Power has value but no price; leaders who put it up for sale discover it is worthless

The most understood and least contested definition of power is to be found in the physical world. Power is the rate of doing work, a measure of energy consumed in a given time, measured in joules per second (just so you know).

In a different context, power is defined as the ability to exercise control over others, to persuade and influence people.

In nature, power (it seems to me) is just there — we use it, transform it and convert it into the manageable forms of energy that we need to drive the industrialised world.

The power of influence and control, however, has many different sources — some conferred, some ordained or earned, by whatever means. Power thus created is not in abundance, it is precious and most often the preserve of the few. If it were not so, it would not be powerful. Political power, for instance, often ultimately vests in a single individual, in a defined political ecosystem, typically a sovereign state.

In a democracy, power vests in the population, which, from time to time, elects a leader in whom such power is then manifest — usually for a limited period of time, usually subject to checks and balances.

Other origins of power, such as royalty, are linked to a life and pass on from one generation to the next, typically forever. The basis of their sustainability is fragile, and I suspect they will disappear (or co-exist powerlessly with an elected government) over time. Such power is less easily traded.

Power is not influence, but influence is power.

Money is not power. It is a medium of exchange. If left to its own devices, money can be a store of value, but regulatory interference in a multicurrency world can mess with that.

Money can’t buy power. It can temporarily mislead powerful people, but it can’t buy power (or love, as the song goes).

Power, like virtue, has no price. So often we hear that “everything has a price”. I don’t think so. The very act of exchanging power for money changes the value of the power traded and the residual power not yet sold. At the instant the first unit of power is sold, however small, the value of the balance of power diminishes. Just because your power is for sale, it becomes less valuable.

Real power vested in a human being is neither transferrable nor negotiable – that is how it retains its essence. The currency for earning power is not cash.

Vested power, no matter the size of its circle of influence, is sacrosanct.

For an individual to remain in charge, to lead, that power must be and be seen to be intact. If that equilibrium is tested and found wanting, things will start falling apart for the buyer, the seller and the ecosystem.

Immediately the first bit of power is bought, the buyer will realise the diminished value of the next unit of power for sale. The seller also realises this, and so the conundrum begins — the power-money paradox.

I have something that devalues every time you buy a piece of it — so I want you to pay more for it as it starts running out and before it expires.

The net result is that there is never enough money to fill the gap of sold power. From the buyer’s point of view, having to pay more and more for less simply doesn’t make sense.

Inevitably, the whole system collapses, as both parties to this deal realise the folly of their ways. Power initially returns to the judiciary, whose function is neither to lead nor to govern, but to judge and pronounce and therefore will not provide a sustainable alternative.

In the end, in the absence of respected leadership, a circumstance that naturally and inevitably follows a sale of power, there will be a fight to establish new power. At this stage there may be little left to bargain with other than force, and applying that will accelerate the destruction of the ecosystem, no matter which side prevails.

The harder earned the power, the more valuable it is, like most things — but, whatever you think it is worth, once it’s for sale, it’s worth nothing.