Does power really corrupt?

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/does-power-really-corrupt

by Turukawa • 10 years ago

118 112 10 years ago

1843magazine.com

pigpaws• 10 years ago

Yes. Next question.

thricegr8• 10 years ago

No. See Marcus Aurelius

iofj2• 10 years ago

You mean the Roman Emperor telling everyone they should be happy with less money, less food, less water, less everything ?

The Roman Emperor who got the position because he was his father's favorite nephew ? The Marcus Aurelius who got a special exception on at least 2 laws just for him personally from the Senate for his first job on special request from his father ? Whose first job was qaestor ("minister of finance" - sort of) ?

That Marcus Aurelius ?

Actions speak louder than words, and given the fact that this guy was an emperor (and is thus rather unlikely to have written those books himself) ... probably were a PR campaign. A very successful one, but mostly nothing more than a PR campaign.

Granted these are all cases of other people acting in a corrupt manner to provide him with advantages in life no-one else had. It doesn't necessarily reflect on his character ... however ... especially his succession ...

manmal• 10 years ago

You are trying to point out Aurelius' corruption by critizising the way he became emperor, which I find a bit weak. Is there evidence that he actually mis-used his power when he already held that power? Also, how did he compare to other emperors of his time? The things you mentioned could easily have been culturally accepted.

rprospero• 10 years ago

Your counter argument is a man whose nepotism ended the the reign of the Good Emperors and put a raving megalomaniac in charge?

I'm trying not to be snarky, but it feels like his experiment with Commodus is a massive example of how power does corrupt. Perhaps you were thinking of Cincinnatus?

singold• 10 years ago

And remember in most cases (if not all) your boss is not your friend.

Kind of a corollary

hazza1• 10 years ago

absolutely

venomsnake• 10 years ago

Actually be scared of powerful person that is not corrupted. They are willing to commit atrocities on much bigger scale.

ithkuil2• 10 years ago

Famous quote of Giulio Andreotti, an old Italian politician.

"Il potere logora chi non ce l'ha"

("Power wears out those who don't have it")

Note: the literal translation is "to wear out", but the phrase "il potere logora" has the equivalent meaning of "the power corrupts", in the sense that it wears out the moral compass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Andreotti

Angostura• 10 years ago

Perhaps go with 'degrades' which carries both connotations?

ithkuil2• 10 years ago

I used the translation I found in the linked wikipedia article and also the most frequently cited form in the wild.

Furthermore 'degrades' can also imply that it demeans a person, strips one's dignity, while recent history shows that Italy is a country where being corrupt does not necessarily make you lose respect and honour (i.e honour != rightfulness).

Chandler75• 10 years ago

uhm well actually, in italian, it means that the power, with all the responsibilities that come with its exercise, is supposed to wear or erode those who must exercise it: but it is actually the opposite, it wears out those who want the power and cannot have it and maybe even those who have to suffer from it.

It's an ironic quote from Andreotti.

Tepix• 10 years ago

The page demands more power:

"Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website."

But I'm not going to give it away!

Buetol• 10 years ago

Here's in markdown form: https://gist.github.com/mdamien/44abbef9e6c7099fd54f45bab257...

co_dh• 10 years ago

really? I write javascript(typescript) for living.

clentaminator• 10 years ago

I'm so sorry.

Programmatic3• 10 years ago

You can inspect the element and delete it to gain full access to the article. Lots of sites like to put a noscript div up that obscures the article, but the full text is underneath. No ajax trickery here.

humanrebar3• 10 years ago

Not that this study isn't interesting, but Lord Acton was really talking about how powerful people corrupt us.

''' I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility [that is, the later judgment of historians] has to make up for the want of legal responsibility [that is, legal consequences during the rulers' lifetimes]. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which . . . the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position, . . . but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greater names coupled with the greater crimes. You would spare these criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them, higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice; still more, still higher, for the sake of historical science.... '''

http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/165acton.html

What is he getting at? We'd hang Mary and forgive Elizabeth for the same crimes, so we're corrupted by the powerful. I think the the leading presidential candidates of both major U.S. parties shows this to be true.

