> For me, personally, it was quite depressing & disillusioning to recognize that there is no "inner ring" where the people populating it are magically "better" (more rational, of stronger character, whatever) than the people outside, and that in fact "innerness" is more often inversely correlated with those qualities.
Not in my experience, real decision makers do behave somewhat better, on average, then the median person, if you tally up all their virtues and vices.
It's not a very steep improvement, but it is noticeable.
Of course the median person will likely never meet more then a few, so even a somewhat lower fraction of bad apples can easily cause a similarly negative perception.
I think it's less the decision-maker and more the ring that's built around the decision-maker.
It's also true in my experience that decision-makers are often pretty solid. Decision-making is its own craft, many CEO/VP-type people take that craft very seriously.
But, unless the person in question has spent a significant amount of time and effort in forming their own "society", the "default" rings that accrete around these people are pretty awful.
Agreed that the bad apples are more frequently sampled in the media, and it distorts perception of the overall population. But I do think it's the default state of human nature for great power to (eventually) attract great grift and lose its raison d'être – you see it all over history.
The 'ring that's built around the decision-maker' is still, on average, better than the median person.
But it generally is very unevenly distributed in any single, concrete, individual, so that it may appear to be worse depending on perspective.
e.g. A bonafide super-genius with a lot of unfortunate personality traits. Such that they can't really be considered that great, just somewhat above average.
Not in my experience, real decision makers do behave somewhat better, on average, then the median person, if you tally up all their virtues and vices.
It's not a very steep improvement, but it is noticeable.
Of course the median person will likely never meet more then a few, so even a somewhat lower fraction of bad apples can easily cause a similarly negative perception.