The Power Broker by Robert Caro

Author:Robert Caro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joosr Ltd

Moses often built structures just because the projects secured him more money and power

Developing areas without consulting residents was certainly an expression of Moses’s disinterest in other people’s views, but it also reflected his steady road to corruption by using his existing authority to gain greater power. As his career progressed, this became an ever more pressing motivation for many of his projects.

We often think of corruption as motivated by personal financial gain: officials taking bribes or “skimming off the top.” This wasn’t Moses’s style, and even his detractors and rivals agreed he didn’t take illicit earnings. However, this didn’t mean money wasn’t a key part of his corruption; after all, money could be used to buy him what he really craved—more power. It could be used for conspicuous displays of wealth to intimidate others, or to pay bullies to threaten businesspeople who refused to sell land to Moses. Or it could be used to hold lavish events and openings to impress and manipulate powerful figures, a technique Moses employed repeatedly to exert control over New York City Mayor Fiorella La Guardia.

Most importantly for Moses, money could be used to fund new projects that would in turn give him more responsibility, more money, and more power. The Triborough Bridge is again a good example of this: millions of dollars of the project’s funding came from selling bonds secured against future takings from toll charges on the bridges. But once the toll money started rolling in, Moses didn’t pay off the bonds; instead, he used the earnings to finance other toll bridges and toll roads, and used their takings for the next round of projects.

This dubious financial system, combined with the fact that each new project gave Moses a new sphere of influence, meant that his reasons for building quickly became largely self-serving.

New structures did not have to be useful or wanted, they just had to ensure that he was the man in charge and the man with the money. This is why Moses continued to build parkways and highways in congested areas despite overwhelming evidence that they did not help the traffic problems. Each time he built a new road, he gained more money and more responsibility, and kept feeding the machine of growth and expansion on which his power and authority was built.

Many of Moses’s planning decisions failed to give New Yorkers the facilities they wanted in their city. Instead, they gave Moses opportunities to increase his power by taking on more responsibility and more money that he could use both to manipulate others and fund future projects. Anyone in a position of authority should take Moses’s behavior as a warning that power can corrupt you: attaining it can make you even hungrier for more, until power and control becomes your primary motivation over what you had initially set out to do.

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