Programmatic3• 10 years ago

I don't think that interpretation jibes with the text:

Assertion:

"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases."

Rationale:

"Historic responsibility [that is, the later judgment of historians] has to make up for the want of legal responsibility [that is, legal consequences during the rulers' lifetimes]. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

He then goes on to rail against people that hold power:

"Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority."

Without the idea that power tends to corrupt those in power, there would be no reason to presume that they did wrong by default or to say that people who exercise influence and authority are bad men.

zaphar• 10 years ago

In some ways it's mutual. Power tends to remove societal curbs on bad behavior. The natural result in aggregate is an increase in bad behavior. The cause though is both on those who allow and indeed even consent to the removal of those curbs. (See the current Trump campaign.) And the individual who fails to resist the temptation of consequence free action.

humanrebar3• 10 years ago

There's probably some of that in there too, but the context is history, so when I read 'great men', for instance, there is an implied 'great men of history' in there. I think Acton was saying our view of events and actions naturally lean towards making excuses and we need to be aware of that.

You probably have a point there, but I think the corruption of authority on the rest of us is certainly a major theme.

madaxe_again• 10 years ago

To define someone as bad you must also define good - and if you are defining the terms, they are meaningless.

From the perspective of the "bad men", they are serving good - be that the good they see in themselves or whatever cause it is they act in. Stalin genuinely believed he was acting in the interests of the Soviet people. Pol Pot was liberating his countrymen.

I would argue that the GP's interpretation is correct - we willingly ignore our own moral compasses when we examine the behaviour of the powerful, as to admit that those that hold power over you are "evil" is to admit your own weakness in not actively opposing that power - so power does indeed corrupt those who behold it, as much as those who hold it - if not moreso, as the "bad men" act in "enlightened self interest" and do no wrong in their own eyes - but you do do wrong by knowingly averting your eyes.

barrkel• 10 years ago

The two are intermixed. The only reason powerful people are powerful is because we acquiesce to their demands. Our acquiescence in turn influences our moral judgements; or alternatively, one measure of power is the ability to cause people to inhibit their moral judgements that could cause them to resist.

stplsd• 10 years ago

‘We must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’. In fact power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth. The individual and the knowledge that may be gained of him belong to this production’

-- Foucault

halov• 10 years ago

Depends on how you think of power: a privilege or great responsibility? Power corrupts those who think they deserve it.

"Two of my cousins and I entered the apartment of the Prophet (ﷺ). One of them said: Messenger of Allah, appoint us rulers of some lands that the Almighty and Glorious God has entrusted to thy care. The other also said something similar. He said: We do not appoint to this position one who asks for it nor anyone who is covetous for the same."

"If a dog dies hungry on the banks of the River Euphrates, Umar will be responsible for dereliction of duty." Umar Ibn al Khattab

gambiting3• 10 years ago

"If a dog dies hungry on the banks of the River Euphrates, Umar will be responsible for dereliction of duty."

can you explain what it means? English is not my first language and I'm having difficulty getting the meaning out of this sentence.

deelowe• 10 years ago

Paraphrasing - If a dog starves/drowns, the ruler is responsible for their failure to perform their duties (keep the dog safe).

More or less saying everything is the responsibility of the ruler, no matter how small the task, I think.

wopian• 10 years ago

Dereliction of duty means that the person shamefully abandoned or failed to fulfill their obligation.

In this case, it's Umar letting the dog die of hunger instead of keeping the dog well fed.

some1else• 10 years ago

It's a vicious cycle. In a world where corruption is rewarded, you are chastised explicitly or implicitly for passing up the opportunity to get ahead by participating in systemic abuse of power. I can't find the precise research that illuminated how identifying a cheater (who is perceived either as part of the community, or an outsider), can influence the rest of the class to cheat at tests or not. But this infographic[1] identifies peer pressure as the #1 reason for cheating in college, and seems to back it up with survey and research evidence.

