17 ms·

Power Is Overrated

321 points by tlb 7y ago

Possiblyheroin 7y ago
You lost me at not not enjoying Settlers of Catan :p
- sdbryan 7y ago
  That was my reaction as well. How can one's judgment even be worth considering after such a confession?
rsp1984 7y ago
Here's a quote by Frank Underwood / House of Cards: Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who doesn’t see the difference Amusingly, I find it's the other way round. Power dies with with the people who have it. Money can last for many generations, especially when put to good use.
- sjwright 7y ago
  Money and power can both be squandered and wasted with little effort. To the extent that democracy has reduced the longevity of power (compared to e.g. monarchy or theocracy) it acts much like inflation does for money—if you don’t want your asset to devalue in real terms, you need to invest it. (Or you can hack the system and find vulnerabilities. Right now it seems like a few politicians have worked out the power equivalent of the get rich quick scam...)
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >To the extent that democracy has reduced the longevity of power (compared to e.g. monarchy or theocracy) It just gives it a new public facade every 4-5 years. Those in power remain the same...
    - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > Those in power remain the same This is demonstrably false, at least in American politics. The inter-generational transmission of wealth and power had a half life of, at my last reading, about 1.5 generations. In Sweden, for instance, about 70% of information gets lost in each generation [1]. After a couple generations, the effect tends to disappear. Expecting power dynamics to shift every 5 years is silly. People build life-long relationships. And someone good at leading when 35 is probably still good at 45. [1] https://voxeu.org/article/drivers-wealth-persistence-across-generations https://voxeu.org/article/drivers-wealth-persistence-across-...
      - js8 7y ago
        It's also the reason why there is much power in money (in Western societies) - the other venues of power (such as hereditary privilege or religion or mercenaries) have been closed.
      - jammygit 7y ago
        This sounded very interesting, so I looked it up. It seems that Sweden during that time seems to have had a 30-70% inheritance tax, depending on the year. That accounts for a loss of 70% of wealth pretty neatly. https://iea.org.uk/blog/how-high-tax-sweden-abolished-its-disastrous-inheritance-tax https://iea.org.uk/blog/how-high-tax-sweden-abolished-its-di... Please correct me if I missed something in my haste
        JumpCrisscross 7y ago
        The study’s data span multiple inheritance-tax regimes. The results are robust beyond the (since expired) tax.
      - sooheon 7y ago
        Interesting to see those stats, but you also see the same family names in politics over and over again (Bush, Clinton, Kennedy...). I could grant that information loss for the population as a whole, and still also recognize that dynasties exist at extremes (Rothschild?). All the "regular people" could be in a flux of wealth gain and loss, and the true upper crust could also be very good at holding on to power. Your link doesn't demonstrate the falsity of this hypothesis.
- quotz 7y ago
  Pondered on the same thing actually
- mieseratte 7y ago
  Royal families make a good counter-point. As do political dynasties, e.g. the Kennedy and Bush families.
  - RickJWagner 7y ago
    The Kennedy and Bush clans wield some power, true. But nothing compared to those who control the media. (Look at the generations of families that run Hollywood.) They control the narrative, which controls the masses, which choose to empower the Bush/Kennedy/Clinton alternatives.
    - BlueTemplar 7y ago
      Bushes : Bay of Pigs, prime suspects in Kennedy's assassination (means and motive), transforming Irak from the most prosperous third-world country into a hellhole, turning a blind eye to what was brewing just before 9/11 because their best pals Ben Ladens were involved... are you sure about your statement ?
  - User23 7y ago
    The Goldman–Sachs family have also done quite well for themselves for centuries in both wealth and power.
  - mensetmanusman 7y ago
    Do outliers matter in this context?
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Assuming a non corrupted and effective judiciary/police force, money is a proxy for power.
  - syrrim 7y ago
    You mean "assuming a corrupted"?
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      In nature, might makes right. Most societies around the world, as they advance, replace this with a less violent way to trade resources and services. If you define power as the capacity to do something (or obtain something), then money has been the solution that most societies have figured. I specify non corrupted to exclude situations such as mafias and gangs using force instead of money to make things happen.
      - lsc 7y ago
        so, it's interesting. you can see it both ways. Money distills a certain kind of power; one of the sorts of power individuals can have within a lawful system; but... there are other kinds of power that money simply doesn't convey, at least not in a system with functional rule of law. in societies with rule of law, money provides power in a way that is... limited. No amount of money (assuming rule of law, reasonable laws, uncorrupted law enforcement, etc..) lets you have a person killed, or even roughed up without lawful reason. In that sense, even very small time gangsters, people who make way less money than a silicon valley engineer, have more power than a law-abiding billionaire, just 'cause they can credibly threaten to have you killed. I mean sure, the rule of law should prevent the murder in both cases, but on a practical level, it's really a lot harder to prevent crimes in the first place than to punish them after they occur; The low-level gangster's seeming willingness to do things that could potentially cause them to spend a lot of time in jail is a kind of power in and of itself, one that is unrelated (some would say negatively correlated) with wealth. Another interesting side to this is that you could also argue that outside of functional rule of law, money is... worth a lot less, just 'cause you have to put in a lot more effort to protect that money, if the government won't do it. Without the rule of law, if you have money but don't have the sort of power that flows from the barrel of a gun, someone will simply take the money from you using that sort of power. Sure, you can hire bodyguards, but absent rule of law, what's to stop them from just stealing your money? you need some of that other kind of power to convince your bodyguards to work for a wage rather than just stealing your money.
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  Except it's not just money, but money put into some long-lasting, "good use" enterprise (like that stone building). Which tends to give power, even if only a passive one.
- bitL 7y ago
  Stories of executed/imprisoned billionaires/oligarchs in China and Russia would reinforce it. Perhaps it depends on type of society and even subtype within (e.g. democrats vs republicans).
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  I like the 'Golden Wall' analogy from 'The Discovery of Heaven' by Harry Mulisch. Actually being in control is much harder and more expensive than just convincing people that you are in control. And for many situations, it is almost as good. This is where the 'Golden Wall' comes in. The 'Golden Wall' is the illusion of competency. It is the idea that the people on the inside of the wall are more able and better informed than the people on the outside of it. From this, it follows that the first rule of power is not about actually having any more of a handle on a situation than anyone else, but in convincing people that you do.
- munificent 7y ago
  Money is simply liquid power. Non-money power, as you note, can be limited because it's illiquid.
  - blackflame7000 7y ago
    Assuming every man has a price. Most do but I wager there are a select few that don’t.
    - sooheon 7y ago
      Not everyone has a price, but everyone has a breaking point. If you can't buy someone you buy someone else to cause them pain.
  - User23 7y ago
    Money isn't power, power is power. Money can hire power, if power wants to be hired. And power can take money, if power wants to take it. For example you can say I won't sell my land for any amount of money, and then money can do nothing. But then the government can use eminent domain to take it and you learn a little bit about power. It's observably true that in the USA those with political power choose to sell out to those with money, but this is just an accident. In many cultures those with power choose to loot those with money and the latter can do nothing about it, because that's what power means.
    - munificent 7y ago
      > Money can hire power, if power wants to be hired. All this means is that individuals have different currency conversions from money into power and vice versa. But in the aggregate, money is liquid power. If you've got the money, odds are good you can find someone with sufficient power that's willing to exchange. > For example you can say I won't sell my land for any amount of money, and then money can do nothing. Money can: * Hire a thug to threaten to break your legs if you don't sell. * Buy up the neighboring land, pollute the soil, drain the water, obscure the visibility, etc. * Buy something that you would give up the land for. Private doctor for your son's rare disease. You get the idea. Another way to look at it is that anyone who can honestly say "I won't sell my land for any amount of money" by implication already has enough money for all of the high priority things money can acquire. Being able say that itself already implies luxury. So all you're really saying is that money won't buy someone who already has more money than you, which is pretty obvious. > But then the government can use eminent domain to take it and you learn a little bit about power. Except that you've taken some of your money and funded campaigns for all of the city council members so they're in your pocket and don't vote to do that. And you've bought advertising in the area to persuade citizens that they shouldn't take it. Democracy exists fundamentally to push against the long human history of might (-> power -> money) making right. The idea of each human getting one vote is essentially an attempt to reset or flatten out the power currency economy. It's great. But at least recently in the US, you can watch power and money reverting that back to the old way. Billions of dollars flows into campaigns every election. That money is buying something.
- mordymoop 7y ago
  And Frank Underwood lived happily ever after.
andybak 7y ago
> Doing what I want, and not being made to do things I don’t want to do I'm beginning to think the complete opposite (at least to some degree). I'm terrible at making choices that make me happy whilst I'm pretty good at finding value in serendipity. Generally nowadays I'm trying to make meta-choices if that makes sense - committing to things that remove the number of options I face whilst having a reasonable chance of providing fruitful activity.
erinyesita 7y ago
Clearly, this man has never felt threatened by anyone in power. > Any cabdriver, barber or internet troll can mouth off about his crackpot hypotheses; but if a president accidentally lets slip an authentic, uncensored thought it's called a "gaffe" and costs him approval points. Sorry, but what year does this guy think it is? We have had a paranoid extremist in office for two years now and his approval ratings have been remarkably stable. I’m at a loss for words to describe my despair (and lack of surprise) that the NYT has published this self-congratulating, contrarian tripe.
- skipthemeat 7y ago
  https://globalnews.ca/news/5311884/doug-ford-voicemail/ https://globalnews.ca/news/5311884/doug-ford-voicemail/
alexandercrohde 7y ago
> Underlying the pathetic quest for all power is fear: the fear of death. Some billionaires are building posh survival compounds and funding Frankensteinian research programs to defeat genetic decline Yes. I think it's important to understand the M.O. of the people who quest after power, and what types of systematic errors come along with that.
jhbadger 7y ago
