steven comments on Why Does Power Corrupt? - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: steven 14 October 2008 09:15:40AM 3 points [-]

Isn't the problem often not that people betray their ideals, but that their ideals were harmful to begin with? Do we know that not-yet-powerful Stalin would have disagreed (internally) with a statement like "preserving Communism is worth the sacrifice of sending a lot of political opponents to gulags"? If not then maybe to that extent everyone is corrupt and it's just the powerful that get to act on it. Maybe it's also the case that the powerful are less idealistic and more selfish, but then there are two different "power corrupts" effects at play.