User blog comment:GrandMethuselah67/Character Sheet: Malcolm River/@comment-4867780-20161014010956/@comment-26322734-20161014030334

Malcolm doesn't have singularity, for one. So he isn't immune to being copied by Hargrave's Data Warping. Furthermore, his powers work on a considerably smaller scale than Bradley's, so he isn't necessarily able to create a super-technology. All of the technology Dr. River had created was due to the scientific prowess of both himself and the other technical experts in his field.

So Malcolm isn't able to restructure all of reality, at least not on any universal scale. He was only able to create a separate universe through his privately-owned particle accelerator and using the relatively small-scale quantum fluctuation to scale it up to an entire universe.

"So Malcolm basically kidnapped his "citizens" to enforce his socio-political values upon them ? Who is he to decide in their place that freedom is above happiness ? How is he any better than Bradley Hargrave ?"

He isn't. That's the point. The key difference between Malcolm and Bradley is enforced Libertarianism vs enforced Authoritarianism. Malcolm had created a society where being free and independent is compulsory, whereas Bradley had created a society where freedom and independence do not exist, but everyone is happy.

I'm leaving it up to the leader to decide if they'd rather be free and independent or live happily in a nanny state where their freedoms are abridged.

So instead of it being an issue of alignment, it's more of a commentary on the scale of Authoritarianism vs Libertarianism.