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Study Finds Most Would Become Supervillians If Given Powers
It probably comes as no surprise, but researchers have found that most of us would gladly put on a mask and fight do-gooders if given super powers. From the article: "But power also acts like strong cologne that affects both the wearer and those within smelling distance, Galinsky noted. The person gains an enhanced sense of their importance, and other people may regard them with greater respect as well as extend leniency toward their actions. That combination makes for an easy slide into corruption."
How about just being selfish and pretty amoral? I bet a lot of folks could do that. It's not plotting-to-take-over-the-world villainry, but it's not good either.
Maybe, but that's not what those studies say. You seem to assume that someone has a conscious choice to be hero or villain and intentionally choose villain.
Most people seem to have that kind of delusion. For them you're either clearly doing good and you know it, or you're aware that pillaging and burning is wrong but you deliberately chose evil. Their world has some people who basically chose to be villains and know they're villains.
You can even look at fictional organizations like SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) in otherwise non-parody movies. And it comes easy to swallow that someone would come up with a business plan like, basically, "I know, let's make an organization that's all about placing bombs and extortion, 'cause that market hardly has enough supply to meet the demand." And then a bunch of people would basically go, "yay, I always wanted to be an evil minion! Where do I sign up?"
In reality what these studies show has nothing to do with choosing to wear tights or twirl a moustache and cackle manically. They just show that most people, if given power, or even if role-playing a position of power, find it increasingly easy to rationalize bad behaviour. They're not choosing to be evil, they just rationalize being a complete dick as _good_ or at least excusable.
And not just business decisions. That's the fun part. Sure, you can rationalize evil business decisions via what I call an "argument from capitalism": being evil is good if it makes some investor money. But it extends beyond that.
E.g., in a study people role-playing some executive-level boss with a posh office would find a $100 bill. And most would not just pocket it and forget about it, but actually lie if someone came asking about it. Whereas those role-playing the peons would be less likely to.
Or like in that baker's statistic that folks on the executive level were more likely to take a sandwich without paying for it, than the peons on the cubicle floor.
The illusion that now you're above those pesky peons and their judgments extends not just deciding if to cut costs by dumping radioactive waste in the Mediterranean (actually happened, btw), but even to that kind of stuff. It's not even about fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders or anything, but basically about being a dick. Those in positions of power can rationalize it better and for being more of a dick.
It applies to heroes vs villains only in as much a case can be made that if they suddenly found Plato's ring and could be untraceable whenever they want, most people wouldn't think "yay, now I can do some serious good with this power", but rather "yay, let's steal some money from the bank" or even "yay, now I can take revenge on the boss/ex-gf/whatever".
Granted, as TFA points out, not all people. Some actually go in overdrive with applying higher standards to themselves when given power or an illusion of power. So I guess you'd get some heroes too. Most just start rationalizing more of what they want and now can take and be de facto villains.
But the fun part is that neither would actually consider themselves villains. Someone could be just in the process of leaving with a sack of cash from the bank and just think it's the due that society always owed them, or that they're actually doing a good thing because they might give a tiny portion of that to charity, or really whatever rationalization.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I mean, it still sucks less than every other form of governance yet devised, but it has no magical anti-corruption powers
Actually, the idea is to balance corruption against corruption, ambition against ambition, in such a way that nobody can get away with anything too terribly terrible.
The problem with the idea is that partisan politics short-circuits this theory; political parties operate as (almost) monolithic entities and the "cooperative" aspects of them make it so that attempts at balance get co-opted and circumvented.
On the hierarchy of theoretical governments, it's often been stated that the best would be that of the truly enlightened despot, a single ruler and his lieutenants beneath who all act for the greater good of (hopefully) as many of the people as they can manage. The problem here is that assuring such a despot is impossible.
The second-best would be that of the enlightened communism, wherein all put forth an honest and earnest effort to do what they can, even if the job they are assigned is not something they have a passion for; often proponents of this theory suggest that if there is a job nobody really wants, the populace should draw lots and take turns doing it. Unfortunately, the problem here is that you get the two lazy-classes - the leeches and the bureaucrats - who tip the system into unworkability. This is why religious communism (monastic orders mostly) works rather well, while all attempts to expand it into the larger population always fail - the religious orders are freely and happily able to kick those who don't behave as they should out of the commune!
Since those two are fundamentally unworkable on a large or sustained scale, forms of "democracy" are about all we have left. Alas, over time they too are becoming co-opted and short-circuited by those who want to make a "ruling class" of themselves.
So it's not surprising that most people, given power, would inevitably become a "villain" on some score. Everyone has something they think needs fixing and that they would gladly be an "enlightened despot" to fix. After all, even General Zod is for universal healthcare access.