The point of being a boss isn't just to have power over others (although I'm sure some do enjoy that) but to get more stuff you want done by delegating it. Of course a danger is eventually you don't get to do any of the stuff you want to do yourself because you are spending all your time supervising the people who are actually doing it.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > being a boss isn't just to have power over others (although I'm sure some do enjoy that) but to get more stuff you want done by delegating it The latter, getting others to act on your behalf, is pretty much the definition of power.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    I think the distinction is between using power for some other purpose, or using it for its own sake.
- tlb 7y ago
  The other way of looking at it: The point of being a boss is to help your people get more done by organizing them and coordinating their efforts.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    That's the point of view where the thing being done is a free variable; "whatever it is they're doing, my job is to help them be better at it". It makes sense at the low-tier management level, but someone somewhere has to have a goal, or the whole enterprise is a colossal waste of time and resources. This kind of thinking infecting top-executive level is IMO one of the problems with a lot of big companies.
    - hammock 7y ago
      I feel like parent comment deserves a closer read that you seem to have given it. They specifically mention organization and coordination (around a common goal).
kstenerud 7y ago
Just because you don't understand the desire for power doesn't make it "pathetic" or a "fear response" as the author puts it. This sounds more like post-rationalization than actual introspection. Success in large scale projects always goes to the better organized. Without a unifying, guiding plan, confusion reigns, and projects fail. And that plan needs to come from someone not only with vision, but also the ability to enlist the labor of his fellow man. In other words: power. "Underlying the pathetic quest for all power is fear: the fear of death." - This is a very narrow point of view, and completely discounts the useful and good ways in which power is used. "funding Frankensteinian research programs to defeat genetic decline and death." - Notice the use of loaded words to dismiss attempts at dealing with the oldest affliction known to man: aging. Even if it doesn't lead to immortality, imagine living to 80 in the body of a 20 year old! Imagine the improvement in the quality of life for everyone! We're learning how the cellular degradation process works, and how to fix it. Why would you want to disparage that? Because you want someone to blame for your ennui, and the "billionaire tycoons" and by extension anything they like makes for an easy target. "The sanest people, I think, are those happily unafflicted with ambition — whether for power, wealth, fame or achievement — who want only to work at some useful job, to love someone and to live in a nice place with some wind chimes on the porch." This is beginning to sound like the Communist Manifesto.
- drblast 7y ago
  There is a difference between success and happiness. Living longer if your happiness depends on living longer is not an improvement. We can live longer and healthier than ever before with minimal effort. Why is nobody happily enjoying that instead of desperately searching for ways to stretch out a few more years? It's because there's something fundamental they haven't found yet and they are afraid of running out of time before they do. Nearly everything is about ego and fear of death.
- salawat 7y ago
  Hold up. You started out making good points. >"The sanest people, I think, are those happily unafflicted with ambition — whether for power, wealth, fame or achievement — who want only to work at some useful job, to love someone and to live in a nice place with some wind chimes on the porch." >This is beginning to sound like the Communist Manifesto. Then completely jumped the rails here. There are some hints of a tendency toward Marx or Leninism, but no overt push in the direction of nationalization of the means of production. Rather these statements are consistent with being the echo of a general American sentiment if you go back as little as 100-150 years ago; particularly in more agrarian areas. The trend toward the accumulation of power/money, and being the center of the power structure; the rat race as it were, only started to become a prevailing ethos during the late 1800's, early 1900's with the first Gilded Age on the rise, and all the atrocities that came with advancement in the rat race becoming the primary multi-generational goal. If there is a touch of Marx to be found, it's that he was the first to call out the inevitable excesses and vices of unfettered capitalism for it's own sake. To me these statement you call out ring as an echo of the Jeffersonian Democrat. The Yeoman Farmer, cultivating the earth to grow enough for himself, and an excess with which to bolster his community. It speaks to me of industry of a different flavor. Where monolithic industries too big to fail are not allowed to exist, where information flows freely between competitors, and a corporation builds itself to the point it can do it's job without the push to diversify and building itself and it's executives into the industrialized lords of a horizontally and vertically integrated fiefdom, as widespread as legal circumstances allow. I see the disappointed spectre of Locke, staring in horror at what has become a Hobbesian nightmare of a country. Where the Human clause is subordinated by being classed as a "resource" by the prevailing elite. I see the desperation of the trodden upon, desperately leaning on each other to get by, swapping social capital and favors instead of wages, hoping for some change from above; a prospect stunted by the necessity to placate the gatekeepers of capital to be able to spread one's personality enough to participate in the legislative process. They look to an Executive branch, increasingly delegated to, and manipulated by the industrial monoliths that it is their sworn duty to regulate and minimize harm from; which is increasingly hamstrung in it's capacity to operate. The Justice System, the final bastion is tilted almost by design in favor of those with the capital to engage with the privileged class of the legally savvy; an increasingly difficult expertise to attain for the common man. There is so much more in that paragraph than some Red Menace bogeyman. There is a cry for help. A shout of warning that the rolling stone of progress is starting to get a bit out of control. A keen of a society so put upon by those sitting atop the wealth of the country pushing for more, more; from a people that are faced with a choice between seemingly "feeding the machine", or leaving it to collapse under it's own weight I haven't been very enamored of some of the views printed in the Times recently, but this one certainly resonates... It resonates with a hell of a lot more to it than "The commies are at it again."
erik_landerholm 7y ago
Power is very addictive to certain personalities. Give me money, any day.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
aphextron 7y ago
The freedom to do what you want is entirely predicated upon those with power. It so follows that in order to truly secure the freedom to "do what you want", the only real long term viable solution is to attain power. Try telling those living under an autocracy that they should give up any hope for power and just be happy doing whatever they want. Nietzsche describes this perfectly in On the Genealogy of Morality and Beyond Good and Evil. The only way to truly be master of ones destiny is in creating the circumstances under which one will exist, not simply living at the whims of another. Those who think they are achieving true actualization through the shunning of power are simply deluded, or lucky enough that their local circumstances have provided a modicum of stability and freedom.
- dan00 7y ago
  > The freedom to do what you want is entirely predicated upon those with power. I don't think so. Find something you want to do and others need or want from you.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > Find something you want to do and others need or want from you If one is truly powerless, the latter will be taken without thought to the former. This is why tights are fundamentally empowering (and lacking in autocracies).
    - cheerlessbog 7y ago
      I assume you mean rights, but tights is far more intriguing in this context.
      - toomanyrichies 7y ago
        This scenario was (sort of) depicted in a line of dialogue in the Mickey Rourke movie The Wrestler. The main character (a struggling pro wrestler) asks for more work hours at his side job, and his boss jokes “Why, did they raise the price of tights?”
Synaesthesia 7y ago
Actually I think power is underrated and poorly understood, you have to understand how power functions to understand a lot of society. A lot of how it operates is shrouded in secrecy and deception.
_bxg1 7y ago
Whenever I watch shows like House of Cards or Narcos, the thought that I keep having is, "why? why do you want this so badly? what's the point?" My theory is that seeking power is very evolutionarily satisfying, and it has no ceiling. This means that, even for people smart enough to see its diminishing returns as a means to actual happiness, it can provide an everlasting narrative for one's life, which can create a kind of happiness. It can fill an existential void for certain people who a) choose to ignore the question of what it's all for, and b) are sociopathic enough to not care what effect it has on others. You always have something to work towards. Satisfying existential quandaries is a highly desirable goal in itself.
- xiphias2 7y ago
  Whatever powerful attribute you are aiming for (money, looks, fame, pure power), it's much easier to get more of the same than to extend to other attributes. The CEO of Alibaba tried to make a movie, but it was crap, he didn't become a famous movie star. Kim dot com tried DJing, he failed, he's just a rich guy as well. Famous people can easily fail in their business as well: Jamie Oliver just closed a lot of restaurants, even though he had loads of play money and his name on them. Of course there are exceptions, for example investing is easy if you are famous enough to personal get help from great investors.
- silvestrov 7y ago
  Getting out of the drug business is difficult for the guys at the upper levels. When being in the drug business you need to quiet to avoid burning yourself. Your partners need to keep quiet to avoid burning themselves. But if you go legit then you can "talk" by leaking info and then your partners will get burned. They don't want that, so they will make sure you can't get out, e.g. by threatning your family. Even if you end up with all the money you need for the rest of your life, what are you going to spend your time with? Eternal holiday isn't nice after a couple of months. The drug job keeps people busy and gives them a purpose. That's so much more important than the money and power. Even bright dogs like Border Collies go crazy when they don't have a job.
baybal2 7y ago
The key quote: > Ambition has led me to spend 20 years of my life in a clamorous, filthy city I cannot afford, and to devote far too much attention to the soul-shriveling business of self-promotion.
bigred100 7y ago
Pretty much any time I hear discussion of power I think of Jesus’ famous exchange with Pilate in John 19 When the chief priests and the guards saw him they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him. I find no guilt in him.” 7 * The Jews answered, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.” 8 Now when Pilate heard this statement, he became even more afraid, 9 and went back into the praetorium and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” Jesus did not answer him. 10 So Pilate said to him, “Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered [him], “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.”
- mac01021 7y ago
  I've contemplated this exchange a few times over the years, but I never feel like I really understand the point that Jesus is making.
  - opportune 7y ago
