Sometimes demanding more money is just about money. But sometimes demanding more money is additionally about power – about getting more money and more power.
Similarly, sometimes demanding more power is just about power. But sometimes demanding more power is additionally about money – about getting more power and more money.
Though money and power usually are inseparable, the symbiotic relationship between them tends to remain unspoken. Unspoken because it’s much more acceptable to ask for more money than to ask for more power.
Wanting more money is easy to understand, and sympathize with, especially if income is blatantly unequal. More money can and usually does translate into living a better lifestyle – and it mollifies feelings of grievance.
Striking autoworkers have taken to the picket lines for several reasons. High on the list is that the CEOs of Detroit’s big three automakers are earning about 300 times more than the median autoworker. Not only is this gap in earnings egregious, but it’s also wider than most large companies nationwide. Not incidentally, the media industry, also beset in recent months by strikes, is similarly unfair. In 2021 Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav earned 2,972 what his median employee made – $246 million.
But if the benefits of having more money are immediately obvious, what are the benefits of having more power? What does more power get you? It might of course get you more money, in which case the virtue of having more power is clear. But what if having more power is about nothing else than having more power?
Does the question apply to, for example, Matt Gaetz, the Republican member of Congress who, with special venom, is trying to unseat the Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy? If there’s money in this for Gaetz, it’s not immediately apparent. What is immediately apparent is that for Gaetz this is about power. Even if he fails to overthrow McCarthy, Gaetz has seized the national spotlight, thereby accruing more power than if he had remained merely a backbencher.
As I wrote in The End of Leadership, in democratic societies leaders are becoming weaker and followers stronger. Hence the title, “the end of leadership.” In some ways this shift in power and influence is good, and in others bad. It certainly contributes, mightily, to our democratic dysfunctions – including to the current food fight in Congress. But it also contributes, mightily, to rectifying previously existing imbalances.
Case in point: the movement for player empowerment in college sports. Imagine this a generation ago: the Dartmouth College men’s basketball team petitioning the National Labor Relations Board to unionize! Startling, yes, surprising, no. For these players are only the most recent in a growing line of those taking on the old model. The model in which student-athletes gave their all to their schools – but their schools gave them little or nothing in return. No money and no power.
On the surface, what these players want is money. It was only two years ago that the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) finally agreed to allow its players to profit from their prowess. But beneath the surface this is also about power. Players are sick and tired of not being able to cash in on their contributions. And they are equally sick and tired of not being treated like enormous assets – which clearly, they are.
Motivations matter. It matters whether people are motivated by money, and, or power, and, or something else, such as safety and security. Motivations matter especially to those of us with an interest in who leads and why, and in who follows and why. For what drives us – and how strongly – determines what happens.