… is from page 229 of Michael Huemer’s 2013 book, The Problem of Political Authority (original emphasis):
Predatory behavior does not occur merely because human beings are selfish. It occurs because human beings are selfish and some human beings are much more powerful than others. Powerful, selfish people use their positions to exploit and abuse those much weaker than themselves. The standard solutions to the problem of human predation all start by cementing the very condition most likely to cause predatory behavior – the concentration of power – and only then do they try to steer away from its natural consequences. The alternative is to begin with an extreme decentralization of coercive power.
Of course, this alternative is ridiculed as ‘unrealistic’ by those who wield coercive power, as ‘unscientific’ by those who fancy themselves to be the intellectual sherpas of those who wield coercive power, and as ‘unfeeling’ by those naïve enough to believe the false promises to work for the public welfare typically issued by those who wield coercive power.
