Science

This reminds me of Steve Harvey and his "moral barometer". Still a douchebag whether he meant it that way or not.

This is intuitive and you can see it everywhere. Rules and laws only have power when they are actively enforced. If there's nobody there to stop a bad actor, eventually they will figure it out and abuse the flaw.

Getting people to drive at (or close to) the speed limit only takes seeing a couple of cops a day and perhaps having received a ticket or two.

Preventing tax cheats just requires enough enforcement so that you know of a guy who knows a guy who was turned inside out by an audit.

Keeping corruption in government low just requires a few public cases of the right people getting thrown in jail never to come back again. Sadly this is one that's eroded significantly in recent memory and too many rotten actors are publicly getting away with shady business.

The willingness of those in power to act fairly depends on how easily others can collectively push back against unfair treatment

And as long as Americans don't collectively push back, Trump will continue to abuse anyone and everyone in his conquest of the country.

Makes sense. The rich don't try to prevent unionization and collective action purely out of spite.