we corrupt power. it attracts and rewards the corrupt. ok here is a nice little anarchist argument, to the effect that people who rise into leadership are on average much morally worse than those who do not: more narcissistic, less empathetic, more hypocritical, and so on. though the piece is on cracked, it appears to be linked to real research. the 'social science shows x,' assemble-the-studies opinion piece is the specialty of david brooks, e.g.; it's given its authority by its appeal to science.
first i might hit the obvious reservations: really if you thought about how these studies are conducted - essentially by studying the effects of role-playing - you'd have to see that their application to the real world is at best a problem. one's suspicions are augmented by the bizarrely unanimous tone of the statistical results: "Yet, while both the less-powerful and the control group gave up the responsibility 30 to 40 percent of the time, a full 100 percent of the empowered subjects chose to roll themselves," etc.
right. on the other hand, the extreme primitivism of the research does not show that the conclusion is false. i think it's true.
