Does power really corrupt?
1843magazine.com
1843magazine.com
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.
Evolution makes blithely shortsighted errors. We're about as intelligent as we are required to be in order to survive.
We're stuck at local maxima at every level from the personal to the political and that is a problem.
That is why using artificial aids like books for recording memories and genetic splicing is the right thing to do. Biology should not be accepted as Physics. It is alright to cheat and interfere.
I will now sound like I'm contradicting myself but I'm not.
Evolution has accomplished results with brute force that we do not comprehend. Some of those results appear stupid to us but there exist secret underlying patterns that are not available to our minds. Our instincts contain heaps of responses that we often regard as stupid e.g. blushing, jealousy but they are likely adaptions that helped us survive so we will require an understanding of their function.
This is the great truth of conservatism and complex systems. Things are the way they are because reasons. That the proponents of this view can't explain themselves articulately is not relevant. The reasons are real. You are not your frontal cortex. That's just the Speaker in the house of parliament.
That's why jenga is a problem. Jenga gives us the FDA. Jenga eventually produces a caste system. The great project is to somehow open a third door nobody has noticed. Let me know if you figure it out!
Uncoincidentally I like Patri Friedman's idea of constructing seasteads. I don't want to sound like I'm allergic to work but real change is hard work! It is like everything interesting happens at edges of things.
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.
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.
But, besides the fact that the difference might not be in the direction you think it goes, in all these cares, inter-group variability is tiny compared to intra group variability.
That means: it doesn't matter in practice. Whether men ow women are on average more intelligent, those 1-3 average IQ points are so irrelevant compared to the 15-30 points 5 random people in a room would generally differ from each other that it is barely of academic interest and certainly useless to use to judge a random men or women you meet.
This thing is true for many differences between groups often discriminated against. Scientist are thus inclined not to research these differences: if they exist they are rarely helpful for policy (too small) but often their reporting results in people misbehaving even more due to their misunderstanding the impact (or rather lack thereof).
However I strongly disagree that it does not matter in practice. In practice people are not randomly assigned rooms to be in. They certainly do not meet other people randomly. The result is group identity becomes ever more strongly associated and tribes form. Stereotypes are developed and so on.
For example; it does not surprise me that tiny eastern European countries have coders working for Google but much larger and closer minority populations do not. EE workers are natively nowhere close to Google HQ and they don't even share a common language and culture. These are high barriers.
That there exist a larger number of people with the hypothetical potential to code for Google (which surely exist because of intra group variability) within that minority American population is not relevant. Those people do not want to code for Google i.e. exchange their labour in this area for money. The eastern european coders from (really) tiny states on the other hand have a strong desire to work in those domains that computer corporations select for in their workers.
Even though there are many differences between a typical coder in the United States and a typical Eastern European coder, their shared 'tribe' of basically being geeks trumps everything else. That ought to be GOOD news for those who want to avoid discrimination based on the superficial differences but somehow it does not seem to be taken as this. That's politics.
Obviously scientists are under social pressure not to examine such visible differences. This is because they are failures at being scientists. I do not say that lightly. These are atrocious failures of omission. If society only receives measurements it looks for, then why bother doing any research at all? We already know the answers! It is certainly cheaper to confirm society's biases, whether we're in Victorian times or in the present. It's like being a fat man avoiding the weighing scales.
I understand your point about the gen.pop taking complex research with many confounding variables and reducing the results to a simplistic and inaccurate story. That worries me as well, not just in cases of racial discrimination, but as a general error. That said I cannot agree it makes no difference for public policy (because of the non-random sorting I mentioned earlier). Public policy ought to be based on reality, if the map does not conform to the territory problems will occur. Any system that produces inaccurate information and then has to depend on the false outputs will constantly be tripping itself up.
As a last point, although gen.pop can do dumb things sometimes, that is no reason to feed them platitudes. They do however have bullshit detectors which go off when what the media describes to them isn't what they see in their realities. They are capable of complex thought and thought evolution over time and I fail to see how deliberately misleading them can lead to a greater good without dysfunction. Frankly I think a decline in economic prosperity has a lot more to do with inter-group dynamics going bad, with propaganda causing it to be worse, but as a second order affect.
I agree that IQ is far from the deciding factor in most individual cases. 3-5 points really isn't that much. You could get that many points by taking a ten minute walk and a shower! The issue though is that just as gravity does not affect you and I on the microscale we are at, with enough mass/size things start happening that really do impact on us. I don't know if you've ever walked from a room with average people to a room with people who are totally into the thing you're into, but the difference is very palatable to me. I much prefer the second room over the first, even if that first room had a slightly higher IQ. Why? Because I can now get something done! In fact we all can. That almost comes as a relief.
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.
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.
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...
Sure, take it for what it's worth. At best, it applies only to the town where I live. Still, the opening anecdote in the article resonated with me because Mercedes drivers around here have shown an unusually small amount of concern for my welfare.
As a cyclist, one tends to be more than usually sensitive to people trying to kill you with their cars. I submit that as the driver of a high-performance luxury vehicle, you may be more than usually sensitive to people driving too slow for your taste.
Another Texan checking in, and I absolutely agree with you (with the addition of BMW and a growing number of Audi drivers).
