# I Want Power

*What I've Been Thinking About Lately #88*

By [WIBTAL](https://wibtal.com) · 2026-05-10

---

"I want power" is a statement that carries negative connotation. But I don't think it should.

I want power because it sucks to be the guy without any.

In the book The Godfather, people come to Don Corleone when the system has failed them. They ask him to exercise his power to rectify situations where they themselves are powerless.

One man comes to the Don after buying a house’s worth of furniture for his new home. Shortly afterward, the furniture company goes bankrupt. The owner knowingly took the buyer’s money despite having no intention of delivering the goods.

Legally, the buyer’s only recourse was to join a lawsuit that would take months or years and likely return pennies on the dollar. He had clearly been wronged, yet the official system offered no meaningful justice.

So the Godfather sends a man to talk to the owner. This talk implies that the owner needs to make right on the deal or bad things will happen. Of course, the furniture arrives the next day.

While I disagree on the method of power through violence, I like the principle! The owner was trying to fuck over the buyer and power was needed to change the outcome. The buyer, through the proxy of Don Corleone, had enough leverage to prevent the injustice.

So I don’t want power for its own sake. I want it because I don’t want to live at the mercy of other people’s rules. I don’t want to get shafted when I’ve done nothing wrong. I’d rather live by my own principles and be sovereign.

But you still have to live within a system. Total sovereignty is impossible. Power determines how much freedom you actually have inside that system. And as we've seen with the lack of people in jail over the Epstein Files, sometimes having power means the rules don't apply to you at all.

---

*Originally published on [WIBTAL](https://wibtal.com/88)*