Hoarding and rotting

Chapter 317

“Hoard food and it rots. Hoard money and you rot. Hoard power and the nation rots.”

― Chuck Palahniuk ,  Adjustment Day 

What an interesting thought. This of course written during the multiple crisis’ of 2020 where leadership is difficult to find in any quarter and problems abound, especially riots and quarantines and the WWS (world wide shutdown). The solution seems super simple - stop hoarding and all these ills will cease. But that super simple solution has less effectiveness as you progress from one of these points to the next, because the context of each of them are different. But the implication from the author is that they are all rooted in greed of some type and that greed rots. 

This may be true. Food will rot, and money can easily corrupt your soul, but the power to nation connection is more tenuous I think. No one has any trouble believing that power corrupts, and that the more you have the more corrosive it can become. History is rife with examples. And there are practically no examples of great power and someone withstanding the corruptive influence. This is why we always put checks and balances in place to mitigate the power of power in a leader. Whether that be a CEO or a president.

But I am less clear here, if the author means the nation will rot from lack of leadership, or that the leadership is so ruinous that it destroys the nation? I supposed either or and or both could be true. But I think this point is different, because the nation can be and perhaps should be, autonomous from the leader, and thus have the power to resist and change.