1: http://www.bestcollegereviews.org/cheating/

velodrome• 10 years ago

Exploring the Psychology of Wealth, ‘Pernicious’ Effects of Economic Inequality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuqGrz-Y_Lc

alanwatts• 10 years ago

Having power is a requirement of being corrupt, by the definition. If you didn't have power, you wouldn't have the leverage to corrupt the system in the first place.

Corruption: dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery

steego2• 10 years ago

I know this isn't a popular idea, but I think people need to be more empathetic to those who have been entrusted with power.

I despise corruption, but I think we do ourselves a disservice when we focus all our attention on the officials who are being corrupted while allowing armies of policy experts to influence official's opinions while funding their campaigns.

The question shouldn't be "Does power really corrupt?", the question should be, "Does power become a magnet for special interests hell bent on corrupting it?"

awakeasleep• 10 years ago

The very nature of power forces people to be empathetic to those who wield it.

Thats almost the definition of power, and it's also what corrupts people.

steego2• 10 years ago

That's a good point. People tend to be empathetic to those who they feel like they represent them, so they'll be more likely to forgive corruption as they'll chalk it up to the landscape in which the official has to operate.

How do you get people to focus on the landscape of corruption rather than politicians? Politicians are easier to blame because they have a name and a face. How do you train people to target landscape?

ADDED: How do you get people to focus on the elements of conflict of interest in larger systems rather than people?

anexprogrammer2• 10 years ago

This, probably apocryphal, quote applies:

Those who want power shouldn't have it, those who enjoy it do so for the wrong reasons.

dang• 10 years ago

It compels them to be subservient—or rebellious, which is the same thing with a bit flipped—but neither of those is empathy. I'm not sure empathy is possible except among equals.

kordless• 10 years ago

I think people need to be empathetic to those who have been entrusted with power, but I also think most people in power didn't get there by trustworthy means.

There's something to be said for making things sacred. How power is arrived at, the people who hold it, how it is managed moving forward, and how that power changes (nay, MUST change) over time.

pluma2• 10 years ago

It's not so much that power corrupts. Power is just a multiplier.

The problem is more that the kind of people who are most likely to end up in positions of power are those who are going to abuse that power and don't care about their responsibility (or have never learned it).

TheOtherHobbes• 10 years ago

It's because democracy doesn't work - and nor does any other system.

Democracy selects politicians on their ability to persuade voters. Feudalism and dictatorship select those who are the most violent and self-serving.

All are examples of a very niche kind of competence, which has nothing to do with intelligent strategic planning.

pluma2• 10 years ago

I was thinking more of business people than politics, actually. What with the trope that most successful business people are sociopaths.

known• 10 years ago

It's called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

2close4comfort• 10 years ago

Power corrupts those who are in power to wield influence, eventually in attempts to please all those they serve they find themselves without any ideals or direction of their own. And I agree with some1else that people are rewarded for this behavior but the chances of that changing are pretty slim so I guess the real solution is not be weak/unempathetic people.

EGreg• 10 years ago

Wow, finally an article that breaks Betteridge's law!

For a great speech on why power corrupts, by a powerful person, see this:

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/havel.html

profmouse• 10 years ago

has anyone ever thought about ai being in power? Maybe being unemotional and lacking emotional intelligence might be a possible solution where humans fail once again...

saiya-jin• 10 years ago

tempting Deux Ex-esque scenario. but - this machine would be #1 hacking target of all nefarious people, agencies, NSA and whatnot for reason or another. and all programs, systems and architectures have fault.

maybe a mixed system - AI would decide certain topic, and human assembly/public vote in important matters would confirm/reject the solution. this way AI could evolve and have a proven track, and we wouldn't lose all control.

it feels scary to give all control to something that could fail fast and in epic scale, Skynet-style (I know, I played one too many games in my life and it shows)

