Corruptible

We wonder why our leaders are often such terrible people. Everybody knows that "Power Corrupts", but there's much more to power's effect on society, as explained in Brian Klaas' Corruptible

The book is full of historical anecdotes and experimental data that demonstrates a great deal of information about how power affects us. For example, a certain type of person is drawn towards positions of power. That right there is going to be a problem even if power didn't corrupt. So, we should implement systems that draw from a wider range of potential people, like we do for jury pools for example.

And there are ways we can curtail abuses of power. We have this surveillance state that we use on ordinary people. Klaas argues that we should junk mass surveillance and instead employ those methods on the most powerful. Just the threat that one is being watched causes a powerful person to behave more honestly.

I enjoyed the book and I think you will too.