Power flows when coded, like money, transmitting reduced complexity

Evidence

Only on the basis of relatively complex assumptions about a power-code does power begin to ‘flow’, i.e. to take the form of a process which transmits reduced complexity from one decision to another. The liquidity of power is the effect of its being a suitable code – just as with money. The impression of ‘flow’ arises because events (here, actions) take place sequentially, their selectivity being related to one another by means of a code in the sense that selections presuppose or complete one another reciprocally. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 633

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Luhmann’s core mechanism: power’s ‘liquidity’ — the code converts power into a flow of selections, directly parallel to money and directly to the reader’s thesis about system trust reducing complexity.
• XREF: Central to the Luhmann-to-Giddens bridge: ‘transmits reduced complexity from one decision to another’ is nearly the definition of a faceless commitment. Stevens’s deference is a power chain where each selection presupposes the institution’s code.
• ADDENDUM: The money-liquidity simile parallels the trust as ‘social lubricant’ ideas that the reader’s comparative argument would develop.
• SEED: An essay could live on the liquidity metaphor: power flows only where a code exists, and institutions without moral grounding are codes that transmit complexity but no ethical content — exactly Stevens’s case.

Related

• Power flows as reduced complexity transmitted decision-to-decision via its code (similarity 0.94)
• Power transfers reduced complexity and grows more critical as the world complexifies (similarity 0.81)
• Power’s function is transferring reduced complexity, institutionalized through its code. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Power’s function is transferring reduced complexity, institutionalized through its code. #corroborates (0.90) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 636
• Power catalyzes action chains that reduce the complexity of coordinating many parties #expands (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 654