Actually, this is orthogonal to governments. There's widespread bribery in the private sector too, where decisions makers are gifted to persuade them.

To use your phrasing, a capitalistic view of this is that corruption is just anything that breaks the fairy tale idea that the people who work in the corporation seek the interests of the company and not their very own private interests.

You can even see it play out here on Hacker News - people who optimize for their own career goals at the detriment of the company that pays them to get a job done.