DomreiRoam• 10 years ago

The Culture books by Iain M. Banks talks about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series

arethuza• 10 years ago

The Culture books pretty much define the best case scenario for an AI run society - the main control on the godlike-AIs (the Minds) running everything being the opinions of their fellow Minds. Get it wrong, e.g. by fiddling with the minds of meat beasties, and you get ostracized - which is about the most severe punishment the Culture has:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCU_Grey_Area

Jtsummers• 10 years ago

It's a theme in many science-fiction tales, with various results. See Asimov's works, the introduction eventually of the zeroth law. Ostensibly the machines weren't in charge, but much decision making was pushed to them. Similar to EPICAC (later generations) in Vonnegut's Player Piano, though with a very different result. In his work the machine made decisions based on measured statistics and rules put in place by people (to comedic and tragic effects).

And what does it mean to have an AI in charge? First, we don't have any sort of AGI. So any AI is going to be something along the lines of a Watson or AlphaGo. Machine learning + logic + heuristics (the latter two potentially generated by the first).

What level of authority will it be given? Will it be queried for input like any other Cabinet member? "Department of Heuristics, Secretary Watson".

Will it directly guide things? At what point will people be comfortable with this? To what extent will it's authority be permitted to go? This may only appeal to authoritarian-endorsing personality types. In Player Piano, the computer largely guided employment (or employability), but a screw up in a person's CV resulted in their attaining a position they excelled in, and later lost when the CV was corrected (they did not earn their BS because they didn't pass a gym class, consequently they couldn't have earned their Masters or PhD, no longer with the educational background they were unqualified for the post they held).

It'll likely be as mindless a drone at this as actual HR offices are (my mother, a ChemE, was barred from a program management position, no actual engineering work, because she didn't have a civil engineering degree, it was a numbers, dollars and personnel, jox, the degree was irrelevant given her experience).

More likely, these non-general AIs will continue to do what they've done for years but in more areas. They'll inform decision makers, become sufficiently comprehensive to properly correlate numerous variables and detect patterns that we mere mortals cannot see. Many businesses have used some form of this, see optimization and logistics algorithms, for decades, technically centuries but there's been more data and more computational power the last few decades. Now machine learning just automates this sort of statistical and logistical analysis.

tim3333• 10 years ago

It wouldn't surprise me if Google start working on that once they've got the cars sorted.

quadrangle• 10 years ago

"SORRY, YOU NEED TO ENABLE JAVASCRIPT TO VISIT THIS WEBSITE." it tells me. I do. I see flat, plain text with some images. WTF. Don't be those web devs, guys!

Aelinsaar• 10 years ago

Probably, but we don't spend enough time thinking about what kind of person it is who seeks that power in the first place. Maybe there was nothing to corrupt in the first place.

gwern• 10 years ago

"A Large Scale Test of the Effect of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior" http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... , Korndörfer et al 2015:

"Does being from a higher social class lead a person to engage in more or less prosocial behavior? Psychological research has recently provided support for a negative effect of social class on prosocial behavior. However, research outside the field of psychology has mainly found evidence for positive or u-shaped relations. In the present research, we therefore thoroughly examined the effect of social class on prosocial behavior. Moreover, we analyzed whether this effect was moderated by the kind of observed prosocial behavior, the observed country, and the measure of social class. Across eight studies with large and representative international samples, we predominantly found positive effects of social class on prosociality: Higher class individuals were more likely to make a charitable donation and contribute a higher percentage of their family income to charity (32,090 ≥ N ≥ 3,957; Studies 1–3), were more likely to volunteer (37,136 ≥N ≥ 3,964; Studies 4–6), were more helpful (N = 3,902; Study 7), and were more trusting and trustworthy in an economic game when interacting with a stranger (N = 1,421; Study 8) than lower social class individuals. Although the effects of social class varied somewhat across the kinds of prosocial behavior, countries, and measures of social class, under no condition did we find the negative effect that would have been expected on the basis of previous results reported in the psychological literature. Possible explanations for this divergence and implications are discussed."

internaut7• 10 years ago

Gwern, I declare you to be a natural aristocrat.

