>Even the article seems to land on this conclusion.

But the title landed in the next county because that's what the editor's job is in the modern era of clicks and eyeballs.

A buffer class of courtiers. If you got rid of every powerful dictatorial elite with one magical bolt of lightning, the upper-middle class would have new ones chosen by the end of the day.

Whenever my RSS reader shows me an article from phys.org and the article is open access I decide if I want to post the phys.org article or the paper, this was a toughie. A common situation is that the phys.org headline is "Scientists come to some conclusion" and the title of the paper was "We measured something"; this one was a tough call, I bet it would have gotten <5 upvotes had I posted a link right to the paper.

Sometimes phys.org articles are absolutely great, sometimes they suck, sometimes they run articles off the AP wire or from a university press release. Their advertising is reprehensible, but I've looked at the alternatives and most of them are much worse, it's one reason why phys.org and related sites are on the list of top sites submitted to HN by people other than myself, not just the list of top sites I submit to HN. (I post enough that I really have to take stats ex-myself because for some sites, like coindesk, I post most of them)

> He added, however, that it is important to remember the limitations of such studies: "We used point/money to represent the real-life costs associated with actions like campaigning or going on a protest march. Experiments like these are only meant to simulate aspects of the real world, not perfectly represent its complexity."

> Behavior may be different if participants had earned their points rather than simply received them, or both Proposers and Responder shared a common identity or wider goal.

> "Still," Dr. Gordon continues, "it is a reminder that we should be mindful of attempts to limit the ability to hold power to account. For example, through anti-protest, anti-strike, and voter suppression laws. In an era marked by growing global inequality, this study offers critical insights into the psychology of power, and the mechanisms that can promote more equitable societies."

> This is why capitalists dislike unions so much, beca[us]e they know this.

No, the reason why capitalists hate unions so much is that it is another layer of incredibly annoying bureaucrats that you have to get along with.

What you describe might rather be the reason why people who have dark triad traits don't like unions; these people often are not "convinced capitalists", but rather people who use capitalism (or whatever the current system is) to their advantage.

It was aspirational then, but after 50 years of working to create the Unitary Executive it is now fact.

True in most countries. The president or more generally the chief of the executive often has legal immunity. It makes sense because that are the law, at least in part.

In democracies there a usually some protection against abuse of that power (ex: impeachment).

This is an incredibly sad read.

Very insightful. 1965 was an interesting time to write this book too with welfare being passed around then.

Right effect, wrong mechanism.

It's not free rider but coordination costs -- the same reason democracies are at a disadvantage relative to authoritarian regimes.

Transaction cost ecomomics has been studying this and other transactions features since before 1965. Key to their methodology and success is comparing actual to actual alternatives, instead of actual to imagined.

We have not evolved far beyond the same problems that bedeviled Socrates and his interlocutors, have we?

They are also powerful compared to you in other ways. Homeless person can get away with being intoxicated in public for example or various other technical crimes that come hand in hand with sleeping rough.