    Pontius pilate has the power to choose yes or no, but he also must choose yes or no, and this is enforced by the people with power over Pilate. His job to act as the justice system. The people who handed over Jesus forced pontius pilate to make that decision, but could have just as easily not done anything. Think about it this way: suppose you know someone who smokes a lot of weed at home in an illegal state, and their neighbor rats them out, and police discover an ounce in the person's house. That person goes to jail for a month and gets a felony. Who has been more unethical: the person who snitched for adversarial reasons, or the people in the justice system which did their job enforcing the rules given to them?
    - mLuby 7y ago
      This may be a trick of translation, but couldn't "The one who handed me over to you has the greater sin" refers to God (the Father)?
js8 7y ago
Unfortunately, to want power might be completely unreasonable thing to do, yet many people might choose to want it. I mean, dogs still sniff around corners and mark them with piss, even though it is obvious to anyone that this activity doesn't make any sense and is completely useless.
- pbourke 7y ago
  Are you judging dogs by the standards of human behavior? It would be completely useless for a human to piss all over the place, but for a dog with orders of magnitude better sense of smell than people, that urine odor will linger and be picked up by other dogs. A dog’s sense of smell is so good that some studies have demonstrated they can reliably detect cancer in human urine.
  - js8 7y ago
    No. Dog is "programmed" to do it. But it objectively doesn't make sense. (It might have made sense 1000 years ago, when dogs were not domesticated.) So it's not unreasonable to expect that some behavior of humans is completely irrational, yet they do it.
thiago_fm 7y ago
Power is important. The author himself writes about how he has spent X years trying to get more power/money when he can now just move to the countryside and enjoy life. And write when he wants. This is power. Which to me, is not something an Intern would right, as you have student loans to pay, perhaps dreams to build. When you are successful and write for NY Times, or code for Google for a few years, it is easy to write "Ah, fuck this shit! I can now move to the country side and do whatever I want, but I don't do this. Will this be my last year here?", because even though you don't notice, you are very powerful. You have financial independence to do this, because you have fought very hard to go big on your career. So essentially, you have power, even if you don't write for NY Times, or if you aren't POTUS anymore. You made some big bucks or respect, that enables you do to things most people can't even dream of. Then it looks "Overrated". What I think is Overrated is being poor and left behind. Financial independence is one of the most powerful things one can have. Sure, most of the people after they have it, they still work and run after more power and money. But having a little bit of power and money is one of the most important things in life, without that, you have no leverage in society to be free. If after this you will chose to seek more power, that's your choice. Coming back to my initial example, if you were the intern that can barely eat lunch with your colleges and your mom is sick and need money... shoveling shit to become more power seems like a good thing.
- devoply 7y ago
  Also when you are at that level what is asked of you and your time is much less when you are at a lower level, so the motivation to quit is less than it would be if you were not in that position.
- david-gpu 7y ago
  I would differentiate between power and freedom, as the author does. Power would be the capacity to affect other people's actions, often arising from having a position of authority over them, but can also occur in the form of influence over them (soft power). Freedom would refer to having the means to choose our own actions with fewer or weaker external constraints. The author has achieved some degree of financial freedom, but not much power from what I can see, beyond the limited power that his modest net worth can buy.
orasis 7y ago
Power isn’t zero sum. Through complexity, power can be manifest along new dimensions.
ttarabula 7y ago
Does anyone have a list of smart career options and career advice for people that fall in to this camp (or resources that help navigate)? It's really really hard to chart courses that don't seem to eventually bump up against the accumulate power or falter hurdle.
- tomcam 7y ago
  Humility
whack 7y ago
In order to understand why power is coveted, we need to understand human motivation. The best theory I've read on human motivation, comes from Drive. As described by scientific research, once you go beyond our primal need for food, safety and companionship, there are 3 primary factors that motivate us. Mastery, autonomy, and purpose. Mastery is the ability to master and perfect a craft you care about. This can most likely be achieved without having power over others. No problems here. Autonomy is exactly what is described in the article. The freedom to avoid being micromanaged. On the face of it, you don't need power over others to be autonomous either. Purpose, however, is a lot trickier. If like the author, your purpose in life is simply to engage in the arts, you're all set. You don't need power over others, and you won't understand why anyone would want that. But suppose your purpose in life is to save millions of lives, like what Bill Gates has done with his foundation. Or to help all Americans get universal healthcare, like what Sanders wants to do. Or to help mankind become an interplanetary species, like what Musk is aiming for. It is near impossible to fulfill such purposes without wielding power. Either political or economic or cultural. There are some purposes, even the noble kind, which can only ever be accomplished by shoring up a lot of power. To go one step further, a lot of people try to fulfill their life purposes through their jobs. They want to help people, and so they work at a non-profit. Or they want to further scientific progress, so they work in a research lab. Which is great, except that by becoming a cog in a powerful machine, they are surrendering their autonomy in the process. They find themselves having to choose between autonomy and purpose. Regardless of what they choose, they fantasize about having enough power so that they can have both. They dream of being rich enough to start their own non-profit, not just work in one. They dream of heading a research lab, not just being a cog in someone else's. People like the author are in an enviable position, of having their cake and eating it too. For others with a different purpose in life, power is the only way of having the best of both worlds.
- return1 7y ago
  There is a certain physiological response to conquest that goes beyond satisfaction, especially in males. For example , the fans of a football team having their testosterone levels go up after a win. This translates to every sphere as some kind of reward to domination. That said, just because it's evolutionarily selected for , doesn't mean power relationships and dominaance have any kind of legitimacy or optimality. They are just as primal as our urge to kill, and should be viewed with suspicion.
asveikau 7y ago
The form of freedom he describes is just another form of what he's calling power, and he even admits to that in the article, when he writes: Freedom is the defensive, or pre-emptive, form of power. I have recently come to the realization that a lot of people seek or defend "freedom" as another form of power, and that is a very egotistical definition of freedom that has a lot of the same anxiety-inducing side-effects as the most vain power-seeking behaviors. Being free doesn't mean that you can't also yield to others and get over your selfishness. We should all have times, maybe lots of them, in which we yield to others and admit that many instances of our own personal notions of "freedom" are basically a whiny temper-tantrum when we fear not getting what we want.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Why should one get over one's selfishness?
  - asveikau 7y ago
    Selfishness will cause you anxiety and guilt. It will cause pain to others. It will make you a jerk. A society of jerks inflicting pain thrives less than one where we are appropriately empathetic and charitable to others. If you're going to argue against selfless empathy, etc. I suggest we have different axioms and this is not a discussion that will go well.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    Years ago, on another discussion forum, someone was asking why he shouldn’t act like other assholes he knew, who seemed to be doing fine. The top response to his question was: “Because then you’ll be an asshole.”
tmilard 7y ago
Please don't send url where you have to login.
gizmodo59 7y ago
Reminds me of this exchange in Game of Thrones: https://images.app.goo.gl/AfvQNHv95YhR6L4o7 https://images.app.goo.gl/AfvQNHv95YhR6L4o7
- MikeLui 7y ago
  ...and yet nothing happened to him there...
mrmrcoleman 7y ago
Lost me at “Like gravity and acceleration, these are two forces that appear to be different but are in fact one”
- skybrian 7y ago
  That's a reference to general relativity.
w3gv 7y ago
As much as parts of the article resonate with me, what isn't addressed is that freedom from external forces doesn't necessarily include freedom from one's own impulses -- which can be as, if not more, restrictive. True freedom not only remove external restrictions but also requires purpose beyond ones self.
allenu 7y ago
Sure, more power than what you have is overrated if you have enough power to control your own destiny. For those who don't have the privilege to fully control their own destinies, power is not overrated at all. The older I get, the more that I see power is incredibly underrated. When you are young you think that the world is fair and that if you do the right thing, you will be fairly rewarded. When I got older I realized that power and the ability to obtain it is vastly more important in your ability to make the change you wish to see on the world. Those with power and the ability to use it and gain more of it will always effect greater change than those who focus on doing the "right" thing.
- taneq 7y ago
  Exactly. Power is like money or sex or oxygen: it's only important when you don't have enough of it.
- HNLurker2 7y ago
  >The older I get, the more that I see power is incredibly underrated. When you are young you think that the world is fair and that if you do the right thing, you will be fairly rewarded Reminds me of just world theory. Related video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=geSfK9PzEDw https://youtube.com/watch?v=geSfK9PzEDw
colluphid 7y ago
Why is the nytimes shilled daily on this site lately?
jlnthws 7y ago
Ask any French kid about "Les Animaux Malades de la Peste"[1] (in English [2]). You need power to survive / for a better life, freedom is not enough. When times are good, be happy and forgetful. But when times turn bad (plague, war, financial crisis, family problems), it might be too late to struggle for power. [1] https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/les-animaux-malades-de-la-peste https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/les-animaux-malades-de... [2] https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/animals-sick-plague https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/animals-sick-plague
loblollyboy 7y ago
"Like gravity and acceleration, these are two forces that appear to be different but are in fact one. " AGGHHH! Had to stop reading.
- silasdavis 7y ago
  It continued to be a pretty tedious article.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
neonate 7y ago
Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. Carl Gustav Jung
- rofo1 7y ago
  He says that, but he married the richest girl in Switzerland. So, yeah, I guess watch what people do and not what they say?
  - etiam 7y ago
    Before or after the quote?
  - neonate 7y ago
    That's irrelevant; Jung is making no claim about himself there. It's also a cheap shot, unless you have some special ability to read the inner state of another person.
  - cocochanel 7y ago
    He did both. Married the richest woman in Switzerland and made love with the other women. Classic.
  - blaesus 7y ago
    Before perhaps 19th century, marriages had little to do with love but everything to do with social status and wealth.
