"PHILOSOPHICALLY SPEAKING...":

Should the same ethical standards apply to everyone, as suggested by Kant? Or should the powerful be left to define ethical standards for themselves, as suggested by Nietzsche? This article from The Economist (UK) looks at the psychological research on the relationship between ethics and power and implies that even if we agree with Kant, our behavior is more Nietzschean -- at least when we think no one's looking. www.1843magazine.com/features/does-power-really-corrupt

"The professor put a group of students on the case; sent them out with clipboards to loiter on the traffic islands of Berkeley. They monitored vehicle etiquette at road junctions, kept notes on models and makes. They observed who allowed pedestrians their right of way at street crossings; who pretended not to see them and roared straight past. The results couldn’t have been clearer. Mercedes drivers were a quarter as likely to stop at a crossing and four times more likely to cut in front of another car than drivers of beaten-up Ford Pintos and Dodge Colts. The more luxurious the vehicle, the more entitled its owner felt to violate the laws of the highway."