"Power is what men seek and any group that gets it will abuse it"

Lincoln Steffens compresses a hard lesson about human nature and institutions into a stark axiom. Power is not merely a tool to achieve other goods; it often becomes the good pursued, shaping motives as it is acquired. Once concentrated, it changes incentives. It demands preservation, justifies itself, and breeds blind spots in those who hold it. Abuse follows less from monstrous individuals than from ordinary people operating within structures that reward self-protection over public duty.

Groups are especially prone to excess. Collective identity dilutes personal accountability; responsibility is diffused and rationalization is socialized. Deindividuation, groupthink, and loyalty norms shield insiders while marginalizing dissent. Information asymmetries widen, critics are labeled disloyal, and mission creep quietly expands mandates. Even benevolent aims can mutate into control when a group convinces itself that its ends are indispensable.

The universality is the point. No creed, class, or cause is exempt. Revolutions that promise justice harden into new hierarchies. Corporations capture regulators meant to restrain them. Parties, unions, churches, and nonprofits can all drift from service to self-preservation. The pattern reflects selection effects, those who seek power most aggressively are more likely to gain it, and structural effects, authority without counterweights invites misuse.

Pessimism here functions as a design principle. If abuse is the default, then virtue is not a sufficient safeguard; only incentives and oversight are. Disperse power, divide it, rotate it. Build transparency, independent auditing, and a free press. Protect whistleblowers and channels for dissent. Engineer competition among institutions and cultivate civic norms that prize accountability over victory. The test of leadership is not how it accumulates power, but how readily it submits to limits and gives power back.

Exceptions exist, but they are fragile and temporary. Absent constraint, even good intentions bend toward domination. The sober response is not cynicism, but architecture: assume the temptation, and design against it.