- 481092 7y ago
  I'm of the philosophy that love is a power.
rsync 7y ago
This article, and it's sentiment, reminds me a lot of the very current "zero waste" movement. Bear with me ... When you are sufficiently detached from every mode of production and delivery and generation (like growing food, or building houses or working in the back of a kitchen) then it's very easy to look around your (modern, remodeled, beautifully appointed, first world) kitchen and ... stop buying plastic baggies or only use reusable containers, etc.[1] But in reality, several levels below your level of life and consumption, an enormous amount of waste is being produced just to maintain the very modern life you lead. It's really not that interesting or impactful that you cut out most of the 1% that you actually touch inside the walls of your house. This article sounds like the same kind of self-delusion ... After violently conquering a continent, enslaving or killing or (otherwise subjugating) the indigenous population, and maintaining a political and economic lock on more than half the world (through direct and indirect warfare, economic colonization, and otherwise), the author, who holds an equal share with all of us on whose behalf this was done, opines (possibly from that same kind of kitchen) that he can't think of any use for power over others. In reality, an enormous amount of power and violence has been, and continues to be, wielded on the author's behalf. It's really not that interesting or impactful that he doesn't want to "boss other people around". [1] All very positive actions and not to be impeached.
- RyanAF7 7y ago
  Agreed. Privilege provides the opportunity to opine disdain for that which elevated you in the first place.
- josalhor 7y ago
  This was an incredibly well written anology. Every time I'be tried to explain this concept I struggled to share the 'many levels under you' kind of idea that we (developers) get when we talk about abstractions.
- wetpaws 7y ago
  I don't see a problem with it. Even if you can't contribute much it's still better than not contributing anything.
crimsonalucard 7y ago
>The wish to have power over others is altogether alien to me; There is experimental evidence that endorphins are released, especially for males, when dominating or winning. Humans seek endorphins. If the concept is alien to you, it is not the concept that is foreign... you are the alien.
willart4food 7y ago
We, humans, are social animals. Which it also means that we organize in hierarchies. Ideally, these hierarchies are competence-based hierarchies; but the reality is that at times these hierarchies are hacked by a few to establish power-based hierarchies, which are not stable. Be it a PTA, or a social group, or a team, or a start-up, or a HOA, or a government entity, from a small town to a huge country; competence-based hierarchies and hence power lead to prosperity and to the greater good, while the arrogance of a pure-power based hierarchies lead to continuous issues. We've all seen those.
jeffdavis 7y ago
An important topic that warrants a lot more discussion, but the article is a bit shallow. Ambition is connected to power but not identical. Power is often about power over people, but not always. Some people want to be free and some don't (at least in some contexts). Freedom is closely tied to understanding, but the world is so complex now, how can we understand? We are all like an 8-year-old king surrounded by a bunch of people who also don't really understand the world. Freedom is also a source of identity in the US. Could it be used to bring people back together here?
jcroll 7y ago
How much life advice do people want to take from NYTimes journalists? Seriously, I'm sure if you met one at a party you wouldn't be prioritizing their advice over anyone else's
- sintaxi 7y ago
  If you met one at a party you'd be slamming your drink so you have an excuse to exit the conversation.
  - wavefunction 7y ago
    I might find them interesting and engaging enough to talk to at a party. I won't speak for you.
mycall 7y ago
> but if a president accidentally lets slip an authentic, uncensored thought it's called a "gaffe" and costs him approval points. That was true before Trump.
dnprock 7y ago
"With great power comes great responsibility." I heard that in Spiderman. It still resonates with me. I think it applies to any level of power. Whenever we are responsible for something, we have some power over it. I'm responsible for my children. I have some power over them, whether I want it or not. Responsibility is skin in the game. If we aren't responsible, we will eventually be disposed of power. When some want power, but not the responsibility, that's a red flag.
- faceplanted 7y ago
  Everyone wants power but not responsibility, nobody wants to accept that their actions have consequences, they just accept them, sometimes.
loup-vaillant 7y ago
> Underlying the pathetic quest for all power is fear: the fear of death. Some billionaires are building posh survival compounds and funding Frankensteinian research programs to defeat genetic decline and death. Where the hell did that come from? Is the author saying we shouldn't even try? Why, because trying to reverse ageing (and its consequences) is unnatural? Because corpses in a fridge are disgusting? Because our fictions are full of tyrants and supervillain trying to achieve immortality? Because there's some natural "balance" that would require the many to die so the few could be immortal? I sense a cognitive dissonance here. As far as I can guess, most people living now will die in less than 120 years. Possibly everyone. If we do achieve significant life extension, there's a good chance it will only be accessible to rich people, at least for a time. And the longer we live, the wider inequalities may rise. That's unfair, so it's better if everyone dies, right? Wait a minute, you'd solve inequalities by killing everyone? I'm tired of those stabs at transhumanism that don't even try to justify themselves. Yes, many post humanists scenarios are a hell even Lovecraft couldn't comprehend. See Robin Hanson's speculations on mind uploading to get a taste. But assuming that all such scenarios are bad is a failure of the imagination, I think. --- To the author's credit, the paragraph ends with a Woody Allen quote about "living on in [his] apartment" that is spot on. Almost contradicts what I've quoted, so I'm not sure what the author actually thinks.
- rytill 7y ago
  A rare gem of an opinion to find on HN. There are a sea of unjustified and incomplete stabs at transhumanism and anything in that realm.
aiisjustanif 7y ago
"You know, 'cause like, people say money's not everything, But money, you need money to do what you wanna do, like money is power, honesty is power, truth is power, but at the same time they tell you like Ain't nothin' more important than the mula You ain't really eatin' boy, you gotta get your food up" - Donald Glover Maybe the "Rat Race" is inevitable and is main cause for strive of power, but maybe we too narrowly define power in this discussion.
spencerwgreene 7y ago
There are sentiments in this article that I think will mislead people into doing nothing with their lives. For example, > "Ambition for the more obvious and boring forms of power — political, financial — may not always be inherently evil, but it does tend to have unfortunate side effects in the form of poverty, slave labor, pogroms and unwelcome territorial advances." This is how ambition works in a zero-sum world. It doesn't mention technology improving the lives of people. There's a related essay by Paul Graham, "How to Make Wealth" [1]. The "Wealth and Power" section is relevant. [1] http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
HNLurker2 7y ago
Yeah but freedom isn't power. You can lose yourself in possibilities
hoseja 7y ago
For most of history, and I suspect for a lot of future too, you could only be free if you had the power to make others not fuck with you. Even with the best intentions, if you are not powerful you will be crushed anywhere but in the fraction of developed, civilized countries which may go poof at any time.
ak39 7y ago
Is this writer, much like myself, a representation of what Dr Calhoun's experiment revealed as "the beautiful ones"? "During his studies, Calhoun coined the term "behavioral sink" to describe aberrant behaviors in overcrowded population density situations and "beautiful ones" to describe passive individuals who withdrew from all social interaction." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun] I too have little if no desire to lord over anyone. Is this passivity? Withdrawal? But what I lack in that ambition for power I magnify in my desire for autonomy. Yeah, I have my usual moments of feeble aggression which can be mistaken for a deeper and more permanent desire for power (eg. stuck on the road, impatient in a queue, wanting a prospective sale to go through etc) where I fantasize power to influence outcomes - but the moments pass just as quickly when I realise the absurdity of that sort of wish. Autonomy OTOH is sacred for me. Absurdly, I will fight till starvation than be co-opted into someone else's creative ideals (especially when I do not agree). I'd rather go hungry than submit to power dynamics in this regard. Loved the article.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  The ability to withdraw is an expression of power in and of itself. Autonomy is the power that many (most?) are looking for. It’s just that many are incapable (or believe they are incapable) of achieving autonomy without getting others to do work for them. Programmers try to find the best of both worlds: they try to get machines to do work for them, so that they don’t need to impose on people to do so.
szemy2 7y ago
Couldn't boredom be a reason for people chasing power? Blaise Pascal had interesting thoughts on it: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ― Blaise Pascal, Pensées (https://amzn.to/2I6kTpv https://amzn.to/2I6kTpv) We have an inherent desire to engage with the world and other people, to reach out for new stimuli. Often the most interesting path is the one where you influence people and that is by nature a form of power. Reminds me of the video that was recently posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcBzOesw7sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcBzOesw7sc This is truly a man without ambition. For me, that way of living seems like the definition of hell.
madmax96 7y ago
>I would define power as the ability to make other people do what you want I don't think anyone agrees or uses the word 'power' that way, instead, power ought to be defined as: >the ability to do something or act in a particular way, especially as a faculty or quality. Getting this definition wrong confuses the author throughout the article: >So freedom is a kind of power; but a certain kind freedom also comes with powerlessness Okay, the definition the author provided literally stated power is the ability to make other people do what you want and freedom is the ability to do what you want. I fail to see how in that mode freedom is a kind of power. I think the author doesn't really believe their own definition. The author goes on to question if great leaders (e.g. Alexander the Great) have freedom, comparing him to the homeless philosopher Diogenes. That's ultimately a personal question; if Freedom is indeed the ability to do what you like, you have to ask "could I do more of what I like as Alexander the Great or Diogenes?" >Underlying the pathetic quest for all power is fear: the fear of death. Underlying the pathetic quest for mediocrity is fear: the fear of failure. We can sit here speculating about the psychology of the average and the ambitious all day, but it provides nothing useful other than additional zings for $ECHO_CHAMBER to enjoy. >The sanest people, I think, are those happily unafflicted with ambition Cattle are pretty happy, sure. Expounding on the mental health of "the ambitious" (whatever that means to the author) seems pretty disingenuous and like an attempt to control the creative expressions of others. It's frightening that people actually think this way.
38543821223 7y ago
the author of this article fundamentally misunderstands what power is. Power is not just the ability to get other people to do what you want. Anything that allows you to achieve a desire is "power". To say "I don't want power" is like saying "I don't want to ever fulfill my goals."

