Power

The rate of doing work; and, among people, the ability to influence people and events — held legitimately only when it is aggregated and directed toward the Goal, for the good of All.

The canon keeps both senses of the word on purpose, because they illuminate each other. In physics, power is Energy transferred per unit of Time — the rate at which Work gets done. Socially, power is the ability to move people and events. In both cases power is not a substance a person owns but a rate at which something flows through them, and in both cases it is morally empty until you know what it is accelerating.

That is the whole of the canon's position: power accelerates. It makes a body better at whatever that body is already doing. A group aimed at the Goal becomes more able to reach it; a group aimed at extraction becomes more able to extract. So the question is never how much power but aimed at what, agreed by whom, and revocable how (Right Use of Power · Legitimacy · Mandate).

Because power accelerates, its concentration is the single most consequential structural question a body faces. Gathered into few hands it is fast and it is fragile, and it reliably begins serving its holders (Centralization Of Power · Institutional Idolatry). The structural answers the canon reaches for are therefore not exhortations but arrangements: authority held at the smallest competent scale (Subsidiarity), functions kept apart so none can complete a capture alone (Separation Of Power), roles that rotate and end (Term Limits And Rotation), accountability that can actually remove someone (Impeachment · Recourse · Necessity Of Accountability), and the whole thing resting on consent that can be taken back (Consent · Withdrawal Of Consent).

There is also the power that is not command at all — the power of a whole that moves together because it agrees, which is larger than any amount that could be concentrated and which cannot be seized (Power Of The Republic · Synergy · Stigmergy). Building that is the long game; it is slower to raise and far harder to corrupt.

Also called: influence · the rate of doing work Stands on: Energy · Time · Work · Sovereignty Opens onto: Right Use of Power · Authority · Legitimacy · Centralization Of Power · Separation Of Power · Subsidiarity Of Authority · Power Of The Republic · The Sacred Use Of Force · Containment Of The Dangerous Sovereign · Pillar II — Sacred Governance and Stewardship In play: the table, whenever a role is given or a decision is delegated; and the Room, whenever someone must be able to say no and be heard Sources: Power (root page, draft — both senses, and the aggregation-only-for-Throughput clause) · Energy, Work, Throughput (root pages) · The LIØNSBERG Pattern Language — Synthesized 2026-05-24, the governance Recognitions · lionsberg.wiki: Power Open: The root page states the rule — power is aggregated only to produce Throughput of the Goal — without saying who verifies that it still is; the structural answers above are drawn from the governance Pillar rather than from the page itself. · A high-traffic name carrying a five-line page.