I’m unclear why you think power is not by definition a zero-sum game. Possibly we’re using different definitions.
What I mean is “who gets to make the choice.” When government limits my ability to make choices for myself, it gains in power and I lose.
The power of a master over his slaves consisted of his legal right to make choices and limit their choices as he saw fit.
His total power over them was increased by precisely the amount theirs was decreased.
Do not ask me why so many people want power over others, as I don’t get it. But it’s obvious they do.
You are right in that, upon the surface of it... But look at the ultimate end of that power - When the government of a thing surpasses the ability of the thing it (government) is purported to defend, the result is tyranny and collapse. Every time.
Hence, limited governance, minimal governance, always is the proper balance, albeit that such a balance is regrettably hard to keep.
Likewise in business - the good profit comes while the company is nimble and quick - once one layers bureaucracy between production and administration, the company becomes fat and lazy, unable to change course quickly to chase profit - And so it's accretions solidify and it becomes doomed to eat itself into bankruptcy - Unable to risk, unable to change.
But all the same, there is a point at which individual power is LESS than the sum of the whole, when men of good will give of their own power to form government - The American West is a good example: While men were content to stand on their own and develop the west, when it comes to an environment suitable for community, for women and children, for commerce and ease, men necessarily join together to form government, and to enact laws, for the defense of those too weak to defend themselves... Where a man can leave his family and be reasonably assured that they will not be dead and his goods stolen when he comes home at night.
In that, it is not a zero-sum game. There IS a balance where government is a good thing, where law is proper and beneficial. And it is for this reason that governments are raised up among men (to protect the rights of all)... In that, the power is distributed and equitable, and profitable to those who give of their power to form it as such. In such an environment, power is multiplied, whether by security, or by increased production, or by way of education, or any of the other benefits of a complex society... PROVIDED that the government does not exceed it's proper limits!
The power of a master over his slaves consisted of his legal right to make choices and limit their choices as he saw fit. His total power over them was increased by precisely the amount theirs was decreased.
TRUE in the case of power for power's sake, all too often the case... But a study of the rise of the middle class will show a point at which the middle class enriched the lords who allowed it to flourish - There is profit in the middle class and hence the uneasy alliance between them and those who consider themselves to be elite. If everyone is poor, there is no one to buy goods, and the power of the elite as found in their profits is severely curtailed.