"Corruptible" by Brian Klaas

I've been postponing writing the review for "Corruptible" because it is so good. It is packed with novel answers to age-old questions backed by research, and I want to distill and remember many of the concepts the author outlined.

Brian backs every bit of his points with research; here are my main outtakes:

• Yes, power corrupts (but not as much as we think).
• Yes, corrupt people gravitate towards power-wielding positions.
• Yes, lack of oversight and enforcement corrupts even uncorrupt people.
• Yes, there are incorruptible people.
• Yes, we need to ensure that primarily incorruptible people get into power and are observed and that any corruption act is punished.
• We're hardwired in our brains to select bad, corrupt leaders.
• System matters: create an honest system, and it will result in honest leaders; create a corrupt system, and it will result in corrupt leaders.
• Collaboration turns on our instinct for fairness and sharing extra resources. Lack of collaboration rarely triggers this instinct, which is absent in chimpanzees.
• "All men seek to rule, but if they cannot rule, they prefer to be equal."
• Survivorship bias makes us focus on people who passed three consequent filters: want to get to power, got to power, and stayed in power. We forget about all the potential leaders who got filtered out. These filters can be rigged, biased, irrational, and suboptimal.
• When a position in power is unattractive, only the worst people get in power because of the filters above and self-selection bias.
• "If you're a bully, a bigot, or a sexual predator, policing is a beautiful career choice."
• How people running for office look matters. Visual appeal is a better predictor of winning elections than any analytics. Most people guess who'll win by looking at candidates for only a few seconds.
• A perceived security threat amplifies masculine look benefit.
• People automatically sort others into three categories: friends, enemies, and strangers. The third category rarely happens, so you're usually either a friend or an enemy. Our brains have cognitive shortcuts only to elect people who look like us (or have other familiarities).
• Hiring rewards the dark triad because the interview is essentially where we decide to hire: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
• Overconfident people are perceived as more confident than others, even if it's evident that they aren't.
• Perceived observance through random checks amplifies observance benefits.
• People in power are perceived as more corrupt because sometimes they choose between two bad options and select lesser evil; corrupt people become skilled at corruption (and hence appear more "corrupt"), they have more choices to make (hence more opportunities to do wrong), and they have more eyes on them (thus being caught more often).
• Power makes people more risk-taking due to the illusion of control.

Now, let's talk about what we need to do to put more incorruptible people in power:

• Recruit incorruptible people and filter out corruptible ones by having a larger pool of applicants, attracting the right applicants, and combat self-selected corruptible people who pass the filter by spending enough resources on this task.
• Use oversight by sortition with shadow boards or citizen assemblies. This will make it evident if elected politicians are acting out of self-interest or for the greater good.
• Rotate people in power. The longer the same people in power work together, the higher the chances they will scheme something for self-interest and not get caught. Rotation brings in new outsiders, which deters corruption.
• Investigate both successes and failures in electing officials not to repeat mistakes.
• Create frequent and potent reminders of responsibility for people in power. They must know that every choice they make affects real people.
• Watched people are nice people. We need to reverse surveillance so that the people in control are watched, not those being controlled.
• Random watching is more ethical and more efficient than constant surveillance.

I do not doubt that "Corruptible" may be the best book of 2025 for me, just like "The Dictator's Handbook" took the spot a couple of years ago. I want everyone I know to read it; that's how good it is.