I have no trouble visualizing a society composed mostly of people with high status, or a society composed mostly of people with low status, with very different sums of total status.
Many people may share social power, especially if they don’t choose to wield it often or to the detriment of others. I suppose you’d say that you count them as having it in exact proportion to their tendency to actually use it, or in terms of the power they’d likely have if they chose to war against one another.
No, the point is if someone gains social power, someone else must lose that power. Sharing of power is fine in this framework—if you share power over the tribe, for example, then you don’t have full power over the tribe. For one, you don’t have the same kind of power over the individuals with whom you are sharing power.
I have no trouble visualizing a society composed mostly of people with high status, or a society composed mostly of people with low status, with very different sums of total status.
I think we might be using different definitions of status. So instead of status, I’ll say that social power is zero-sum.
Many people may share social power, especially if they don’t choose to wield it often or to the detriment of others. I suppose you’d say that you count them as having it in exact proportion to their tendency to actually use it, or in terms of the power they’d likely have if they chose to war against one another.
No, the point is if someone gains social power, someone else must lose that power. Sharing of power is fine in this framework—if you share power over the tribe, for example, then you don’t have full power over the tribe. For one, you don’t have the same kind of power over the individuals with whom you are sharing power.
You can gain social power that was previously held by natural randomness.