But seriously, as to the cost of ideas and separating “good” ideas from “bad” ideas, you remind me of Matt Ridley’s Ted talk a year and a half ago: When Ideas Have Sex.

In it, he introduces an interesting concept where he marries the ideas of natural selection and trade. In natural selection, generations of organisms have sex, combine genes, and adapt or perish accordingly. In trade, human populations mingle, share ideas (the ideas have sex), and the resultant goods and services prevail or are “creatively destroyed”.

I’m guessing you’ll have already seen this talk, or read Ridley’s book, “The Rational Optimist”, but some of your readers may not have.

I highly recommend at least the Ted Talk (16:27 min):
http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html

The book takes off from there.

As to the more specific gist of your post, I have to agree. The step from “my great idea” to “my abuse of power ” has been hardly a full stride historically, and is usually on a pretty infamous road.