"O anel de Gyges" é narrado por Glaucon, e imediatamente após concluir a narrativa, ele fornece seu comentário. Nesse ponto do diálogo, Sócrates e Glaucon discutiam se a justiça é algo inerente ou se é apenas uma construção social com a qual as pessoas concordam, a fim de se protegerem das injustiças que outros lhes infligiriam. Glaucon argumenta que o homem prefere ser injusto, e a justiça é uma concessão à própria fragilidade do homem:
They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice; — it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice.
(The Republic Book II translated by Benjamin Jowett; my emphasis)
Para esse fim, Glaucon conta a história de Gyges como uma ilustração do fato de que qualquer pessoa que não tivesse nada a temer de outras pessoas descartaria a justiça, não necessitando dela. Visto que o único objetivo da justiça é proteger os próprios interesses, se alguém é tão poderoso que ninguém mais pode prejudicá-lo, a pessoa voltará ao ideal mencionado acima: "o melhor de tudo é fazer injustiça e não ser punido". É assim que Glaucon explica:
Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. Enough of this.
(The Republic Book II translated by Benjamin Jowett; my emphasis)
Assim, a resposta para sua pergunta é que o anel tem uma influência corrompida sobre seus usuários. Mas não é uma influência corrupta "mágica". O anel (ou seja, o poder de fazer o que você quer e não ser pego) simplesmente remove a utilidade da justiça, que deixa o homem em seu estado natural, onde a injustiça é a melhor política.