Morality and Power

"Does the ring corrupt us?"
In The Rings of Tokien & Plato, issues of the co-existence of power and morality are argued. Questions such as "why be moral" and "does immense power destroy the need to be a moral person" are brought up. As interesting as these questions are, I would like to focus more on the question: "with immense power is it even possible to be moral?".
This year during RA training we were asked, "what would you do with a million dollars". As we went around one girl surprised me by saying, "I would pay off my debts, then my parents debts, and then I would give it all away and get rid of it because I don't like to think about who I would be if I was in posession of all that money". It was so interesting that she thought that because she had money, she would become someone she did not want to be.
I think the story of my friends perception of money can definitely be paralleled with the way the ring affected the characters in Tolkien's books. Throughout the article, many of the characters were brought up and it was shown how each was affected by the ring. Gollum, for example, was so affected by the ring that it was all he could "see". He was so trapped in it that he was miserable and had lost all meaning to his life. Boromer was corrupted by desire, even though he never actually posessed the ring. Galadriel refused the ring and stayed true to her integrity and principles. Tom Bombadil was not at all affected by the power of the ring while Frodo was captured by it.
At the beginning of this post I used the example of money, which many may think is not that big of a deal. However, with money comes power and with power comes the freeing of morality. Now, I am in no way making the claim that all those who are in power are immoral, but I am saying that the more powerful you become, the less of a need for morality there is. Oftentimes you hear of people "buying" others off. I have had people tell me they are not afraid of speeding tickets because the cop rents land from their father. I realize that is a small scale issue, but if you think about it, if something as small as a speeding ticket is deferred, how much more can the larger things in life be overlooked for a certain sum of money/power.