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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

It may not be “fair” but that’s how it always works. If the person in power wants you gone, you’re gone unless you have someone more powerful in your side.

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I'm pretty cynical, but let's be real: power doesn't have to work this way, and I don't think we do ourselves any favors acting like it does. A functional society finds ways to hold unchecked power accountable for pettiness, and that's a norm that doesn't go away unless all of us let it.

To be more specific, societies are always threatened by actors who wield massive unilaterally-exercised power, who are only countered when enough other people band together and pool their own power in opposition.

> power doesn't have to work this way

Yes, it does. Power is what you can do.

> A functional society finds ways to hold unchecked power accountable for pettiness

This doesn't make sense. Unchecked power is not accountable.

More importantly if there’s a power that can check it, then that power is the unchecked one.

Why is that more important?

Because if the problem is unchecked power, and any checked power is checked by a power that is checked or unchecked, eventually you either get a loop or an unchecked power, which can then do whatever abuse you're worried about.

How do you figure? “Unchecked” means uncontrolled, not uncontrollable (an important distinction). In a functional social system, different powers constrain one another, which is a kind of loop I guess, but a stabilizing one.

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