NancyLebovitz comments on Why Does Power Corrupt? - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 October 2008 12:23AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (58)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 March 2016 04:19:41PM 1 point [-]

In Tolkien: Author of the Century, Shippey says that he hasn't been able to find anyone before Acton who said that power corrupts, though he did find one source which said that power reveals character.

I'm wondering whether people failed to notice that power corrupts, or it doesn't corrupt as reliably as all that, or whether it took until Acton's time for people to think it was abnormal for the people in charge to take a big share for themselves and/or be generally irresponsible.