Preface: Occasionally, I disagree with pg too. But I respect him since I find most of his essays insightful and I appreciate the effortless precision of his wri

Preface: Occasionally, I disagree with pg too. But I respect him since I find most of his essays insightful and I appreciate the effortless precision of his writing style. I.e. too many bloggers beat around the bush and rarely attack the crux of their topic directly, let alone adequately support their thesis. That said, I'm one of those who "don't see the problem". I reread his essay about inequality. I tried to imagine your thought process. I agree that money, freedom, and power are joined at the hip. I don't see how this contradicts pg's quote. Here's how I understand things. Corruption implies power by definition. But does power necessarily imply corruption? Lord Acton believed power consistently causes corruption in practice. But it doesn't have to be that way. I think we can agree on this. Here's where I imagine our disagreement lies (best guess, low confidence). Corruption connotates "immoral behavior". But pg's examples indicate (to me) that he wanted to address not immoral behavior per se, but the double standard society imposes between the privileged and the less fortunate. This distinction frames the discussion in a more actionable way. Like you said, power enables people to do what they want... which isn't always moral (or fair [1]). It's inevitable. So society won't be able to prevent this consistently, lest reality resemble Minority Report. But one thing society can prevent is punishing offenders according to a double standard. Another thing society can prevent is lack of transparency. I imagine either would decrease corruption while allowing the privileged to enjoy their power (money) in more socially acceptable ways. Personally, I'm especially upset with the U.S. lobby system. In theory, democracy is supposed to afford one vote per capita. In practice, the lobby system allows the powerful to undermine this principle. [1] http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html