> concentrated power and/or wealth often tends to subtly (or not so subtly) corrupt people.
I wonder if one reason for that is that power and wealth tend to minimize the negative feedback people experience from mistakes. People seem to drift towards craziness more when there's no "ground truth" to provide immediate negative feedback when you do something wrong -- like compilers yelling at you, or the needs of plants/animals for farmers, or gravity and friction for rock climbers. Living and working daily close to these kinds of constraints seems to keep us sane and humble like nothing else.
Healthy communities also naturally provide at lot of good, hard constraints. The social consequences from being a bad actor can be incredibly motivating to think and live decently (unless you're really rich, unfortunately).
NB: I don't think the negative character effects from wealth are a good argument against capitalism or property ownership. But it does reinforce that we need democratic governments with elected officials who faithfully represent the common people's interests.
I wonder if one reason for that is that power and wealth tend to minimize the negative feedback people experience from mistakes. People seem to drift towards craziness more when there's no "ground truth" to provide immediate negative feedback when you do something wrong -- like compilers yelling at you, or the needs of plants/animals for farmers, or gravity and friction for rock climbers. Living and working daily close to these kinds of constraints seems to keep us sane and humble like nothing else.
Healthy communities also naturally provide at lot of good, hard constraints. The social consequences from being a bad actor can be incredibly motivating to think and live decently (unless you're really rich, unfortunately).
NB: I don't think the negative character effects from wealth are a good argument against capitalism or property ownership. But it does reinforce that we need democratic governments with elected officials who faithfully represent the common people's interests.