"They are not average and they are not normal" — Brian Klaas on power seekers. #shorts

less than 1m read

·Nov 3, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

The people who end up in power are not representative of the rest of us. They are not average, and they are not normal people. Those who are power hungry tend to self-select into positions of power more than the rest of us.

As a result, we have this skew, this bias in positions of power where certain types of people, often the wrong kinds of people, are more likely to put themselves forward to rule over the rest of us. That is one of the key challenges of modern life: we have to find ways to block them.

There's this absolute intersection between culture, behavior, individuals, and systems. When we have this simplistic view of power, we're missing the story.

What you really need is a system that attracts the right kind of people, so that the diplomats who are clean, nice, and rule-following end up in power. Then, you need a system that gives them all the right incentives to follow the rules once they get there.

If you do have people who break the rules, there needs to be consequences.

Bargaining for Boards | Yukon River Run

What You Try to Control, Controls You | The Paradox of Control

View All

Wealth and Happiness: How to Achieve Both

They lied to you. Since you were a child, you kept hearing it over and over and over again. You always have to make a choice: money or happiness. You simply can’t have both. But what if we told you that’s just a coping mechanism for poor and middle-class …

Peter Lynch: How to Invest for Beginners (7 Investing Rules)

I’m amazed how many people own stocks; they would not be able to tell you why they own it. They couldn’t say in a minute or less why they don’t. Actually, if you really pressed them down, they’d say, “The reason I own this is the sucker’s going up,” and t…

Patrolling the Bay on the New Hawk Five | To Catch a Smuggler: South Pacific | National Geographic

Summer in the Bay of Islands sees many yachts visiting from overseas, so Customs have their work cut out for them keeping the country’s coastal border safe. Today they’re patrolling on the new Hawk Five. It’s a serious vessel, loaded with tech, and can tr…

Surviving a Hostage Situation | No Man Left Behind

It’s hard to describe what was going on. There is total, not panic, but chaos. Pandemonium. I don’t know that anybody was ready for Anita to shoot me. I wasn’t. After the shot, it was a throbbing, burning pain, and I immediately became concerned about the…