The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn't What It Used to Be by Moisés Naím
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Ultimate Free Market


This is a subtle argument about a not so subtle phenomenon - getting others to do what they wouldn’t otherwise.

Power may be the real Original Sin. None of us likes being subject to it, but we all use it; many of us aspire to it; and some of us create inestimable destruction with it. Children are inevitably subject to the power of their, employees to the boss, and the boss to the state. All of us at some point in our lives resent it. But very few of us forego it if we have acquired it. Indeed, once we have power we tend to consider it ours by right.

Moisés Naim knows that power has become more concentrated, more globally exercised, and more deadly than ever before. His book’s title therefore is somewhat misleading. Power is not about to become a scarce commodity. Rather his point is precisely that power has become so commodified as to become subject to the same market forces as the other objects of need and desire in the world. His thesis is arresting:

“To put it simply, power no longer buys as much as it did in the past. In the twenty-first century, power is easier to get, harder to use—and easier to lose. From boardrooms and combat zones to cyberspace, battles for power are as intense as ever, but they are yielding diminishing returns. Their fierceness masks the increasingly evanescent nature of power itself.”

Naim’s argument is primarily economic rather than technological or cultural: “… the more fundamental explanation as to why barriers to power have become more feeble has to do with the transformations in such diverse factors as rapid economic growth in many poor countries, migratory patterns, medicine and healthcare, education, and even attitudes and cultural mores—in short, with changes in the scope, state, and potential of human lives.” Essentially, globalisation does to power what it also does to everything else that is bought and sold: it makes it cheaper to buy and creates a much bigger market of people who want to buy it.

So as the competition for power has developed, the hold by the powerful on power becomes more fragile: “The decay of power does not mean the extinction of those megaplayers. Big government, big armies, big business, and big universities will be constrained and confined as never before, but they will certainly stay relevant and their actions and decisions will carry great weight. But not as much as before. Not as much as they would like. And not as much as they expected. And though it may seem to be an unalloyed good that the powerful are less powerful than before (after all, power corrupts, doesn’t it?), their demotion can also generate instability, disorder, and paralysis in the face of complex problems.”

It is at this point that I begin to lose the plot, get increasingly confused, and end up angry at Naim’s crypto-fascism. If the world has complex problems that only stable power can address effectively, what can any of us do, even the most powerful to reverse or at least mitigate the effects of the global market for power? Naim suggests the need for a “common power.” What could such a thing be? A global political entity? A military force? A kind of secular church?

All these possibilities and more are clearly beyond hope and reach, even if we could figure out how to prevent the worst excesses of the power of such an entity. Naim doesn’t know what such a common power might look like, where it might originate, or how it might be maintained. He says he just wants to start a discussion. He wants us to understand the decay of power as a first step. That the second step is as practically remote as as finding a time warp in a black hole, indicates that Naim’s point is purely academic in the worst sense.

Naim longs for the old days. Don’t we all? Haven’t we always? Meanwhile power remains as problematic as it always has been: can’t live with it; can’t live without it.


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