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The problem with corruption is that it's society-wide and an emergent phenomenon from economic circumstances (poorer countries are always more corrupt than rich ones are- just comes with the territory). This is why it's happening now- compared to 60 years ago there was no massive uplift out of poverty for most of the West through industrialization, no transformative technologies like radio, TV, thinking machines, telephones, affordable semi-private transportation, and certainly not all of those things at once.
This is why the US (and its provinces to varying degrees) citizenry was at a high watermark of anti-corruption at that time, and why conservatives even have a US that barely had any corruption to remember in the first place. Of course, despite their best attempts, all their anti-corruption laws ended up getting corrupted over time; movements and groups that were once positive-sum expansions of economics and civil rights have all devolved into zero-sum supremacy movements.
As far as eliminating corruption goes, well, that's a hard problem and not one any society has ever managed to solve. It's harder without circumstances that empower the anti-corrupt (we're currently scraping the bottom of the barrel for new technology) and that technology has allowed us to prevent most of the Four Horsemen from paying us a visit (as mostly-indiscriminate death from war/disease/famine tends to, after the fact, increase the individual's power to resist corruption due to increased resource availability, leading to the society becoming less affected by corrupt tendencies in itself- sometimes this needle doesn't move much, like in China during the mass exterminations campaigns of the '50s and '60s, but it does still move).
Calling it by its proper name is generally the best way to start.
Look, I live in a poorer country than USA where you don't see as happened in the USA of over 90% of jobs going to favored by progressives groups after BLM as Bloomberg reported. You don't see this kind of behavior because there are less people with this ideology.
There are also people here who advocate moving more in line of this direction. And they do this because of their ideology. if they capture power they are going to push things more in that line. If people who see it my way are in power, then we will not tolerate progressive supremacists.
It really is tragic that your best hope of moving the needle even a little is mass death other than recognise that groups like the ADL not having a chapter in Microsoft, Google, not having influence in the FBI, is moving the world closer to evenhanded application of the rules by both the goverment and private institutions.
Generally I see here people willing to endorse more extreme ways of thinking over being negative, resentful and bitter of groups in a manner that might see as taking a side in the culture war, while their attitute also by default takes a side. Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the inoccent, but what about not blaming the guilty at all?
I initially had a bigger post talking about the history and how even initially so called civil rights movements had supremacists in charge and in key positions of power. The main difference was that they might have some legitimate grievances too about how some of their favorite groups were treated while after getting their way it is all getting more and more. When the civil rights act was passed Lyndon Johnson was praising Marcuse's as the man whose philosophy reflects it and people like MLK were demanding that USA treats blacks especially better for having treated them in the past especially bad and he and his activists were harassing business to get them to hire larger percentage of blacks and complaining how disparate outcomes were evidence of racism.
But in any case, even if they were more moral in the past which I don't think they were to the extend people think, it doesn't change the current reality.
Progressive supremacists (Jewish supremacists, black supremacists, LGBT supremacists, female supremacists, left wing supremacists that is discriminate in favor of being a leftist) have captured power and are abusing it.
This is only a facet of corruption.
There are others. I fail to see your economic explanation apply to say warmongering in the USA. Where groups like the neocons have captured key positions in American goverment and remain in the key positions as administrations change and are authoritarians who gatekeep and cancel those who aren't neocons. Meanwhile weapon manufacturers have been one of the biggest funders of think tanks. Then there are contractors who make a lot of money in nation building while enriching themselves and local elite collaborators by overcharging and underlivering to the most extreme proportions.
There are plenty of poor communities that behave more morally than richer ones. You might be confusing in some instances the effect of bad behavior to the cause. Behaving in destructive enough manners help perpetuate poverty butt it is possible to be rich and be immoral and even predatory and parasitical.
The people involved with revolving doors in weapon manufacturers, governance, even intelligence services and front groups who promote warmongering are rich and made plenty of money out of this. They are also corrupt. Becoming richer has not made them more moral. Indeed as their method was corruption, it ensures a continuation of it.
Public private partnerships in spheres of medicine with revolving door with big pharma and goverment is also an issue.
Taking very serious agency problems is one way to combat other forms of corruption outside of just the progressive supremacists. Although it is all connected since in addition to intersectionality in ways of other identities, compromise in regards to other agendas and interest of the powerful and willingness to play along is a means for different factions to get their way and promote less conflict in a "bipartisan" uniparty manner.
The dominant ideology and whether institutions tolerate corruption is key. You can have improvement absent mass death, and promoting hopelessness is a cope excuse for being unwilling to name and oppose the corrupt and corruption. Things can always improve and become worse, which relates with whether moral people are willing to behave morally and enforce morality. If they are unwilling and allow immoral people to impose their vision and even strategically demoralize any opposition, well you will see how interesting times can get when people don't try to enforce a better way of doing things.
Of course a certain level of unpleasantness, negativity, bitterness is necessary. Sorry but you can't support being ruled by the reasonable, the ethical, the truthful, the honorable, the restrained, etc, etc, if you aren't unpleasant to the unreasonable, dishonest, unethical and corrupt.
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