Is It That Corruptible People Seek Power?

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Sot. Sot: Some people are psychopathic, who will absolutely relish causing pain and breaking the law to see if they can get away with it. There are other people who situationally will change their behaviour to act like a criminal. But what i'm talking about a lot in the book is this mediating fact that i call the system,. which is sort of the environment or structures around you that cause you to behave in different ways. And at all levels, we have to think carefully about how our systems either increase the tendency of awful people to seek and obtain power, or counteract that tendency.

Does power corrupt, or are corrupt people drawn to power? Are entrepreneurs who embezzle and cops who kill the result of poorly designed systems or are they simply bad people? What sort of people aspire to power anyway? Are there individuals among us who should never be given the title of president, or CEO, or PTA leader lest they build their own dictatorship?

Michael Shermer speaks with Brian Klaas, a renowned political scientist, Washington Post columnist and creator of the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, about his long sought answers to the above questions.

In his new book Klaas draws on over 500 interviews with some of the world’s top leaders — from the noblest to the most crooked — including presidents and philanthropists as well as rebels, cultists, and dictators, to get to the root of power and corruption. Klaas dives into how facial appearance determines who we pick as leaders, why narcissists make more money, why some people don’t want power at all and others are drawn to it out of a psychopathic impulse, and why being the “beta” (second in command) may be the optimal place for health and well-being.