this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Probably not 95%...
What skews your perception is the fact that the people who find themselves in power (CEOs, politicians, cops, and dictators) are the ones who wanted to gain power and took steps to ensure they get it. If you gave the average altruistic person a lot of power, I don't think half of them would completely turn into a different person too quickly. This is because people who aren't greedy don't particularly care about gaining power beyond what they need to live comfortably.
I disagree completely. I strongly believe that people can start with the absolute best intentions and attain power with good morals and ethics, but eventually the temptation to use power for your own benefit is too strong for most people to ignore.
If you had the power to divert $0.01 from every bank account in the US to your own account, would you do it?
Another thing to consider - you have power over animals. Do you use it for your own benefit?
I do agree that overtime it will change and corrupt people, but I was referring to before too long. I think most people would eventually be corrupted by absolute power, but it would take longer.
Also, even people with good intentions can be ambitious, but a lot of people are unambitious. I was responding to the whole "if you gave people power", which is entirely different from people who desired power (even if for a noble goal) and got it. People who desire power are almost certainly going to be corrupted by it, while people unambitious who are given power, are more likely to resist that corruption for far longer.
It happens much faster than you’d think, and it doesn’t have to be absolute power by any means. Have you seen/heard stories of even tiny amounts of power going to people’s heads? It doesn’t happen because they’re evil people, it happens because they had a way to improve their living situation (maybe even for nothing more than an ego boost) at the expense of others, even if in a very minor way, and chose to take it.
We would all like to believe that the world is good and fair and that if we just got the right people in power, everything would be okay, but that is just not realistic unfortunately. Power almost always corrupts anyone who wields it, and as long as there are unequal structures of power, there will be abuses of power.
Ambition isn’t a binary thing. Most people have some amount of ambition, even if it’s just “I aspire to get a decent job so I can live comfortably”. It’s surprisingly seductive to abuse power to further your goals, even seemingly unambitious goals, especially if you think you can get away with it, and doubly so if you think that your abuse of power isn’t really doing any significant harm (as per my example of taking $0.01 from people). If you give yourself a moral justification for your abuse of power on top of those things, you’re doomed.
I want to believe that if I had significant power that I wouldn’t abuse it, but I have to be realistic. I have no reason to think that I’m special or that I would somehow be immune to this. It’s better for all of us that we get rid of as much of the unequal structures of power in our society as possible.
I did not mean to imply that "if we just got the right people in power, everything would be okay", we need checks and balances, and we need to strengthen our democracy by making sure to have an educated, politically engaged population, and reform the democratic system to become a full democracy to prevent the abuse of power.
As for ambition not being binary, I agree with that as well, however, I think most people's desire for power is dependent on their material conditions and social well being.
I do generally agree with your point that we should get rid of the unequal structures of power, just that your 95% assessment seems unrealistically high.
All of the things you suggest (checks and balances, strong education, democratic reform) have consistently been weakened rather than strengthened - this is because they would negatively impact those in power, and those in power make the decisions about implementing those things.
In addition, they would help, but not nearly enough. Checks and balances are a temporary improvement but eventually become captured and consolidated by the power they’re checking/balancing. Education helps people to understand how these systems are abusive, but can be countered by propaganda and misinformation - no one is immune to psychological manipulation. And democratic reform again acts as a temporary improvement, but eventually, power is consolidated and the reforms are integrated.
Humans unfortunately are still quite instinctual creatures, we often don’t have an “off” switch that says “okay, we have enough material wealth / security now, we don’t need to hoard anymore!” because we’re kind of always inclined towards building up a stockpile for winter.
We need to accept the reality of our situation and dismantle power structures - this means the abolition of money, the police, prisons, private property ownership, etc. - this may sound far fetched, but it is the only way that we can have a world without abuses of power and exploitation. I completely believe that it’s possible and worth working towards achieving that goal.
I am aware that we are in democratic decline, one would need to be completely disconnected from reality to not realise that, which is why it is important to fight for it. But abolition of the police means there won't be a way to enforce laws. The corrupt police force must be reformed, and bad cops fired or jailed. A lot of crimes can be prevented by improving people's material conditions, and education, but there will still be crime and violence, and for that we still need some police force, though at a reduced capacity.
The police were founded in 1829. We managed without them just fine before they were founded and we will manage just fine after. I’d propose the creation of a voluntary group of people with no powers beyond that of any other person, but who take some time out of their day to keep watch and deal with any issues that crop up. The overwhelming majority of crime is caused by poverty as you rightly said so there’s likely very little that they would have to deal with.