What is influential power? Which people go around gathering chains of others that look to them as reference on a subject (politicians, for example)? Which people do the same but with chains of people that lend them favors and services, consciously and subconsciously?Or is it some other group or category of people that has what we can call “influential power”?
I think the first three questions cover distinct but overlapping areas. The fourth is a theoretical “who knows?” that we must allow for.
People that establish chains of people that look to them as a reference, or for whom such a chain is established, I will call Masters. People that establish chains of people that provide some kind/s of favor/s or service/s service to them, or for whom such a chain is established, I will call Lords. I believe these two types of people have among them and crosses of them what we may call “influential power”.
Masters influence people in how they perform tasks that they are willing to sacrifice time and resources, or even a promise of time or resources, for getting different (usually “better”) at in specific ways.
Lords influence people on how to specifically spend some of their time and resources, also accepting promises of these sometimes.
Many times people are combinations of Lord and Master. These hybrids usually develop one of them in order to aid him/herself in achieving the ends of the other one. Some Masters demand specific time, resources or promises be invested in order for the chain-member/s to achieve the change they were seeking, so they become Lords. Some Lords impart training onto chain-members in exchange for specific time, resource and promise allocations, so they become Masters. It is logically possible for other variants to exist.
Lords thrive on material (including potential) expansion. The end of a Lord is the specific allocation of time, resources and promises, usually at least partly for the Lord’s benefit and the detriment of his/her enemies.
Masters thrive on attention. The end of a Master is to spread his Art/s, producing less predictable benefits and detriments.
Thus, with time, a Lord’s chain tends becomes full of more and better disciplined followers than a Master’s, the change in who’s composition of chains is less predictable.
And so, given enough time, a higher frequency of Lords than of Masters is statistically existent. Right now, it is statistically possible that it exists. And it does exist.
Since the ends of Lords are better met with bigger and better fed chains of people and the ends of Masters depend equally on any number over 1, centralized power tends to benefit Lords, even if some of them are also Masters, and tends to fall on them too, because they are likelier (by virtue of having more effective delivery systems for time, resources and promises) to engage in warfare with others over chains and all the elements that affect them or are to be affected by them, and win.
Since Masters end up losing some, most or all chains and chain-al elements in warfare with Lords than Lords, they exist in smaller quantities, and are hard to find among camouflaged Lords and camouflaged Masters.
This leads to more people that are well trained in acquiring time, resources and promises that Lords are interested in brokering than for whatever it is they would otherwise choose to do, especially given the existence of Masters to help them.
So, what would you do if we lived in a world of mostly Masterful power instead of Lordly power?
What would social relations look like?
What if there were a lack of both?
Just some Anarchist questions.