Move Over, Megaplayers

In the April issue of reason magazine, which is not yet up on the website, there's an intriguing and thought-provoking article titled "The End of Power: How wealth, health, cheap flights, and prepaid phone cards are undermining authority across the globe," by Moíses Naím. I think it's so interesting that, since I can't point you to a link except that of the magazine itself (http://reason.com/), so that, if you want, you can look it up later in the month, I'm going to give you the tantalizing first three paragraphs:

   "Power is shifting—from large, stable armies to loose bands of insurgents, from corporate leviathans to nimble start-ups, from presidential palaces to public squares. It has become harder to wield power and easier to lose it, and the world is becoming less predictable as a result. As people become more prosperous and mobile, they are harder to control and more apt to question authority.
   "Insurgents, fringe political parties, innovative start-ups, hackers, loosely organized
activists, upstart citizen media outlets, leaderless young people in city squares, and charismatic individuals who seem to have 'come from nowhere' are shaking up the old order. These are the micropowers: small, unknown, or once-negligible actors who have found ways to undermine, fence in, or thwart the megaplayers. Navies and police forces, television networks, traditional political parties, large banks—the large bureaucratic organizations that previously controlled their fields—are seeing their authority undermined.
   "Micropowers should be aberrations. Because they lack scale, coordination, resources, and a pre-existing reputation, they should not even make it into the game, or at least they should be quickly squashed or absorbed by a dominant rival. But the reverse in increasingly true: The micropowers are beating the megaplayers."

   My first thought when I read this—and it's possible that the issue is addressed later in the article (I admit, I haven't yet read the whole thing)—is that these megaplayers he talks about will fight to the death to keep themselves alive. Companies, corporations, governments are like living things and will do whatever it takes to remain so. Perhaps that's why we're seeing more invasion into our private lives in the form of surveillance cameras, computer tracking, more automated and less personal service (which takes away consumer power), more authority being given to police, and evermore prying laws.