alt Hacker NewsCS Lewis has a speech about the ingroups and corruption. His thesis is that the mere desire to be "in" is the greatest driver of immoral behavior:
"To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”"
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I think this is absolutely spot on with the Epstein thing. Powerful individuals just helping each other, giving each other information and money, or facilitating or ignoring exploitation because it is "what we all do". Especially effective when the group believe (maybe implicitly) that they are "better" and entitled to put their interests before those of the public. Even more so when there is a huge advantage to be gained by being part of the group.
Join my networking group, pass on some info in return for money or vice-versa, turn a blind eye to abuse even if you are not involved....
In undergrad I did a formal Philosophy / Sociology study, where we were looking at human motivations. The research indicated that prestige is the number 1 driver of human motivation. Gaining prestige "trumps" ethics. Nobody likes to hear that.
> "Half of the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; But the harm does not interest them."
-T.S. Eliot
Absolutely. In an ideal setting, elites model excellence and serve as an example for others to follow. In practice, things are never so pure, and in bad cases, quite bad. This is why we may speak of the fish rotting from the head down. The general populace takes its example from what is taken to be its elite, even if in objective terms, that "elite" is a total failure.
You see this with political opinions. People generally don't think very deeply about politics. They generally reflect the political sensibilities of the in-group they aspire to remain part of or aspire to join. It's a signal. A reasonably intelligent person can make the distinction between signal and genuinely informed opinion, but often, and especially among the poseurs, it's not about the truth value of an opinion. It is about the signal. This is the very definition of bullshit: something said with total indifference to its truth value, and only valued for its instrumental usefulness.
Also Lord Acton - “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
I'd note that it is common for fraudsters to prey on members of ingroups
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_fraud