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The Jordan Harbinger Show

650: Brian Klaas | The Corruptible Influence of Power

The Jordan Harbinger Show

Jordan Harbinger

Education, Science, Business

4.812.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2022

⏱️ 76 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) is an associate professor in global politics at University College London, host of the Power Corrupts podcast, and author of Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us.

What We Discuss with Brian Klaas:
  • How accurate was historian Lord Acton's assessment that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"?
  • Why do people become corrupt? Is it the system working on them from the outside or something in human nature working on them from within?
  • What kind of people become corrupt? Is everyone susceptible to corruption's temptations?
  • When it comes to corruption, should our leaders be held to higher standards than the rest of us?
  • How can we create fair systems to incentivize people to resist corruption in favor of the straight and narrow?
  • And much more...

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/650

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

0:02.8

If a corrupt person has gotten into power and is just abusing that power,

0:07.7

then you don't need to change the system because they already were corrupt to begin with.

0:11.6

You just have to get better people into power.

0:14.0

If a good person goes into a system and gets spit out as an evil monster,

0:18.5

you have to fix the system because then it's a good person drawn into the system and power

0:22.2

corrupted them. So the problem is in any individual case, you'll see somebody in power behaving badly.

0:28.4

And there's two basically opposite explanations for why that happened.

0:32.0

They were always bad or they became bad.

0:34.1

And if you misdiagnose it, the solution is completely wrong.

0:40.8

Welcome to the show, I'm Jordan Harbinger.

0:43.0

I'm the Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's

0:46.8

most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs,

0:51.3

spies and psychologists, even the occasional mafia-unforcer drug trafficker or extreme

0:56.4

athlete, maybe even a neuroscientist here and there.

0:58.8

Each episode turns our guests wisdom into practical advice you can use to build a deeper understanding

1:04.0

of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you're new to the show or you want to tell

1:08.2

your friends about it and thank you so much for doing that, I suggest our episode starter packs.

1:12.6

These are collections of top episodes organized by Topic. That'll help new listeners get a taste

1:16.9

of everything we do here on the show. Topics like China, North Korea, technology, futurism,

1:21.6

crime and cults, negotiation, communication, persuasion, influence and more.

1:26.0

Just visit JordanHarbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.

...

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