Power Problems

There are a lot of types of power - institutional, interpersonal, financial, even religious or spiritual when thinking about the relationship between a priest and a follower.

However, since we're looking at power systems that operate in very large numbers of people we'll be sticking to the kind of power that comes from large organizations putting the responsibility to make some kind of decision onto an individual.

The power problems we will look at all develop when the job is not done optimally, "as it should". However, we're going to see later that this also gives rise to most of the situations where you might ask "why do they have that power or responsibility in the first place?"

First, let's make it very concrete and focus in on a specific example for now: Customs Officer.

These people deal with the flow of goods into a region, accepting, rejecting and identifying them correctly. Typical circumstances they are used for include:

• A state or region inside a country economically depends on some crop (eg. apples, peaches, wheat, bananas) so anything that could act as a disease vector to those crops is excluded from entry.
• Hazardous materials that are coming through a port must be stored and transferred safely: See Beirut Explosion 2020
• Some goods eg. money, weapons, drugs, alcohol, beef, can be illegal in a region or only allowed in certain amounts, and the Customs Officer needs to ensure compliance.
• Someone turns up with 20 week old Snake Mackerel and identifies it as fresh tuna, the Customs Officer might be empowered to look for fraud.
• While they do the above, the Customs Officer shouldn't impede the normal flow of goods.

First, we'll look at the situation like an economist: whoever gets the job, does the job exactly as expected to the best of their ability.

There are rewards for doing the job - these positions are usually paid and at least somewhat respected, and so