Abu Ghraib. An 'authority' doesn't need to be a person. It can be a culture. The point of the experiment is not the literal situation or situations resembling

Abu Ghraib. An 'authority' doesn't need to be a person. It can be a culture. The point of the experiment is not the literal situation or situations resembling it: it is how easily otherwise non-cruel humans can be persuaded to engage in cruelty. It's the hundreds of variations of the experiment that you could employ to get your underlings to behave in this way that is the lesson that bears repeating again and again.