definition of a corrupt society is one where power, whether political, commercial or personal, is routinely abused by means of bribery, extortion, or other dishonest means of seeking gain.

Every community will have a percentage of people who abuse power in this manner, and a percentage of those who encourage this.

Some communities (countries, states, and so on) actively discourage corruption by various means; in others it is so entrenched that it becomes simply the way things are done.

Of course, when the majority of people in any community live in a certain way, things tend to balance out in the end.

For example, a group of traders collude to set prices so that while their customers believe competition exists, in fact it doesn't. There might be some fluctuation for the sake of appearances, but basically the prices will match.
However, there will be some customers who are well aware of this practice, and some of these will offer inducements to one or more traders to work with them outside the system. So a trader might on paper sell to this customer for the price agreed between traders, but in reality will give the customer a cash discount. In return, the customer might offer, from their own business, similar concessions to the trader.

So, competition still flourishes.

Variations of this happen everywhere, in politics, business and personal life. We call a society corrupt when it's easy to see this is the case, but human nature being as it is, people everywhere will do what appears to be, or what they feel to be, in their own best interests whether overtly or covertly.

It really does all balance, eventually. But behaving dishonestly isn't nice; it isn't good, and its effects on both the dishonest person and their victims are bad.

Sadly, an astonishing percentage of people do behave dishonestly, even when their is little or no benefit to themselves and, at times, when there would be more benefit to themselves if they behaved honestly.

A person in business, for example, will lose customers if their behaviour is consistently and clearly less than honest. Whatever minor gains their dishonesty might achieve, in the long run the customers they've lost won't come back, and new customers will hear about them and go elsewhere.

In a society where corruption is overt and an accepted way of life, the big problems arise when some people seek to gain or retain power by seriously threatening the safety, well-being, or livelihood, of those who even passively resist the system, or those who challenge it.

This happens to some extent in all communities, but when a whole community is controlled in this way the society in question has become seriously rotten and change is not only advisable but vital because, apart from the direct human cost, the fact is that violently corrupt societies simply do not flourish economically.

The percentage of poor people in violently corrupt areas becomes ever greater, and the divide between rich and poor, empowered and powerless, becomes enormous.

Eventually, there is nowhere left for the society to go; it has degenerated so far that only the most drastic and extremely long-term measures can drag it back up again. We see very clear examples of this happening worldwide, now and throughout history.

Answer 2

Living in a corrupt society means that dishonesty, fraud, and unethical behavior are prevalent across various sectors, leading to a lack of trust in institutions and undermining the rule of law. It can result in unequal access to resources, limited opportunities for social mobility, and a general sense of injustice among the population.