If I become more powerful, it has to be at someone else’s expense. After all, power just means the ability to determine what happens, and if I become more able to determine what happens, then my defeated opponents are less able to determine what happens. Right?
The word that was on everybody’s minds for some time, *equality*, is . . . unnatural. It is anti-power and anti-agency, and by consequence, pro-decay and pro-death.
Network effects, power laws, compound interest . . . Power disparity is the only stable configuration, without it, there is conflict and power struggle.
The objective of a well designed system of governance, then, is maximally efficient transfer of power. This makes way for great men to realize their greatness, and it means that when a 1 in a trillion or 1 in a quadrillion person does come along, society receives maximum benefit from that person’s presence and life, by getting out of their way.
A small fraction of resistance and conflict reduced would produce an order of magnitude increase in agency, and each additional fraction would produce greater results than the last, the last few drops squeezed hold virtually all the nectar.
Power Is Not Conserved
Which of the four kinds of power does this apply to? Any/all?
The word that was on everybody’s minds for some time, *equality*, is . . . unnatural. It is anti-power and anti-agency, and by consequence, pro-decay and pro-death.
Network effects, power laws, compound interest . . . Power disparity is the only stable configuration, without it, there is conflict and power struggle.
The objective of a well designed system of governance, then, is maximally efficient transfer of power. This makes way for great men to realize their greatness, and it means that when a 1 in a trillion or 1 in a quadrillion person does come along, society receives maximum benefit from that person’s presence and life, by getting out of their way.
A small fraction of resistance and conflict reduced would produce an order of magnitude increase in agency, and each additional fraction would produce greater results than the last, the last few drops squeezed hold virtually all the nectar.
What do you think?