I hope you won't get mad if we freeze you until the world cycles back around to the idea of making rulers effective at their jobs.

I don't think we'll have long to wait. The Net is over turning many formerly reasonable ideas by holding up a mirror to us. Will Rogers said: It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so. <opinion> The Net is the end of egalitarianism, forever until perhaps genomics is truly cracked.

It's going to an interesting ride! I hope we wind up closer to the Diamond Age than Snow Crash though.

sn9• 10 years ago

Did you not catch the hint in DA where DA is set in the same universe as SC? It's just a few decades later.

bayonetz• 10 years ago

Great book on similar topic: "The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics"

https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...

Provides compelling case that all politicians tend toward dictatorship with the difference in how fully these tendencies are realized just being in the size of the coalition they have to appease, reward, or bully. With stereotypical absolute dictators this easy to see. On the other end of the spectrum, it is more shrouded. American democracy is theoretically based on a maximum sized coalition equaling roughly the entire population. In practice, the leaders are beholden to and have to influence a much smaller coalition to wield power. Something like the current Sanders/Clinton popular vote vs inner circle super delegate issue demonstrates this pretty well. Fascinating read.

linhchi• 10 years ago

But people with more power are the ones that have to make the hard choices. And hard choices are hard, true by definition.

If one never has to burden any thing on one's shoulder, probably that one is the burden of someone else. It's like this: we civil people can't stand killing and shooting, that's why we outsource it to the government and praise the army for their service.

Is it hypocritical? I don't know anymore.

Airspectral• 10 years ago

No, I think it depends on the mind of the person. But yes, you are more expose by corruption with power and money.

sebringj4• 10 years ago

These kind of studies address bell curves which by definition always has outliers so your statement is correct but statistically may be an outlier. You can always say "it depends" in other words.

sebringj4• 10 years ago

Intuitively, this feels very right with my experience being on both sides of the fence. I would need to do a study on one aspect of this in particular that gut-wise is the core of this IMO: The way people treat you shapes your personality and how you treat others in the future. To me this is more to the heart of the issue. For example, when I was poor, people treated me like I was not really wanted or that I was expected to go the extra mile to please. I tended to feel less important with less confidence and didn't feel I was special in any sense, which in some sense made me more selfless to a degree. On the flip side, having money, the service industry kisses your ass and women treat you like you're the hot item on Black Friday. This inflates your ego and you expect that treatment after awhile, becoming more picky and discerning of everything, moving in the direction of being a selfish asshole. This is the same reason IMO why beautiful women tend to be perceived as rude or the "B" word as they see most men as just a commodity as they are inundated with unwanted attention.

internaut7• 10 years ago

This is a huge problem in our society in so many ways.

Three examples I've personally noticed.

1. While working at typical working class jobs, if you happen to talk about geek/intellectual stuff e.g. with coworkers - middle class people typically do NOT like that. It really grinds their gears. Even passing references to do with current events.

You can talk about sports or something else you're supposed to be interested in. This is allowed.

You can explain this a dozen different ways but I am convinced it shows something nasty in their character. Don't get me wrong, these are good people but they have this weakness.

2. Not so much attractive women per se as socialites, they have a real problem when they lose their looks. I think the more social you are the worse it gets. Broadly speaking women gradually become less attractive to the opposite sex over time and they are painfully aware of this. Some women are so invested in their appearance that when it goes they undergo terrific emotional turmoil that men probably can't understand (imagine going senile in front of your competitors!) and it produces a mother lode of neurosis. On the other hand women who accept themselves warts and all are easier to get along with.

3. Some people are plain or even ugly. This makes them invisible to many people on a bunch of levels. It can't be a great feeling.

The general point is that all kinds of people should keep an open mind about others. Obviously our bodies are a vehicle and it is what our minds are that really matters. There is also a huge diversity of minds, and that is fine too.

