Power is the ability to impose one’s will on another.  There are two ways to organize society: through voluntary cooperation or through coercion.  The first is the natural order of human interaction, where individuals engage in mutual exchange, seeking benefit without force.  The second is the imposition of control, where one group compels another to obey.  The former fosters prosperity and peace, the latter breeds subjugation and resentment.

Under voluntary cooperation, no one rules over another.  The market, as the purest form of this principle, operates on consent.  Every transaction is an agreement between parties who each expect to gain.  The butcher does not sell meat by decree, nor does the baker provide bread at the point of a sword.  Instead, they trade because it benefits them both.  This is the foundation of civilization: individuals acting in their own interest while respecting the choices of others.

Coercion introduces power as a tool of domination.  The state institutionalizes this coercion, granting it the illusion of legitimacy.  It extracts wealth, dictates behavior, and punishes disobedience—not through voluntary agreement, but through force.  Étienne de La Boétie observed that rulers survive not through strength alone, but by convincing the ruled that their servitude is necessary.  When people believe they must obey, no chains are needed.

It is often claimed that democracy is an expression of the people’s will.  What does this mean in practice?  The individual is given the choice to select a ruler, but never the choice to be free of rulers.  The options may change, but the structure remains: a ruling class issuing decrees, enforcing compliance, and calling it justice.  The subjects are told they are free, yet they must ask permission to act, to own, to build, to speak.  A man may prefer one master over another, but he is still a servant.

Coercion is always justified as a necessity.  Without a central authority, it’s said, chaos would reign.  Order does not come from the dictates of rulers.  It arises naturally as individuals seek their own ends in cooperation with others.  Society was not created by lawmakers.  Long before governments existed, people traded, built, and defended their property.  The argument that people are incapable of self-rule contradicts the belief that they are somehow capable of selecting rulers wise enough to govern them.

Power is not about law, nor justice, nor the common good.  It is about control.  As long as power exists, there will be those who seek to wield it, and those who suffer under it.  The question is not whether society should have rulers, but whether people will continue to accept their own servitude.

References

Murray Rothbard; Power & Market

Franz Oppenheimer; The State