Stoic writings tend to write about those who uphold Stoic ideals. They rarely seem to show examples of those who fall victim to greed, lust, or any of the sins decried by Stoic writers. My guess is that these failures are so commonplace that they don't really need explanation or illustration.
Still, I think such examples can be occasionally useful, and the story of Rajat Gupta, as portrayed in Business Week, is one of them. Rajat Gupta is someone who had a great reputation for honesty, but he only achieved great success and became rich. Those around him were even richer, and his need to catch up to them apparently lead him a conviction of 14 counts of fraud and conspiracy.
Everything is relative. How rich you are in absolute terms doesn't seem to matter as much as relative earnings. We're social creatures, and even if we're better off than 99.99% of everyone else, we still measure ourselves against our peer group. Psychology and social pressure is a hard thing to fight. Maybe it's best to not associate with the rich. If we do, we're going to have to be remarkably good Stoics to help guard against the inevitable social pressures.
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