The Problem With Power

 You have probably heard it said, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Now you probably understand what this means, it is pretty self-explanatory. But if you are anything like me, you may have wondered why and how. Well, I have given this a lot of thought, and I think I finally understand how and why power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. First, I will define some terms, starting with power. Power is, In its broadest sense, energy over time. More energy in less time is more power. You might think that this makes sense when talking about electricity or something, but it is insufficient when talking about social power. However, I will explain how it still works. Think about the president, commonly referred to as the most powerful person in the world. Most would understand this to refer to influence rather than energy over time. But consider that high influence would imply that one could project a lot of energy in a short period of time. If you can write a policy in a moment that could potentially collapse an economy, (considering that collapsing an economy would be a lot of energy) and could potentially be done by signing a piece of paper, (something that takes very little time) we have a situation where a lot of energy is projected in a short period of time. Or consider the nuclear football. Obviously nuclear blasts produce a fuck ton of energy, and the president can project all of that just by turning a few keys and typing a few codes, which takes mere minutes. For any other individual to produce that much energy would probably not even be possible in the timespan of two lifetimes.

Now that we have defined power, let’s explore how it corrupts. Consider how we all sometimes act selfishly, how even the most benevolent among us will occasionally subordinate another's interests to our own. The issue is that if you or I do this to our friends (as I’m certain we have) our friends can and will call us out and TRUE negotiation can occur. But what about bosses? Politicians? Or cops? Well, no matter how benevolent these individuals may be, when they inevitably do as we all inevitably do, and subordinate another's interests to their own, they cannot (and likely will not) be called out, and negotiation can therefore not occur. This will make them become accustomed to this, and if someone ever gets some balls and risks being fired, shot, or arrested by calling out some boss, politician, or cop, well then, they will look like the crazy one. Think about it like this, if you have been doing something your whole life, everyone knows you do it, and no one has ever said anything about you doing it. Until one day someone outta nowhere tells you “You can’t do that”. You would look at them like they were insane. It would be like if someone came up to me while I’m walking my dog and told me “You can’t walk your dog here”. I’d respond with an “aww yes I can, I’ve been walking my dog here for years and you are the first person to say I can’t, you’re the fucking weird one”. Voluntarism is an equal consideration of interests. Consent comes from the word consensus and means to reach consensus. Negotiation is the process of making deals or arrangements with each other and reaching a consensus. It is crucial for society to function and is how rights are protected. You may have heard it said that compromise makes the world go round. But this is bunk. If exchange is possible, it is almost certainly preferable to compromise, as more people get what they want. Of course, exchange is not always possible, and compromise may sometimes be the best we can hope for. However, we can only figure out which is possible and best through negotiation. So, negotiation makes the world go round would be a much more accurate maxim. So, from this we can see why equality is so crucial, as without it negotiation cannot occur, the world could not go round, and voluntarism cannot be sustained putting liberty in jeopardy. This is why I will maintain that egalitarianism and libertarianism are interchangeable terms, both sustain each other, and it is impossible to have one without the other.

Now it should be understood that equality is not sameness. Equal is short for equivalence, which implies same on some level but also implies difference on another. The same difference or same in summation if you will. As we do not draw an equivalence of things that are the same, two plus two is not the same as four, it is equivalent to four, four is not equivalent to four, it is the same as four. No more or less, no higher or lower, no better or worse, but different of course.

Now let us discuss freedom and power, their contradictory nature, and their necessary synthesis. Freedom is simply lack of constraint but consider that if you were to have no power you would be constrained from anything by said lack of power. And the other side, if you were to have all the power you would be constrained from anything by all that you must do to sustain power. For example, if humans do not sleep our body will just shut down at some point, constraining us from what we want. If we do not eat, we will starve to death and will be constrained by that lack of life. The more power you have the more you would be required to do to sustain it and any requirement is a constraint. Think about the flash, very powerful, powerful enough to run faster than the speed of light but he has to eat like ten thousand calories a day (according to all the lore). So according to this analysis there is a necessary trade off in power and freedom. We have to have some power to enact our freedoms, but said power will always constrain us in some fashion or another. Again, we should be able to see why voluntary consensus reaching negotiation is so crucial. This is how we each determine that trade off in power and freedom in the way that suits our interests best.