Power Is Overrated

321 points by tlb 7y ago

Possiblyheroin 7y ago

You lost me at not not enjoying Settlers of Catan :p

sdbryan 7y ago
That was my reaction as well. How can one's judgment even be worth considering after such a confession?

rsp1984 7y ago

Here's a quote by Frank Underwood / House of Cards: Money is the McMansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries. I cannot respect someone who doesn’t see the difference Amusingly, I find it's the other way round. Power dies with with the people who have it. Money can last for many generations, especially when put to good use.

sjwright 7y ago
Money and power can both be squandered and wasted with little effort. To the extent that democracy has reduced the longevity of power (compared to e.g. monarchy or theocracy) it acts much like inflation does for money—if you don’t want your asset to devalue in real terms, you need to invest it. (Or you can hack the system and find vulnerabilities. Right now it seems like a few politicians have worked out the power equivalent of the get rich quick scam...)
- coldtea 7y ago
  >To the extent that democracy has reduced the longevity of power (compared to e.g. monarchy or theocracy) It just gives it a new public facade every 4-5 years. Those in power remain the same...
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > Those in power remain the same This is demonstrably false, at least in American politics. The inter-generational transmission of wealth and power had a half life of, at my last reading, about 1.5 generations. In Sweden, for instance, about 70% of information gets lost in each generation [1]. After a couple generations, the effect tends to disappear. Expecting power dynamics to shift every 5 years is silly. People build life-long relationships. And someone good at leading when 35 is probably still good at 45. [1] https://voxeu.org/article/drivers-wealth-persistence-across-generations https://voxeu.org/article/drivers-wealth-persistence-across-...
    - js8 7y ago
      It's also the reason why there is much power in money (in Western societies) - the other venues of power (such as hereditary privilege or religion or mercenaries) have been closed.
    - jammygit 7y ago
      This sounded very interesting, so I looked it up. It seems that Sweden during that time seems to have had a 30-70% inheritance tax, depending on the year. That accounts for a loss of 70% of wealth pretty neatly. https://iea.org.uk/blog/how-high-tax-sweden-abolished-its-disastrous-inheritance-tax https://iea.org.uk/blog/how-high-tax-sweden-abolished-its-di... Please correct me if I missed something in my haste
      - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
        The study’s data span multiple inheritance-tax regimes. The results are robust beyond the (since expired) tax.
    - sooheon 7y ago
      Interesting to see those stats, but you also see the same family names in politics over and over again (Bush, Clinton, Kennedy...). I could grant that information loss for the population as a whole, and still also recognize that dynasties exist at extremes (Rothschild?). All the "regular people" could be in a flux of wealth gain and loss, and the true upper crust could also be very good at holding on to power. Your link doesn't demonstrate the falsity of this hypothesis.
quotz 7y ago
Pondered on the same thing actually
mieseratte 7y ago
Royal families make a good counter-point. As do political dynasties, e.g. the Kennedy and Bush families.
- RickJWagner 7y ago
  The Kennedy and Bush clans wield some power, true. But nothing compared to those who control the media. (Look at the generations of families that run Hollywood.) They control the narrative, which controls the masses, which choose to empower the Bush/Kennedy/Clinton alternatives.
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    Bushes : Bay of Pigs, prime suspects in Kennedy's assassination (means and motive), transforming Irak from the most prosperous third-world country into a hellhole, turning a blind eye to what was brewing just before 9/11 because their best pals Ben Ladens were involved... are you sure about your statement ?
- User23 7y ago
  The Goldman–Sachs family have also done quite well for themselves for centuries in both wealth and power.
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  Do outliers matter in this context?
lotsofpulp 7y ago
Assuming a non corrupted and effective judiciary/police force, money is a proxy for power.
- syrrim 7y ago
  You mean "assuming a corrupted"?
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    In nature, might makes right. Most societies around the world, as they advance, replace this with a less violent way to trade resources and services. If you define power as the capacity to do something (or obtain something), then money has been the solution that most societies have figured. I specify non corrupted to exclude situations such as mafias and gangs using force instead of money to make things happen.
    - lsc 7y ago
      so, it's interesting. you can see it both ways. Money distills a certain kind of power; one of the sorts of power individuals can have within a lawful system; but... there are other kinds of power that money simply doesn't convey, at least not in a system with functional rule of law. in societies with rule of law, money provides power in a way that is... limited. No amount of money (assuming rule of law, reasonable laws, uncorrupted law enforcement, etc..) lets you have a person killed, or even roughed up without lawful reason. In that sense, even very small time gangsters, people who make way less money than a silicon valley engineer, have more power than a law-abiding billionaire, just 'cause they can credibly threaten to have you killed. I mean sure, the rule of law should prevent the murder in both cases, but on a practical level, it's really a lot harder to prevent crimes in the first place than to punish them after they occur; The low-level gangster's seeming willingness to do things that could potentially cause them to spend a lot of time in jail is a kind of power in and of itself, one that is unrelated (some would say negatively correlated) with wealth. Another interesting side to this is that you could also argue that outside of functional rule of law, money is... worth a lot less, just 'cause you have to put in a lot more effort to protect that money, if the government won't do it. Without the rule of law, if you have money but don't have the sort of power that flows from the barrel of a gun, someone will simply take the money from you using that sort of power. Sure, you can hire bodyguards, but absent rule of law, what's to stop them from just stealing your money? you need some of that other kind of power to convince your bodyguards to work for a wage rather than just stealing your money.
BlueTemplar 7y ago
Except it's not just money, but money put into some long-lasting, "good use" enterprise (like that stone building). Which tends to give power, even if only a passive one.
bitL 7y ago
Stories of executed/imprisoned billionaires/oligarchs in China and Russia would reinforce it. Perhaps it depends on type of society and even subtype within (e.g. democrats vs republicans).
inflatableDodo 7y ago
I like the 'Golden Wall' analogy from 'The Discovery of Heaven' by Harry Mulisch. Actually being in control is much harder and more expensive than just convincing people that you are in control. And for many situations, it is almost as good. This is where the 'Golden Wall' comes in. The 'Golden Wall' is the illusion of competency. It is the idea that the people on the inside of the wall are more able and better informed than the people on the outside of it. From this, it follows that the first rule of power is not about actually having any more of a handle on a situation than anyone else, but in convincing people that you do.
munificent 7y ago
Money is simply liquid power. Non-money power, as you note, can be limited because it's illiquid.
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  Assuming every man has a price. Most do but I wager there are a select few that don’t.
  - sooheon 7y ago
    Not everyone has a price, but everyone has a breaking point. If you can't buy someone you buy someone else to cause them pain.
- User23 7y ago
  Money isn't power, power is power. Money can hire power, if power wants to be hired. And power can take money, if power wants to take it. For example you can say I won't sell my land for any amount of money, and then money can do nothing. But then the government can use eminent domain to take it and you learn a little bit about power. It's observably true that in the USA those with political power choose to sell out to those with money, but this is just an accident. In many cultures those with power choose to loot those with money and the latter can do nothing about it, because that's what power means.
  - munificent 7y ago
    > Money can hire power, if power wants to be hired. All this means is that individuals have different currency conversions from money into power and vice versa. But in the aggregate, money is liquid power. If you've got the money, odds are good you can find someone with sufficient power that's willing to exchange. > For example you can say I won't sell my land for any amount of money, and then money can do nothing. Money can: * Hire a thug to threaten to break your legs if you don't sell. * Buy up the neighboring land, pollute the soil, drain the water, obscure the visibility, etc. * Buy something that you would give up the land for. Private doctor for your son's rare disease. You get the idea. Another way to look at it is that anyone who can honestly say "I won't sell my land for any amount of money" by implication already has enough money for all of the high priority things money can acquire. Being able say that itself already implies luxury. So all you're really saying is that money won't buy someone who already has more money than you, which is pretty obvious. > But then the government can use eminent domain to take it and you learn a little bit about power. Except that you've taken some of your money and funded campaigns for all of the city council members so they're in your pocket and don't vote to do that. And you've bought advertising in the area to persuade citizens that they shouldn't take it. Democracy exists fundamentally to push against the long human history of might (-> power -> money) making right. The idea of each human getting one vote is essentially an attempt to reset or flatten out the power currency economy. It's great. But at least recently in the US, you can watch power and money reverting that back to the old way. Billions of dollars flows into campaigns every election. That money is buying something.
mordymoop 7y ago
And Frank Underwood lived happily ever after.

andybak 7y ago

> Doing what I want, and not being made to do things I don’t want to do I'm beginning to think the complete opposite (at least to some degree). I'm terrible at making choices that make me happy whilst I'm pretty good at finding value in serendipity. Generally nowadays I'm trying to make meta-choices if that makes sense - committing to things that remove the number of options I face whilst having a reasonable chance of providing fruitful activity.

erinyesita 7y ago

Clearly, this man has never felt threatened by anyone in power. > Any cabdriver, barber or internet troll can mouth off about his crackpot hypotheses; but if a president accidentally lets slip an authentic, uncensored thought it's called a "gaffe" and costs him approval points. Sorry, but what year does this guy think it is? We have had a paranoid extremist in office for two years now and his approval ratings have been remarkably stable. I’m at a loss for words to describe my despair (and lack of surprise) that the NYT has published this self-congratulating, contrarian tripe.

skipthemeat 7y ago
https://globalnews.ca/news/5311884/doug-ford-voicemail/ https://globalnews.ca/news/5311884/doug-ford-voicemail/

alexandercrohde 7y ago

> Underlying the pathetic quest for all power is fear: the fear of death. Some billionaires are building posh survival compounds and funding Frankensteinian research programs to defeat genetic decline Yes. I think it's important to understand the M.O. of the people who quest after power, and what types of systematic errors come along with that.

