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Notes -
Who has more power, Larry Summers, or some asshole with a rifle, the knowledge to use it correctly, and a willingness to die in the process of murdering Larry Summers?
Who has more power, the asshole or Musk?
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Larry of course. His first advantage is: he is real and nobody real cares enough to die in the process of assassinating him. (Consider that many Russians attribute the worst parts of the 90's to Chubais and indirectly Summers; yet nobody has bothered to go kill him. Granted, Westerners nowadays think we're basically a nation of limp-wristed cuckolds. But still – millions of people with "nothing to lose" over decades).
His second advantage is: he's put-together, well-known and well-connected, so even if he dies, his projects can continue, and indeed his tragic demise will possibly make him more powerful than when he was alive.
Then there's everything else people care about, like actual authority, security etc but that's a bit of an overkill.
Fun fact: https://www.writingtoiq.com/ estimates this comment to 102. I thought due to word "cuckolds" but my attempts to reword in order to increase score failed. (ps, ok, got 109 then i got lazy)
I tried 7 your comments, => 123 Hlynka's (N=7) => 111 comments Hlynka was replying to => 119 (*in case if comment Hlynka was replying to was too short, next parent comment by another person was tried)
These 7 your comments have weird distibution 91 102 119 129 137 143 143
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Yeah, this whole B can easily destroy A, therefore B is stronger than A argument really fails to hold water, even in cases where your principal objective is to destory each other. In DoTA there are often heroes which everyone agrees are severely overpowered, but get absolutely wrecked by other heroes, often those that other people agree are unplayable, e.g. Meepo vs Antimage is basically always favourable for Meepo even when Meepo is unplayable and AM is terrorising pubs. The fact that Meepo dumpsters AM doesn't mean Meepo is a stronger hero than AM overall.
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Larry Summers, for as long as he lives. Rifle guy can still only kill a dude, maybe several, if he gets lucky. Summers can reshape the reality of countless people like Rifle Guy. Possibly he can eve have men killed too, if he cares enough about it.
That, of course, doesn't mean he won't find himself shot, blown up, etc., if he pisses of enough people. There are always limits to power, but power does exist.
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