> Unfortunately, both low education for the general public and low quality of the public discourse exist by design.
Absolutely. Bread and circuses isn't a new idea.
>The only possible way to remedy this is to maximize your own ability to exert power, possibly by becoming massively rich, and then hope it doesn't corrupt you enough along the way such that you can still enact good in the end.
Points for the doing good in the end. But it's a rule in hell/serve in heaven issue, if you first need to create hell with your quest for power you have failed the objective of doing good in the end.
If you have a binary view, Good will always lose.
Evil can act Good, but Good cannot act Evil. Evil has that advantage over Good that cannot be matched.
This continuously plays out in our political systems. Good actors cannot fight the deluge of evil of their opponents, who are free to lie cheat and steal.
Good binds its own hands. For good to win, it must act with even greater evil. At which point, it becomes the very thing that it tried to defeat.
> Evil can act Good, but Good cannot act Evil. Evil has that advantage over Good that cannot be matched.
The assumption here is that being Evil is advantageous. It's obviously advantageous to personal gain, but the relevant thing is whether it's advantageous to staying in power, and then the system you want to design is the one where it isn't.
Notice also that it isn't binary. You can make it harder to be Evil and then have less of it even if you never have none.
This is assuming a short game. Defection over cooperation dominates short games, but evil can't trust evil in longer play. And I would hope that the default desire is a long game..
Tangent: I think this illuminates why I enjoy the “evil” route in many RPGs. My evil party doesn’t have to be moustache twirling. They can pick and choose their evil moments. But a good party feels more constrained.
Rarely a great RPG forces my good party to make difficult decisions.
Funny enough Mass Effect: Andromeda, which I never finished for obvious reasons, actually had a few few moments with pretty thick gray areas where I had to really sit down and think about my decisions. It’s interesting looking back and recalling that mess as one of the only strong examples.
My favorite was one of the KOTOR games where helping an NPC got you dark side points for taking the opportunity for the NPC to help themselves.
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain. But there's a third option, too: to die a nobody.