I don't know if you've ever had a meet-up with people from an online forum before who you've previously talked to for years, but contrariwise to internet opinion people are never what you expect. Without the online community you'd probably have never talked to those people in a thousand years. That's why I didn't like Facebook. It was a return to the old badness.

sebringj4• 10 years ago

Those are some great points, especially about how women's identities change as I've seen that from some of my relatives. But just to be slightly different, I view this as an observation of human nature in general rather than it necessarily being bad or good, although it does seem unfair. I doubt this will ever change unless we somehow genetically modify people to be more empathetic but could be jenga for something else.

tryitnow• 10 years ago

To play the devil's advocate: What's wrong with being more selective? I don't think anything is.

What's problematic is how people go about it. Our society doesn't teach us how to be selective with grace and manners. So when people realize they have power in a situation they freak out a bit and might over react in being excessively picky or rude to others.

Kalium• 10 years ago

Nothing is wrong with being more selective. Everything is wrong if you're the person or group strongly selected against.

ZeroFries• 10 years ago

Because it raises the conditions necessary for you (i.e. makes those circumstances rarer) to be content and at peace.

internaut7• 10 years ago

The problems with class warfare are similar to those of racial discrimination.

The problem is not that there is no basis for using a filter but that assuming everybody is identical within a class (or subset, which has a 1:1 mapping to the notion of class) is a logical error.

It is not about morality so much as logic. Suppose I find Italians to be corrupt and untrustworthy. Well evidently there exist Italians who are honest with good intentions. That some of set of Italians genuinely do belong to a mafia is not indicative of the larger group, even if it were so that a majority of Italians were mafiosos.

Of course real life is complicated, people have to resort to satisficing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing) and worse yet harmful behavior patterns aren't limited to any subset of the group. Notoriously there exist robin hoods and bad cops. Choosing not to go down the wrong street is reasonable under satisficing but rejecting job candidates for having the wrong names is.

All of this is to say that discrimination in of itself is not illogical but discriminating indiscriminately IS.

kelvin0• 10 years ago

Make it illegal to own a black Mercedes, Voila!

clock_tower8• 10 years ago

Anglo-Saxon saying: "You know what a man is when he can do as he likes." Good people with power will remain good people. Narcissists, people who say "I told you so", and other nasty pieces of work will remain nasty pieces of work when in power -- look at the journal editors who rejected Egloff's paper for a petty example.

As for whether Mercedes drivers behave badly? I find it easy to believe that they do. There are those who don't know the social language of cars, and those who inherit family cars, but the sort of person who knows the language of cars and buys a Mercedes anyways is the sort who has money but no taste -- "West African cabinet ministers and Beverly Hills dentists" in Paul Fussell's phrase -- the sort of person who would voluntarily live in Malibu.

Arcten• 10 years ago

For us uninitiated, what is this "social language of cars" you're referring to?

clock_tower8• 10 years ago

US culture's assumptions about what message a car sends -- things like how cowboys drive F-150s, rich old people drive Cadillacs, eco-snobs and neocons drive Priuses, Old Money drives BMWs (preferably 1970s BMWs that haven't been washed since the Clinton Administration), and so on.

None of these messages are self-evident; it's possible for someone outside the US culture, or who just doesn't watch much television, to accidentally buy a car that sends a message he/she didn't mean to send. Thus my disclaimers about Mercedeses -- there are doubtless good people who bought a Mercedes and didn't realize what message they were sending.

sevensor3• 10 years ago

The Mercedes thing is interesting. I hadn't been paying attention to it until I began to notice a pattern -- whenever somebody in my town was driving as if the rules of the road and basic humanity did not apply, the vehicle was usually a Mercedes. I've been wondering about it ever since. There are definitely benign Mercedes drivers on the road, but the brand seems to attract more than an ordinary proportion of jerks. (This is the kind of thing one notices a lot as a cyclist, and Mercedes owners are responsible for more than their fair share of near misses with me.) I looked for the same pattern with other luxury vehicles, but it doesn't seem to apply to BMW, Audi, Porche, or Maserati. Since nobody in my social circle owns a luxury vehicle, I remain intensely curious about who, exactly, is driving these things. Does it have something to do with being the kind of person who is willing to buy a vehicle with ho-hum performance, expensive repair bills, and poor fuel efficiency? Have you got a link for the "language of cars" you're talking about?

dota_fanatic• 10 years ago

I suspect your anecdote is just that. Around here (Texas) I tend to suspect unfriendly driving from large trucks and "cheap" sports cars and am more defensive in my driving when I 'm around them. What is the actual distribution of unfriendly drivers? Many mercedes I see are older folks who drive slowly and safely (perhaps too slowly...)