Many times, in political/economic discussions people involved in them will lack a substantial critique of power and this will result in their critique of systemic issues falling short. I am no stranger to this, my article entitled the problem with capitalism, written years earlier to this one, leaves a lot to be desired, and I have come to realize that is because at that time I lacked a substantial critique of power, and this resulted in my critique of capitalism falling short. And I now notice this from many other socialists, as much as I agree with their critiques of capitalism, they lack a substantial critique of power which results in their critique of capitalism falling short. And the same thing applies to “anarcho-capitalists” & “right wing libertarians”. Again, I agree with many ancap and right libertarian critiques of the state, but because they too lack a substantial critique of power those critiques also fall short. As in order to have a substantial critique of capitalism or statism one must have a substantial critique of power. Statism, capitalism, war, corruption ETC. Are all merely symptoms, the disease is power itself.

Notice also how many things this critique explains and solves. For example, many will say it’s okay if private companies do a thing and is only a problem if the state does it. However, I have always wondered why this would be the case. And power is the fundamental issue. Like wondering what coercion is. Many on the right say capitalism isn’t coercive because you choose your job. Though, again, power is the issue, coercion is not possible without being in a position of power over someone. For example, if I were to go up to you and say, “hey give me money” You’d likely just respond with “aww no” and I’d be like “aww”. No one would call that coercive, they’d just call it a rude way of asking for money. However, if I put a gun to your head and said “give me money” in that case I would have put myself in a position of power over you. But guns are only one way of being above one in power. Having control over one's livelihood (a boss) seems just as significant to me as over one's life (an armed robber). Although technically, in both instances you have a choice. Think about it, if you’re robbed you either lose money or your life and when you go into a job interview the potential employer can look at you as either a potential collaborator or potential bum. But if you had the access to capital they have, they’d have to look at you as either a potential collaborator or potential competitor. This is why Equal access to capital is one of the biggest things I advocate. Again, coercion is impossible if people are on equal footing but is inevitable if people are not. Some may assert equality is impossible as some will always have more strength or something than another. A big strong man will always be able to overpower a small fragile woman. But is that actually true? If that small woman has a gun, then it seems we have evened out that power imbalance, this is why guns are sometimes referred to as “the great EQUALIZER” because they often put the weak and the strong on equal footing. Just as equal access to capital would put laborers on equal footing with proprietors. And if you're curious on how we do that you can read my article entitled Mutual Credit Confederation here.

As an anarchist I am often accused of having too much faith in humanity, that I think people are inherently good, and if you have reached this point in the article and think that you have missed my entire point, and I recommend going back and rereading it. As the whole point of this critique of power is the exact opposite. It seems to me the statists must have a more positive view of humanity than I do, as they will assert that having a class of rulers is the only way to prevent corruption. Thinking this, implies that you don’t believe power corrupts and that we have to have people rule over us to protect our rights and this is only a problem when the “bad people” are in power. I don’t think people are inherently good or bad, we are neutral and even the quote unquote “good people” act selfishly sometimes, even inadvertently and that they cannot be called out on said selfish behavior by those around them if they have power over those around them. In short if anyone is subordinate to another their interests will be subordinated by another. We protect our own rights through advocacy and negotiation, but that only works if we are all on equal footing. Negotiation is the filter. It prevents subordination of interests. Now you may wonder what the treatment is for whatever gets through the filter. In a word litigation, the process of dispute resolution. As our society stands now though, negotiation is very rare, and even litigation is monopolized by the state. If you got rid of your pool filter and only relied on chlorine everyone would recognize that pool is still gonna get dirty, by the same token if you only relied on your filter and never used chlorine, again most would recognize that’s gonna be a dirty pool. We need both, but in our society, we get rid of one and wonder why we still have problems.