jhbadger 7y ago

The point of being a boss isn't just to have power over others (although I'm sure some do enjoy that) but to get more stuff you want done by delegating it. Of course a danger is eventually you don't get to do any of the stuff you want to do yourself because you are spending all your time supervising the people who are actually doing it.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> being a boss isn't just to have power over others (although I'm sure some do enjoy that) but to get more stuff you want done by delegating it The latter, getting others to act on your behalf, is pretty much the definition of power.
- icebraining 7y ago
  I think the distinction is between using power for some other purpose, or using it for its own sake.
tlb 7y ago
The other way of looking at it: The point of being a boss is to help your people get more done by organizing them and coordinating their efforts.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  That's the point of view where the thing being done is a free variable; "whatever it is they're doing, my job is to help them be better at it". It makes sense at the low-tier management level, but someone somewhere has to have a goal, or the whole enterprise is a colossal waste of time and resources. This kind of thinking infecting top-executive level is IMO one of the problems with a lot of big companies.
  - hammock 7y ago
    I feel like parent comment deserves a closer read that you seem to have given it. They specifically mention organization and coordination (around a common goal).

kstenerud 7y ago

Just because you don't understand the desire for power doesn't make it "pathetic" or a "fear response" as the author puts it. This sounds more like post-rationalization than actual introspection. Success in large scale projects always goes to the better organized. Without a unifying, guiding plan, confusion reigns, and projects fail. And that plan needs to come from someone not only with vision, but also the ability to enlist the labor of his fellow man. In other words: power. "Underlying the pathetic quest for all power is fear: the fear of death." - This is a very narrow point of view, and completely discounts the useful and good ways in which power is used. "funding Frankensteinian research programs to defeat genetic decline and death." - Notice the use of loaded words to dismiss attempts at dealing with the oldest affliction known to man: aging. Even if it doesn't lead to immortality, imagine living to 80 in the body of a 20 year old! Imagine the improvement in the quality of life for everyone! We're learning how the cellular degradation process works, and how to fix it. Why would you want to disparage that? Because you want someone to blame for your ennui, and the "billionaire tycoons" and by extension anything they like makes for an easy target. "The sanest people, I think, are those happily unafflicted with ambition — whether for power, wealth, fame or achievement — who want only to work at some useful job, to love someone and to live in a nice place with some wind chimes on the porch." This is beginning to sound like the Communist Manifesto.

drblast 7y ago
There is a difference between success and happiness. Living longer if your happiness depends on living longer is not an improvement. We can live longer and healthier than ever before with minimal effort. Why is nobody happily enjoying that instead of desperately searching for ways to stretch out a few more years? It's because there's something fundamental they haven't found yet and they are afraid of running out of time before they do. Nearly everything is about ego and fear of death.
salawat 7y ago
Hold up. You started out making good points. >"The sanest people, I think, are those happily unafflicted with ambition — whether for power, wealth, fame or achievement — who want only to work at some useful job, to love someone and to live in a nice place with some wind chimes on the porch." >This is beginning to sound like the Communist Manifesto. Then completely jumped the rails here. There are some hints of a tendency toward Marx or Leninism, but no overt push in the direction of nationalization of the means of production. Rather these statements are consistent with being the echo of a general American sentiment if you go back as little as 100-150 years ago; particularly in more agrarian areas. The trend toward the accumulation of power/money, and being the center of the power structure; the rat race as it were, only started to become a prevailing ethos during the late 1800's, early 1900's with the first Gilded Age on the rise, and all the atrocities that came with advancement in the rat race becoming the primary multi-generational goal. If there is a touch of Marx to be found, it's that he was the first to call out the inevitable excesses and vices of unfettered capitalism for it's own sake. To me these statement you call out ring as an echo of the Jeffersonian Democrat. The Yeoman Farmer, cultivating the earth to grow enough for himself, and an excess with which to bolster his community. It speaks to me of industry of a different flavor. Where monolithic industries too big to fail are not allowed to exist, where information flows freely between competitors, and a corporation builds itself to the point it can do it's job without the push to diversify and building itself and it's executives into the industrialized lords of a horizontally and vertically integrated fiefdom, as widespread as legal circumstances allow. I see the disappointed spectre of Locke, staring in horror at what has become a Hobbesian nightmare of a country. Where the Human clause is subordinated by being classed as a "resource" by the prevailing elite. I see the desperation of the trodden upon, desperately leaning on each other to get by, swapping social capital and favors instead of wages, hoping for some change from above; a prospect stunted by the necessity to placate the gatekeepers of capital to be able to spread one's personality enough to participate in the legislative process. They look to an Executive branch, increasingly delegated to, and manipulated by the industrial monoliths that it is their sworn duty to regulate and minimize harm from; which is increasingly hamstrung in it's capacity to operate. The Justice System, the final bastion is tilted almost by design in favor of those with the capital to engage with the privileged class of the legally savvy; an increasingly difficult expertise to attain for the common man. There is so much more in that paragraph than some Red Menace bogeyman. There is a cry for help. A shout of warning that the rolling stone of progress is starting to get a bit out of control. A keen of a society so put upon by those sitting atop the wealth of the country pushing for more, more; from a people that are faced with a choice between seemingly "feeding the machine", or leaving it to collapse under it's own weight I haven't been very enamored of some of the views printed in the Times recently, but this one certainly resonates... It resonates with a hell of a lot more to it than "The commies are at it again."

erik_landerholm 7y ago

Power is very addictive to certain personalities. Give me money, any day.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

aphextron 7y ago

The freedom to do what you want is entirely predicated upon those with power. It so follows that in order to truly secure the freedom to "do what you want", the only real long term viable solution is to attain power. Try telling those living under an autocracy that they should give up any hope for power and just be happy doing whatever they want. Nietzsche describes this perfectly in On the Genealogy of Morality and Beyond Good and Evil. The only way to truly be master of ones destiny is in creating the circumstances under which one will exist, not simply living at the whims of another. Those who think they are achieving true actualization through the shunning of power are simply deluded, or lucky enough that their local circumstances have provided a modicum of stability and freedom.

dan00 7y ago
> The freedom to do what you want is entirely predicated upon those with power. I don't think so. Find something you want to do and others need or want from you.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > Find something you want to do and others need or want from you If one is truly powerless, the latter will be taken without thought to the former. This is why tights are fundamentally empowering (and lacking in autocracies).
  - cheerlessbog 7y ago
    I assume you mean rights, but tights is far more intriguing in this context.
    - toomanyrichies 7y ago
      This scenario was (sort of) depicted in a line of dialogue in the Mickey Rourke movie The Wrestler. The main character (a struggling pro wrestler) asks for more work hours at his side job, and his boss jokes “Why, did they raise the price of tights?”

Synaesthesia 7y ago

Actually I think power is underrated and poorly understood, you have to understand how power functions to understand a lot of society. A lot of how it operates is shrouded in secrecy and deception.

_bxg1 7y ago

Whenever I watch shows like House of Cards or Narcos, the thought that I keep having is, "why? why do you want this so badly? what's the point?" My theory is that seeking power is very evolutionarily satisfying, and it has no ceiling. This means that, even for people smart enough to see its diminishing returns as a means to actual happiness, it can provide an everlasting narrative for one's life, which can create a kind of happiness. It can fill an existential void for certain people who a) choose to ignore the question of what it's all for, and b) are sociopathic enough to not care what effect it has on others. You always have something to work towards. Satisfying existential quandaries is a highly desirable goal in itself.

xiphias2 7y ago
Whatever powerful attribute you are aiming for (money, looks, fame, pure power), it's much easier to get more of the same than to extend to other attributes. The CEO of Alibaba tried to make a movie, but it was crap, he didn't become a famous movie star. Kim dot com tried DJing, he failed, he's just a rich guy as well. Famous people can easily fail in their business as well: Jamie Oliver just closed a lot of restaurants, even though he had loads of play money and his name on them. Of course there are exceptions, for example investing is easy if you are famous enough to personal get help from great investors.
silvestrov 7y ago
Getting out of the drug business is difficult for the guys at the upper levels. When being in the drug business you need to quiet to avoid burning yourself. Your partners need to keep quiet to avoid burning themselves. But if you go legit then you can "talk" by leaking info and then your partners will get burned. They don't want that, so they will make sure you can't get out, e.g. by threatning your family. Even if you end up with all the money you need for the rest of your life, what are you going to spend your time with? Eternal holiday isn't nice after a couple of months. The drug job keeps people busy and gives them a purpose. That's so much more important than the money and power. Even bright dogs like Border Collies go crazy when they don't have a job.

baybal2 7y ago

The key quote: > Ambition has led me to spend 20 years of my life in a clamorous, filthy city I cannot afford, and to devote far too much attention to the soul-shriveling business of self-promotion.

bigred100 7y ago

Pretty much any time I hear discussion of power I think of Jesus’ famous exchange with Pilate in John 19 When the chief priests and the guards saw him they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him. I find no guilt in him.” 7 * The Jews answered, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.” 8 Now when Pilate heard this statement, he became even more afraid, 9 and went back into the praetorium and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” Jesus did not answer him. 10 So Pilate said to him, “Do you not speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered [him], “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.”