As for why buy a luxury car, it's much like why buy an apple laptop? It tends to be a completely different user experience compared to your early hyundai, low-end mazda, <insert budget models here>. As for my luxury car that I got a great deal on used, even considering repair costs, its performance and ride quality is anything but ho-hum...

quanticle• 10 years ago

I suspect confirmation bias is heavily in play here. You think Mercedes drivers are more likely to violate road norms than other drivers, so whenever you see a Mercedes driver, you think, "Ah ha! Another Mercedes driver that's a jerk!"

To be honest, I don't see the problem that either you or the author sees with Mercedes drivers. In my experience, it's Audi drivers that are more likely to be jerks than Mercedes drivers, but again, that's probably confirmation bias talking.

mistermann• 10 years ago

It's strange because I've always witnessed BMW drivers being the biggest assholes on the road, and by a huge indisputable margin. I've always chalked it up to them having the type of personality to want to show off (so, German luxury car), but they weren't actual big shots enough to afford a Mercedes.

tim3333• 10 years ago

Link to Fussell quote

http://www.magnificentbastard.com/posts/paul-fussell-memoria...

clock_tower8• 10 years ago

the kind of person who is willing to buy a vehicle with ho-hum performance, expensive repair bills, and poor fuel efficiency?

I think that's the key to it.

There are two reasons to buy more expensive things than normal: for better quality and durability (think of the famous Terry Pratchett passage on boots), and to show off. Most expensive purchases are a bit of both; a BMW, for example, is a showy vehicle when it's new, but it's also something that'll have a lower total cost of ownership than a Ford if you own it for 20 years.

A Mercedes, though, will cost you more over 20 years than an equivalent Ford. If you know that a Mercedes is a money pit (i.e., if you've ever talked to a BMW salesman), and you buy one anyways, you're practicing conspicuous consumption, showing off how much money you can spend on this money-pit of a car, and generally doing the opposite of Pratchett's Boots. This is noveau-riche behavior, which goes with the rest of being noveau-riche; Old Money buys Pratchett's Boots aggressively (Mercer and Sons shirts, easily-repaired shoes, etc.), which is part of how they stay rich for so long. (A fortune is an easy thing to lose if you start treating it like a genie in a bottle. Recall how the Count of Monte Cristo blew through 2/3 of his fortune in a decade; he has many real-world counterparts.)

Have you got a link for the "language of cars" you're talking about?

No, but there's clearly a lot of interest in this. Maybe I should write a book about it -- even though I don't know cars particularly well...

Note regional variations, as another commentor brought up here; and note that here I'm talking about high-end cars. For really dangerous driving, look for working-class drivers with low-riding sports cars; twenty Mercedeses are less dangerous than one guy who thinks he's driving an F-16.

dikdik• 10 years ago

I've heard a very similar saying about people in LA, as many people love to talk about how narcissistic the population is here.

LA does not turn people into assholes, the environment allows assholes to blossom into their full potential. If you are a humble, good-hearted person and move to LA you will generally stay that way.

clock_tower8• 10 years ago

That's what I've heard about LA as well -- especially with Hollywood being there. It isn't necessary to be a narcissist to want an acting career, but it "helps".

Now that I think of it, LA and Hollywood might have the same problem as DC and politics.

Our political class is a collection of horrible freaks and sad sacks for a reason: the only way to get power in this country is to want it so desperately that you'll spend your whole career trying to get it, even though you'll probably never get past the rank of junior senator or political aide. This is literally megalomania -- the level of power-hungriness normally associated with Lovecraftian cultists and evil wizards, and sometimes not even with them.