So let us now discuss litigation and treatment. A common critique of anarchists is that you have to have a monopoly on violence in order to enforce any litigation. Statists maintain that without a monopoly on violence everyone will be violent all the time. This however makes no sense when you understand monopoly and competition. In the context of every other monopoly this would sound insane. Imagine I was to say we have to have a monopoly on pants because if one company isn't making all the pants everyone would have to make their own pants. Of course, this is nonsensical and borders on sophistry. We know that division of labor would allow pants makers to specialize and trade pants with other specialists in exchange for their product of specialty. To think that without police everyone would have to defend themselves exclusively all the time is ridiculous. Security specialists would contract their services to non-security specialists to protect/defend them and their possessions. And because these specialists would have to compete with other specialists their services would become better and cheaper as they would be incentivized to innovate. They would also not have any special protections (like qualified immunity) making them much more likely to be held liable for the things they do wrong, which would incentivize them to be more cautious in their approach.

In an anarchist society, by default you could do whatever you want. However, if you were to hinder another's ability to do whatever they wanted they could sue you and you could be held liable for the damage you caused them. Some may worry about frivolous lawsuits and although that is a concern, it is not unique to a polycentric legal order. Just like currently, it is unlikely that any mediator/arbitrator would hear a case if one could not show damages. A polycentric legal order would also allow for more opportunity for appeal. In our monocentric hierarchical legal order, you can appeal to a higher court until you get to the highest court. But in the polycentric legal order I advocate you could continue to appeal as there is no “highest court”. If one court made a decision that you thought was unfair you could go to another court, make your case, have the initial court make their case, and that other court could make another decision, and if you still thought that decision was unfair you could continue the process ad infinitum. Now I used the term legal order, but that’s not entirely accurate to what I am advocating. I am advocating an ad hoc system of ethics rather than a rigid system of laws. The courts I refer to would resemble ethical committees and lawyers/mediators/arbitrators would resemble ethicists. As we should all recognize the spirit of any law is more important than the letter of it, Ethical is more important than legal. And if you think a legal system is already an ethical system, I ask you to consider why the question of what is legal is not the same as the question of what is ethical? The answer to either of those questions should always be the same and if they are ever not, then that is a sign of a flawed legal system. Ethical committees exist and are used by academic institutions, businesses ETC. They are used to determine if a scientific study is ethical or not and I see no reason they could not be used to determine if an operation (like involuntary detainment, involuntary search/seizure ETC) is ethical or not. But to monopolize this system will have the same problems as any other monopoly, that is, power, the thing this article is critiquing. I would actually say a monopoly on violence is the most dangerous monopoly that could exist. Consider a monopoly on making pants. One company makes all the pants. Now what if this company wants to monopolize cars? What would they have to do? They would have to buy out all the other car companies, then they would have to make good cars. But what if the monopoly on violence wants to monopolize cars/pants? What would it have to do? All it would have to do is write a law saying no one else can make cars or pants, then they wouldn’t even have to make a good product as they will just continue to jail any potential competitor. Meaning that a monopoly on violence essentially, by default, has a monopoly on anything else it wants.

In closing I need it to be understood that this is not an individual issue. Plenty of bosses, politicians and cops are decent people just trying to do what they think is right (everyone's the hero in their own story after all) My critique is of power, or more specifically power imbalances. Often times people oversimplify consent this is most obviously seen by the “what was she wearing” question asked after a rape as if the outfit of an individual means they by default consent to any given sexual activity “she was asking for it because of that short skirt” as if wearing a short skirt implies consenting to sex. This is what people are referring to when they talk of rape culture. Of course, many of them make the same mistake with the “enthusiastic verbal consent” as if someone saying yes excitedly always means consent, we all know it does not, as a baby who says yes does not necessarily mean that a consensus has been reached. Oddly this is the same mistake that statists and capitalists make, assuming that negotiation can truly occur among non-equals, assuming that your interests are being equally considered by the rulers that make the rule simply because they were elected by a majority. I will close with my favorite quote from the 2009-2011 CBC television series Being Erica. Stated by the titular character Erica Strange, as portrayed by Erin Karpluk-

“With great power comes great responsibility. Why? Because power is an illusion. The desire to yield that is weakness and exercise of ego. And the fact is that all you really hold when you hold power, is all the rope you need to hang yourself.”