mac01021 7y ago
I've contemplated this exchange a few times over the years, but I never feel like I really understand the point that Jesus is making.
- opportune 7y ago
  Pontius pilate has the power to choose yes or no, but he also must choose yes or no, and this is enforced by the people with power over Pilate. His job to act as the justice system. The people who handed over Jesus forced pontius pilate to make that decision, but could have just as easily not done anything. Think about it this way: suppose you know someone who smokes a lot of weed at home in an illegal state, and their neighbor rats them out, and police discover an ounce in the person's house. That person goes to jail for a month and gets a felony. Who has been more unethical: the person who snitched for adversarial reasons, or the people in the justice system which did their job enforcing the rules given to them?
  - mLuby 7y ago
    This may be a trick of translation, but couldn't "The one who handed me over to you has the greater sin" refers to God (the Father)?

js8 7y ago

Unfortunately, to want power might be completely unreasonable thing to do, yet many people might choose to want it. I mean, dogs still sniff around corners and mark them with piss, even though it is obvious to anyone that this activity doesn't make any sense and is completely useless.

pbourke 7y ago
Are you judging dogs by the standards of human behavior? It would be completely useless for a human to piss all over the place, but for a dog with orders of magnitude better sense of smell than people, that urine odor will linger and be picked up by other dogs. A dog’s sense of smell is so good that some studies have demonstrated they can reliably detect cancer in human urine.
- js8 7y ago
  No. Dog is "programmed" to do it. But it objectively doesn't make sense. (It might have made sense 1000 years ago, when dogs were not domesticated.) So it's not unreasonable to expect that some behavior of humans is completely irrational, yet they do it.

thiago_fm 7y ago

Power is important. The author himself writes about how he has spent X years trying to get more power/money when he can now just move to the countryside and enjoy life. And write when he wants. This is power. Which to me, is not something an Intern would right, as you have student loans to pay, perhaps dreams to build. When you are successful and write for NY Times, or code for Google for a few years, it is easy to write "Ah, fuck this shit! I can now move to the country side and do whatever I want, but I don't do this. Will this be my last year here?", because even though you don't notice, you are very powerful. You have financial independence to do this, because you have fought very hard to go big on your career. So essentially, you have power, even if you don't write for NY Times, or if you aren't POTUS anymore. You made some big bucks or respect, that enables you do to things most people can't even dream of. Then it looks "Overrated". What I think is Overrated is being poor and left behind. Financial independence is one of the most powerful things one can have. Sure, most of the people after they have it, they still work and run after more power and money. But having a little bit of power and money is one of the most important things in life, without that, you have no leverage in society to be free. If after this you will chose to seek more power, that's your choice. Coming back to my initial example, if you were the intern that can barely eat lunch with your colleges and your mom is sick and need money... shoveling shit to become more power seems like a good thing.

devoply 7y ago
Also when you are at that level what is asked of you and your time is much less when you are at a lower level, so the motivation to quit is less than it would be if you were not in that position.
david-gpu 7y ago
I would differentiate between power and freedom, as the author does. Power would be the capacity to affect other people's actions, often arising from having a position of authority over them, but can also occur in the form of influence over them (soft power). Freedom would refer to having the means to choose our own actions with fewer or weaker external constraints. The author has achieved some degree of financial freedom, but not much power from what I can see, beyond the limited power that his modest net worth can buy.

orasis 7y ago

Power isn’t zero sum. Through complexity, power can be manifest along new dimensions.

ttarabula 7y ago

Does anyone have a list of smart career options and career advice for people that fall in to this camp (or resources that help navigate)? It's really really hard to chart courses that don't seem to eventually bump up against the accumulate power or falter hurdle.

tomcam 7y ago
Humility

whack 7y ago

In order to understand why power is coveted, we need to understand human motivation. The best theory I've read on human motivation, comes from Drive. As described by scientific research, once you go beyond our primal need for food, safety and companionship, there are 3 primary factors that motivate us. Mastery, autonomy, and purpose. Mastery is the ability to master and perfect a craft you care about. This can most likely be achieved without having power over others. No problems here. Autonomy is exactly what is described in the article. The freedom to avoid being micromanaged. On the face of it, you don't need power over others to be autonomous either. Purpose, however, is a lot trickier. If like the author, your purpose in life is simply to engage in the arts, you're all set. You don't need power over others, and you won't understand why anyone would want that. But suppose your purpose in life is to save millions of lives, like what Bill Gates has done with his foundation. Or to help all Americans get universal healthcare, like what Sanders wants to do. Or to help mankind become an interplanetary species, like what Musk is aiming for. It is near impossible to fulfill such purposes without wielding power. Either political or economic or cultural. There are some purposes, even the noble kind, which can only ever be accomplished by shoring up a lot of power. To go one step further, a lot of people try to fulfill their life purposes through their jobs. They want to help people, and so they work at a non-profit. Or they want to further scientific progress, so they work in a research lab. Which is great, except that by becoming a cog in a powerful machine, they are surrendering their autonomy in the process. They find themselves having to choose between autonomy and purpose. Regardless of what they choose, they fantasize about having enough power so that they can have both. They dream of being rich enough to start their own non-profit, not just work in one. They dream of heading a research lab, not just being a cog in someone else's. People like the author are in an enviable position, of having their cake and eating it too. For others with a different purpose in life, power is the only way of having the best of both worlds.

return1 7y ago
There is a certain physiological response to conquest that goes beyond satisfaction, especially in males. For example , the fans of a football team having their testosterone levels go up after a win. This translates to every sphere as some kind of reward to domination. That said, just because it's evolutionarily selected for , doesn't mean power relationships and dominaance have any kind of legitimacy or optimality. They are just as primal as our urge to kill, and should be viewed with suspicion.

asveikau 7y ago

The form of freedom he describes is just another form of what he's calling power, and he even admits to that in the article, when he writes: Freedom is the defensive, or pre-emptive, form of power. I have recently come to the realization that a lot of people seek or defend "freedom" as another form of power, and that is a very egotistical definition of freedom that has a lot of the same anxiety-inducing side-effects as the most vain power-seeking behaviors. Being free doesn't mean that you can't also yield to others and get over your selfishness. We should all have times, maybe lots of them, in which we yield to others and admit that many instances of our own personal notions of "freedom" are basically a whiny temper-tantrum when we fear not getting what we want.

icebraining 7y ago
Why should one get over one's selfishness?
- asveikau 7y ago
  Selfishness will cause you anxiety and guilt. It will cause pain to others. It will make you a jerk. A society of jerks inflicting pain thrives less than one where we are appropriately empathetic and charitable to others. If you're going to argue against selfless empathy, etc. I suggest we have different axioms and this is not a discussion that will go well.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  Years ago, on another discussion forum, someone was asking why he shouldn’t act like other assholes he knew, who seemed to be doing fine. The top response to his question was: “Because then you’ll be an asshole.”

tmilard 7y ago

Please don't send url where you have to login.

gizmodo59 7y ago

Reminds me of this exchange in Game of Thrones: https://images.app.goo.gl/AfvQNHv95YhR6L4o7 https://images.app.goo.gl/AfvQNHv95YhR6L4o7

MikeLui 7y ago
...and yet nothing happened to him there...

mrmrcoleman 7y ago

Lost me at “Like gravity and acceleration, these are two forces that appear to be different but are in fact one”

skybrian 7y ago
That's a reference to general relativity.

w3gv 7y ago

As much as parts of the article resonate with me, what isn't addressed is that freedom from external forces doesn't necessarily include freedom from one's own impulses -- which can be as, if not more, restrictive. True freedom not only remove external restrictions but also requires purpose beyond ones self.

allenu 7y ago

Sure, more power than what you have is overrated if you have enough power to control your own destiny. For those who don't have the privilege to fully control their own destinies, power is not overrated at all. The older I get, the more that I see power is incredibly underrated. When you are young you think that the world is fair and that if you do the right thing, you will be fairly rewarded. When I got older I realized that power and the ability to obtain it is vastly more important in your ability to make the change you wish to see on the world. Those with power and the ability to use it and gain more of it will always effect greater change than those who focus on doing the "right" thing.

taneq 7y ago
Exactly. Power is like money or sex or oxygen: it's only important when you don't have enough of it.
HNLurker2 7y ago
>The older I get, the more that I see power is incredibly underrated. When you are young you think that the world is fair and that if you do the right thing, you will be fairly rewarded Reminds me of just world theory. Related video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=geSfK9PzEDw https://youtube.com/watch?v=geSfK9PzEDw

colluphid 7y ago

Why is the nytimes shilled daily on this site lately?

jlnthws 7y ago

Ask any French kid about "Les Animaux Malades de la Peste"[1] (in English [2]). You need power to survive / for a better life, freedom is not enough. When times are good, be happy and forgetful. But when times turn bad (plague, war, financial crisis, family problems), it might be too late to struggle for power. [1] https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/les-animaux-malades-de-la-peste https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/les-animaux-malades-de... [2] https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/animals-sick-plague https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/animals-sick-plague

loblollyboy 7y ago

"Like gravity and acceleration, these are two forces that appear to be different but are in fact one. " AGGHHH! Had to stop reading.

silasdavis 7y ago
It continued to be a pretty tedious article.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

neonate 7y ago

Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. Carl Gustav Jung

rofo1 7y ago
He says that, but he married the richest girl in Switzerland. So, yeah, I guess watch what people do and not what they say?
- etiam 7y ago
  Before or after the quote?
- neonate 7y ago
  That's irrelevant; Jung is making no claim about himself there. It's also a cheap shot, unless you have some special ability to read the inner state of another person.
- cocochanel 7y ago
  He did both. Married the richest woman in Switzerland and made love with the other women. Classic.
- blaesus 7y ago
  Before perhaps 19th century, marriages had little to do with love but everything to do with social status and wealth.
481092 7y ago
I'm of the philosophy that love is a power.

rsync 7y ago

This article, and it's sentiment, reminds me a lot of the very current "zero waste" movement. Bear with me ... When you are sufficiently detached from every mode of production and delivery and generation (like growing food, or building houses or working in the back of a kitchen) then it's very easy to look around your (modern, remodeled, beautifully appointed, first world) kitchen and ... stop buying plastic baggies or only use reusable containers, etc.[1] But in reality, several levels below your level of life and consumption, an enormous amount of waste is being produced just to maintain the very modern life you lead. It's really not that interesting or impactful that you cut out most of the 1% that you actually touch inside the walls of your house. This article sounds like the same kind of self-delusion ... After violently conquering a continent, enslaving or killing or (otherwise subjugating) the indigenous population, and maintaining a political and economic lock on more than half the world (through direct and indirect warfare, economic colonization, and otherwise), the author, who holds an equal share with all of us on whose behalf this was done, opines (possibly from that same kind of kitchen) that he can't think of any use for power over others. In reality, an enormous amount of power and violence has been, and continues to be, wielded on the author's behalf. It's really not that interesting or impactful that he doesn't want to "boss other people around". [1] All very positive actions and not to be impeached.