Anyhow, I could see LA having the sort of problem with fame that DC has with power: the people who make it in Hollywood are a subset of the people who want so desperately to make it in Hollywood that they'll throw their lives away on a career track that gives them a small chance of getting a big break and a large chance of waiting tables. Desperate commitment and fear of failure can make a good person turn very bad -- despite my quoting that rather smug Anglo-Saxon saying previously.

wj2• 10 years ago

What your issue with the people of Malibu? Or with the city of Malibu?

clock_tower8• 10 years ago

It's an expensive place, and yet it has neither history nor a pleasant climate. No battles, no culture, no castles or fortresses, no regional wines or cheeses, and yet it's as expensive as Burgundy and the Savoy.

Also, there are probably a lot of Mercedeses sold there. :)

kazinator• 10 years ago

The widespread lack of power suppresses the latent corruption in most people from having any large impact.

The availability of power exposes the latent corruption.

z3t4• 10 years ago

Some people like to take responsibility. Others like to be powerful. But everyone wants to be important.

adrianlmm• 10 years ago

As someone said:

"Power does not corrupt, corrups the fear to lose it"

internaut7• 10 years ago

Interesting article. What I have to say will sound old fashioned but I think it is relevant.

My opinion is that power does not corrupt as much under one circumstance. It corresponds to old ideas about aligning interests of the group with the individual. About also not having to answer to competitors for your status in society.

If you are a trained member of the aristocratic class.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristocrat

Aristocrats != Wealthy. Although they usually are as a side affect.

Aristocrats can be born or more rarely raised into the class. They are normally trained in an area of expertise or otherwise have a great deal of experience. Example would be the House of Lords as opposed to the House of Parliament members whom are democratically elected.

Today the word has a negative meaning but originally the aristocracy performed any number of astonishing feats I do not believe modern governments are capable of accomplishing.

In modern times it is possible that patriotism can serve a similar function for well paid civil servants and that also being independently wealthy can be an advantage against corruption. However these techniques are just derivatives of the original idea of an aristocracy class.

Example of an official present day aristocrat would be Baroness Susan Greenfield. A good example of a defacto (natural) aristocrat would be somebody like Freeman Dyson.

These are people we can trust to have power and wield it responsibly. I realize this is a highly imperfect system but it really is superior to modern day ideas about democracy and responsibility.

Incidentally I have no money or power, I gain no advantage from believing this. I arrive at this idea largely by reading history books. I just think if you can't separate rich from the aristocrats you will get confusing and conflated results as per the article.

Obviously the problem with aristocracy is the overly hereditary nature of it. Freeman Dyson's children are excellent people but in different (magical to me) ways. I could not say whether his grandchildren would share the same level though, that's kind of the problem that lead to the word aristocracy having negative sentiments.

Animats• 10 years ago

Recommended reading: "Assholes, A Theory".[1] A serious study of the rewards and effects of being an asshole.

(I gave a copy of this to a friend who's an attorney for a major Silicon Valley law firm, and she found it explained some of the people she had to deal with.)

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Assholes-Theory-Aaron-James/dp/0804171...

vonnik2• 10 years ago

This is one of many arguments against total economic liberalism. Allowing unlimited economic inequality produces a superclass that is likely to treat the rest of society poorly.

p1esk• 10 years ago

As communism experiments show, enforcing economic equality also produces a superclass that treats the rest of society poorly. :)

vonnik2• 10 years ago

there's a whole lot of room in between. every modern nation state produces a super class, but it's a question of how super they are, and whether possible checks exist to their superness. there are few checks to vast wealth in the US today.

mentat• 10 years ago

The basic research seems sketchy. You send however many students out, what is the framing you're giving them for doing the rating? What are their own current biases or likely statistical ones considering their current training / profession / school?

cainxinth• 10 years ago

I have two words for you: Homeowner Association

Does power really corrupt?

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