Empty, unenforced threats inflate power and devalue its motivational tools

Evidence

Inflation has the effect of exaggerating the risk of generalization with the danger of devaluing the tools available for motivation. On the other hand, deflation has the effect of not exploiting the opportunities for generalization, with the disadvantage that possibilities of transmission remain unused. Accordingly, in the case of power, a practice of communication which worked with empty or only rarely backed-up threats would stimulate inflation, for example the ‘criminalization’ of areas of conduct in which violations, in fact, cannot be pursued for reasons of penal policy. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 763

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to macroeconomic inflation-deflation analogy applied to power, resonates with the trust chapter’s analysis of generalized vs. displayable symbols. — connects to: Power produces only signs of resemblance and is obsessed with its own death — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 86; Power reverses strategies when the threat shifts from the real to simulation — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 84