95% of my travel is by bicycle or motorcycle and in my personal experience this group of drivers is disproportionately less concerned with the safety/welfare of others.
Edit: "Our poll reveals that BMW drivers are the least liked on our roads", Jalopnik:
https://www.carthrottle.com/post/a-massive-41-of-us-think-th...
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.
http://www.magnificentbastard.com/posts/paul-fussell-memoria...
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.
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.
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.
I'd never heard of the Subaru's reputation, but that's exactly the kind of thing I'm thinking of... and exactly the kind of thing that I don't know how to learn!
Perhaps a wiki of some sort could record people's knowledge of what sorts of people drive what sorts of cars. We'd just have to make sure that Something Awful never gets wind of it, lest we "learn" that everyone in the world drives Carry McCarface... :)
Also, there are probably a lot of Mercedeses sold there. :)
There was a castle in Malibu (not the ancient kind) but it burned down and there are some wineries. No cheeses that I am aware of.
''' 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.
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.
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.
You probably have a point there, but I think the corruption of authority on the rest of us is certainly a major theme.
That implies great men have influence and/or authority to exercise. You may read it as 'great men of history', but if to you that set of people includes those who accomplished a lot without authority of influence (at the time, otherwise it would not be possible to be exercised), then the set of what you and Lord Acton consider 'great men of history' likely have different conditions for inclusion. A simple example of this is probably Srinivasa Ramanujan, whose genius was largely unrecognized until very late in his life, and his notebooks were later studied for his many results. A man of great influence after his death.
That's not to say your interpretation isn't useful, or possibly even correct, just that I think this isn't a piece of supporting evidence for it.
The context is a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887. Acton read some work of Creighton's and thought Creighton wasn't critical enough of certain popes. The context is exactly about why the bishop was too uncritical when looking back on the powerful men of history.
It wasn't a narrative of a pope and how he turned to the dark side after he started wearing white robes.
And I'm sure Acton wasn't referring to men like Ramanujan in his quote, though he may indeed have been a great man in other dimensions.
"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
can you explain what it means? English is not my first language and I'm having difficulty getting the meaning out of this sentence.
More or less saying everything is the responsibility of the ruler, no matter how small the task, I think.
In this case, it's Umar letting the dog die of hunger instead of keeping the dog well fed.
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?"
Thats almost the definition of power, and it's also what corrupts people.
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?
Those who want power shouldn't have it, those who enjoy it do so for the wrong reasons.
Maybe I'm just being optimistic that a quest for peak social optimization doesn't necessarily lead to a dictatorship...
I see a lot of hard working MPs lost in the system, doing as the party machines tell them. They're more subservient than powerful. I see the stars and office holders following a much more Machiavellian approach.
A good question is whether that's mainly down to the types of people getting involved, or the party machines that have developed.
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.
"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.
It's an ironic quote from Andreotti.
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).
"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."
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.
Sully of Slashdot claims to have met Mr Stephenson at a book signing.
Quote forthwith:
According to Neal, Diamond Age and Snow Crash are not in the same universe at all. He stated further that any similarity is just due to the coincidence of the both novels having the same author.
Anyway. It was a good idea even if it was incorrect. Mayhap another shining hypothesis slain by ugly facts.
To clarify: I was implying to Gwern that Snow Crash would be a dismal universe to live in because the world was clearly in some kind of stagnation or slump caused by the (I don't have a good way to express this with words properly) backwash of globalization.
If the Diamond Age is an evolution from Snow Crash then it is a much better world to live in. My original impression is strongly of a more fragmented world yet also one with more stability and wealth as compared with Snow Crash, which is a slow motion train wreck.
Ironically I believe we truly do live in the world of Snow Crash. We've stagnated badly over the last few decades and we're just about waking up to the consequences of it now.
It won't surprise you to learn I'm in favour of an aristocratic approach to tackle the problem like the Vickies.
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.
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.
"Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website."
But I'm not going to give it away!
>Corruption: dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery
Kind of a corollary
-- Foucault
For a great speech on why power corrupts, by a powerful person, see this:
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).
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.
(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...
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.
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.
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)
The availability of power exposes the latent corruption.
"Power does not corrupt, corrups the fear to lose it"
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?
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 ...
First, Of the things mentioned in my own post, which focus on the start of his reign. His rise to power. Do you seriously believe he had no hand in that ? He must have fought, in many ways, to get the position of emperor. He pursued power, and not by working hard in any stoic sense (stoicism accepts only actual "hand" labour as labour, and worthy of reward. Things like holding senate/government/management positions, no matter how well executed, no matter how punctual you are, aren't ever very stoic at all). That, by itself, is very very very very un-stoic of him.
Second argument is his reign. He was an emperor advocating stoicism, known for ... being extremely generous when it came to "bread and circuses". His power was built on what is close to the opposite of what his books advocate.
And third argument is the end of his reign, his kid (and his family, but that would take us too far), and his succession. Clearly the behavior of his kid was an indication of how his household functioned. His kid, Commodus, was described as an extremely self-obsessed neurotic drunk ... It is not physically possible to become either self-obsessed or drunk in a stoic household.