rf@wu1.UUCP (12/28/83)
Power does not corrupt individuals. Rather, positions of power attract the already corrupt power hungry. There is hope in this. If one offers rulership to competent men and women of good will, one will have good rulership. But who offers? How shall we choose rulers? How shall we pick administrators and statesmen, rather than actors, salesmen, sycophants, and power-hungry fools? The work of political office is mostly unglamourous. It's mainly concerned with services. Forget the latest stupid war! What's the Federal Communication Commission doing? What's the Justice Department doing? But you cannot build a platform of such matters. Necessarily, one must campaign on catchy ideas: space programs, defense, motherhood (consider the current abortion controversy.) Consider the importance of stage presence to a Presidential candidate. Despite popular opposition to Pres. Reagan's policies (as cited in the current public opinion polls) Pres. Reagan is sill a popular president (according to those same polls). Why? He's got stage presence. The Vice-Presidencies of two corporations for which I have worked have been loaded with incompetent sycophants. Sometimes, a company president will be such a man--a yes-man to the company's Board, who knows little of the business of the company. American industry has fared badly at the hands of such men--good business practice dictates that everyone in a company know its business, yet if one asked ten Western Union executives the company's business, one would get ten answers. How can one run *any* business with such management? So what *is* a good ruler? How do you put such a person in office? Comments, suggestions? Randolph Fritz
genji@ucbopal.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (12/30/83)
Imbalance of power corrupts and monopoly of power corrupts absolutely. --Genji
swatt@ittvax.UUCP (Alan S. Watt) (12/30/83)
I'm sorry, but after reading your note, I still think the author of "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Victor Hugo? Disraeli?) is the wiser one. It is a common fallacy to believe that all we need to do is give power to "intelligent people of good will ...". The reasons why this is a fallacy have to do with the inherent diversity of human interests; those in power will exercise that power to gain what they perceive to be their interests. If your interests happen to coincide, you will probably be happy with their actions; otherwise probably not. Talleyrand once defined the goal of diplomacy as ".. an equality of dissatisfaction", which acknowledges inherently irreconcilable differences in interest. It is very tempting to view politics as just one more "problem" to be solved by scientific method, high-tech, EST, reading dynamics, liberal education, or whatever, but it just ain't so. - Alan S. Watt
rf@wu1.UUCP (12/30/83)
In regard to my questions:
So what *is* a good ruler? How do you put such a person in
office? Comments, suggestions?
Ernie Arias (hogpc!ea) writes:
You ask a difficult question. My thoughts on it are
Rulers should not be elected or chosen on potential or
blind (or somewhat blind) trust. A person should attain
these positions based on demonstated performance to assess
difficult problems, consider alternatives, seek counsel,
evaluation skills, and (sometimes, most important) execution &
and follow-through. To achieve thses positions trust should
not be given - it must be earned.
Randolph Fritzlaura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/01/84)
I believe that power does corrupt. At least I have seen instances of this at the office level. one of the problems that i have identified is that people mistake power for security. Thus insecure people go after power thinking that it will make them more secure. Unfortunately, security does not seem to be related to power; rather it is related to ones self-image. Thus when you take an insecure person and give him power you just get a powerful insecure person, unless you do something which coincidentally improves his disposition. Powerful people have more to lose, thus they have more to be insecure about. If they believed that power equals security before, they are not likely to rexamine their beliefs, and instead will conclude that they need more power. itching causes scratching... There is an extra twist which makes this worse. If you take a secure person and put him under a lot of strain he may become insecure. Thus the responsibilities of power can take an originally secure person and make them into the sort of person that makes a lousy president of a company. This has happened to 3 firms where friends of mine work. It is quite depressing. Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
amigo2@ihuxq.UUCP (John Hobson) (01/04/84)
The original quote about power corrupting was from the 19th century British statesman Mandell Creighton, who actually said "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Note that this is not the same as the "Power corrupts..." version that we all know. What Creighton (any relation to Laura in Toronto?) was trying to point out was that power per se does not necessarily corrupt, but that it can present a temptation that far too many people in power give into. One of my favorite historical examples of this is Henry VIII's Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey. His residence at Hampton Court was the finest house in England at the time it was built, and Wolsey, a man of relatively modest means for one so high in power, had to get the money for it somewhere. When Wolsey fell from Henry's favor, he was brought up on charges of official malfesance, particularly misappropration of Crown funds and property. In fact, the whole business of persons in high religious office and high political office is fascinating, as Jesus put it so well: "No man can serve two masters.... One cannot serve both God and money." See, for example, besides Cardinal Wolsey, the Renaissance Popes, Cardinal Richelieu, or the Ayatolla Khomeni. John Hobson AT&T Bell Labs Naperville, IL (312) 979-7293 ihnp4!ihuxq!amigo2
