Read the following excerpt from Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics There is a tale, "The Ring of Gyges," that Feldman sometimes tells his economist friends. It comes from
Plato's Republic. A student named Glaucon offered the story in response to a lesson by Socrates—who, like
Adam Smith, argued that people are generally good even without enforcement. Glaucon, like Feldman's
economist friends, disagreed. He told of a shepherd named Gyges who stumbled upon a secret cavern with a
corpse inside that wore a ring. When Gyges put on the ring, he found that it made him invisible. With no one
able to monitor his behavior, Gyges proceeded to do woeful things-seduce the queen, murder the king, and
so on. Glaucon's story posed a moral question: could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts
could not be witnessed? Glaucon seemed to think the answer was no.
The excerpt serves as which of the following in relation to the authors' argument?