RyanAF7 7y ago
Agreed. Privilege provides the opportunity to opine disdain for that which elevated you in the first place.
josalhor 7y ago
This was an incredibly well written anology. Every time I'be tried to explain this concept I struggled to share the 'many levels under you' kind of idea that we (developers) get when we talk about abstractions.
wetpaws 7y ago
I don't see a problem with it. Even if you can't contribute much it's still better than not contributing anything.

crimsonalucard 7y ago

>The wish to have power over others is altogether alien to me; There is experimental evidence that endorphins are released, especially for males, when dominating or winning. Humans seek endorphins. If the concept is alien to you, it is not the concept that is foreign... you are the alien.

willart4food 7y ago

We, humans, are social animals. Which it also means that we organize in hierarchies. Ideally, these hierarchies are competence-based hierarchies; but the reality is that at times these hierarchies are hacked by a few to establish power-based hierarchies, which are not stable. Be it a PTA, or a social group, or a team, or a start-up, or a HOA, or a government entity, from a small town to a huge country; competence-based hierarchies and hence power lead to prosperity and to the greater good, while the arrogance of a pure-power based hierarchies lead to continuous issues. We've all seen those.

jeffdavis 7y ago

An important topic that warrants a lot more discussion, but the article is a bit shallow. Ambition is connected to power but not identical. Power is often about power over people, but not always. Some people want to be free and some don't (at least in some contexts). Freedom is closely tied to understanding, but the world is so complex now, how can we understand? We are all like an 8-year-old king surrounded by a bunch of people who also don't really understand the world. Freedom is also a source of identity in the US. Could it be used to bring people back together here?

jcroll 7y ago

How much life advice do people want to take from NYTimes journalists? Seriously, I'm sure if you met one at a party you wouldn't be prioritizing their advice over anyone else's

sintaxi 7y ago
If you met one at a party you'd be slamming your drink so you have an excuse to exit the conversation.
- wavefunction 7y ago
  I might find them interesting and engaging enough to talk to at a party. I won't speak for you.

mycall 7y ago

> but if a president accidentally lets slip an authentic, uncensored thought it's called a "gaffe" and costs him approval points. That was true before Trump.

dnprock 7y ago

"With great power comes great responsibility." I heard that in Spiderman. It still resonates with me. I think it applies to any level of power. Whenever we are responsible for something, we have some power over it. I'm responsible for my children. I have some power over them, whether I want it or not. Responsibility is skin in the game. If we aren't responsible, we will eventually be disposed of power. When some want power, but not the responsibility, that's a red flag.

faceplanted 7y ago
Everyone wants power but not responsibility, nobody wants to accept that their actions have consequences, they just accept them, sometimes.

loup-vaillant 7y ago

> Underlying the pathetic quest for all power is fear: the fear of death. Some billionaires are building posh survival compounds and funding Frankensteinian research programs to defeat genetic decline and death. Where the hell did that come from? Is the author saying we shouldn't even try? Why, because trying to reverse ageing (and its consequences) is unnatural? Because corpses in a fridge are disgusting? Because our fictions are full of tyrants and supervillain trying to achieve immortality? Because there's some natural "balance" that would require the many to die so the few could be immortal? I sense a cognitive dissonance here. As far as I can guess, most people living now will die in less than 120 years. Possibly everyone. If we do achieve significant life extension, there's a good chance it will only be accessible to rich people, at least for a time. And the longer we live, the wider inequalities may rise. That's unfair, so it's better if everyone dies, right? Wait a minute, you'd solve inequalities by killing everyone? I'm tired of those stabs at transhumanism that don't even try to justify themselves. Yes, many post humanists scenarios are a hell even Lovecraft couldn't comprehend. See Robin Hanson's speculations on mind uploading to get a taste. But assuming that all such scenarios are bad is a failure of the imagination, I think. --- To the author's credit, the paragraph ends with a Woody Allen quote about "living on in [his] apartment" that is spot on. Almost contradicts what I've quoted, so I'm not sure what the author actually thinks.

rytill 7y ago
A rare gem of an opinion to find on HN. There are a sea of unjustified and incomplete stabs at transhumanism and anything in that realm.

aiisjustanif 7y ago

"You know, 'cause like, people say money's not everything, But money, you need money to do what you wanna do, like money is power, honesty is power, truth is power, but at the same time they tell you like Ain't nothin' more important than the mula You ain't really eatin' boy, you gotta get your food up" - Donald Glover Maybe the "Rat Race" is inevitable and is main cause for strive of power, but maybe we too narrowly define power in this discussion.

spencerwgreene 7y ago

There are sentiments in this article that I think will mislead people into doing nothing with their lives. For example, > "Ambition for the more obvious and boring forms of power — political, financial — may not always be inherently evil, but it does tend to have unfortunate side effects in the form of poverty, slave labor, pogroms and unwelcome territorial advances." This is how ambition works in a zero-sum world. It doesn't mention technology improving the lives of people. There's a related essay by Paul Graham, "How to Make Wealth" [1]. The "Wealth and Power" section is relevant. [1] http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

HNLurker2 7y ago

Yeah but freedom isn't power. You can lose yourself in possibilities

hoseja 7y ago

For most of history, and I suspect for a lot of future too, you could only be free if you had the power to make others not fuck with you. Even with the best intentions, if you are not powerful you will be crushed anywhere but in the fraction of developed, civilized countries which may go poof at any time.

ak39 7y ago

Is this writer, much like myself, a representation of what Dr Calhoun's experiment revealed as "the beautiful ones"? "During his studies, Calhoun coined the term "behavioral sink" to describe aberrant behaviors in overcrowded population density situations and "beautiful ones" to describe passive individuals who withdrew from all social interaction." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun] I too have little if no desire to lord over anyone. Is this passivity? Withdrawal? But what I lack in that ambition for power I magnify in my desire for autonomy. Yeah, I have my usual moments of feeble aggression which can be mistaken for a deeper and more permanent desire for power (eg. stuck on the road, impatient in a queue, wanting a prospective sale to go through etc) where I fantasize power to influence outcomes - but the moments pass just as quickly when I realise the absurdity of that sort of wish. Autonomy OTOH is sacred for me. Absurdly, I will fight till starvation than be co-opted into someone else's creative ideals (especially when I do not agree). I'd rather go hungry than submit to power dynamics in this regard. Loved the article.

IggleSniggle 7y ago
The ability to withdraw is an expression of power in and of itself. Autonomy is the power that many (most?) are looking for. It’s just that many are incapable (or believe they are incapable) of achieving autonomy without getting others to do work for them. Programmers try to find the best of both worlds: they try to get machines to do work for them, so that they don’t need to impose on people to do so.

szemy2 7y ago

Couldn't boredom be a reason for people chasing power? Blaise Pascal had interesting thoughts on it: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” ― Blaise Pascal, Pensées (https://amzn.to/2I6kTpv https://amzn.to/2I6kTpv) We have an inherent desire to engage with the world and other people, to reach out for new stimuli. Often the most interesting path is the one where you influence people and that is by nature a form of power. Reminds me of the video that was recently posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcBzOesw7sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcBzOesw7sc This is truly a man without ambition. For me, that way of living seems like the definition of hell.

madmax96 7y ago

>I would define power as the ability to make other people do what you want I don't think anyone agrees or uses the word 'power' that way, instead, power ought to be defined as: >the ability to do something or act in a particular way, especially as a faculty or quality. Getting this definition wrong confuses the author throughout the article: >So freedom is a kind of power; but a certain kind freedom also comes with powerlessness Okay, the definition the author provided literally stated power is the ability to make other people do what you want and freedom is the ability to do what you want. I fail to see how in that mode freedom is a kind of power. I think the author doesn't really believe their own definition. The author goes on to question if great leaders (e.g. Alexander the Great) have freedom, comparing him to the homeless philosopher Diogenes. That's ultimately a personal question; if Freedom is indeed the ability to do what you like, you have to ask "could I do more of what I like as Alexander the Great or Diogenes?" >Underlying the pathetic quest for all power is fear: the fear of death. Underlying the pathetic quest for mediocrity is fear: the fear of failure. We can sit here speculating about the psychology of the average and the ambitious all day, but it provides nothing useful other than additional zings for $ECHO_CHAMBER to enjoy. >The sanest people, I think, are those happily unafflicted with ambition Cattle are pretty happy, sure. Expounding on the mental health of "the ambitious" (whatever that means to the author) seems pretty disingenuous and like an attempt to control the creative expressions of others. It's frightening that people actually think this way.

38543821223 7y ago

the author of this article fundamentally misunderstands what power is. Power is not just the ability to get other people to do what you want. Anything that allows you to achieve a desire is "power". To say "I don't want power" is like saying "I don't want to ever fulfill my goals."