rf@wu1.UUCP (01/05/84)
One who will seek power for his own comfort (including the comfort of security) is corrupt before he gains power. Worse still, no amount of power satisfies such people. One who believes power comforts and is not comforted by the power he already has will often seek yet more power. Ultimately, such people become quite unhappy. In democracies he problem of the foolish power seeker is compounded by popular mythology. Not only are children taught that political power is a cure for their ills, they are actually encouraged in power seeking regardless of their qualifications for rulership. The company I work for has a long history of turning good engineers into awful managers. These people would not dream of dealing with a technical problem outside of their expertise, yet, with no actual knowledge of rulership, they believe they are qualified as rulers. This problem is often aggravated by active contempt for courtesy -- a necessity of management. Randolph Fritz
ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP (01/07/84)
#R:wu1:-22700:ucbesvax:7500069:000:4378 ucbesvax!turner Jan 6 21:48:00 1984 Re: power, corruption, insecurity... Seeking power for security is something that even the average person does--quite understandably. Perhaps we need to broaden our view of the adage in question. "Power corrupts"--corrupts who? Maybe the answer is: everyone. The "security" that President Assad of Syria seeks is possibly a little more subtle than a need for material comforts and protection from assassins. He is willing to take risks in the geopolitical arena to prove his worth--as a "regional actor", a game-player to be reckoned with. (In some ways, he is forced to play an offensive game internationally, in order not to have to play a defensive game domestically against the factions that he must contend with at home. An old trick, certainly.) His sense of "security" is related to danger--but not strictly dependent on it. The "security" of Walid Jumblatt is another thing--the leader of the Druze has no homeland for his people. He can't afford (and doesn't need) to go the Palestinian route, since his people are spread over Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Nevertheless, circumstances force him to be based in Damascus, and to give recognition to most of Syria's ambitions--particularly in Lebanon. I have read interviews with him where he seemed to be fiercely determined to gain political autonomy for the Druze--only to crumple slightly when pressed on the question of supporting Syria's presence in Lebanon. Is Walid Jumblatt being corrupted--consciously, but against his will, and with no other choice--by his need for the protection of a despot like Assad? And the Druze themselves? Their choices are few--fight or submit. Or rather, fight AND submit. Consider the situation in Sicily today. There is evidence that the Socialists (the Craxi government) engineered an economic dislocation on the island so that the appearance of U.S. missiles, and the con- comitant influx of American cash through military bases, would appear as economic salvation--and thus be more peacefully accepted. It also seems that the Mafia has been of instrumental value in repressing opposition to the dislocations and the subsequent U.S. presence--a role that they have not played significantly since the days of U.S. occupation after world war II. The response of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) has been to use the Sicilian dissent as a political springboard. Yet this is the same PCI that help repress the student/worker (Worker's Autonomy) movement of 1975-77 on the pretext of combatting the Red Brigades, working hand- in-hand with the Christian Democrats. (This coalition government was called "The Historic Compromise". Not the first time that the PCI compromised history--see its role in breaking the factory occupations movement of the 1920's) This leaves the Sicilians a choice between bad and worse. Accept Mafia influence and U.S. presence, and prosper? Work with the Communists, no matter how many times they sold people out, and hope for better? Either way, the man in the street is corrupted--not by having power, but by simply choosing to live with it. Look at Hungary, whose economy is the work of a great double-thinker: Yuri Andropov. After the Russian-aborted revolution of 1956, when the country rebelled against a Nazi-collaborator government that the USSR had simply re-installed after the occupation, it was decided that the best economic model for Hungary was--Austria. The USSR needed a capitalist cash-cow. The Hungarian revolution, which started spontaneously, and was pushed forward not by dissident Communists but by workers taking control of state factories and farms, is now economically indistinguishable from many mixed-economy European states--except that there are almost no political freedoms. Hungary might have been the model of industrial anarchism--a nation where workers governed industrial enterprises, setting the conditions of labor, prices of goods, and volume of production through a decentralized council system--democracy in the workplace coupled with a market system that could be competitive or cooperative, depending on the situation faced. Needless to say, the Hungarians have no such choices now. So they get what they can. The examples multiply, but the common tragedy is not the corruption of rulers by power, but rather the corruption of the ruled. --- Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)