Power Imbalance Quotes
Alexie, an American Indian, studied wrote about the phenomenon whereby the Indians who were brutalized and attacked by whites with modern weapons and other technological advantages, in the process of defending themselves and their way of life became oppressors to whites in many situations where they could dominate a local scene. Likewise, the Israelis, who were totally oppressed in the Middle East for years and dominated by the more numerous Arabs with over a dozen established national armies attacking the Jewish civilian population when Israel first became a state. However the Jews survived and each time the Arabs attacked and further oppressed the Israelis, the Jews became stronger until at some point the became oppressors of many of the Arabs. The oppressors became the oppressed and vica versa.
At the time, some Palestinian Arabs claimed exclusive rights to the territory on the grounds that Arabs had dominated the area for the longest period of time. They gave no credence to the fact that the Jews had dominated the area and it was the center of their kingdom for many years before—that Jews had constantly lived in the area of longer than the Arabs, nor did they give any credence to the fact that the Christians had conquered the area from the Muslims during the Crusades.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
This is one of the best short quotations about the conflict between freedom and equality or fairness. Economically, if large companies and monopolies are totally free and unregulated, they often prey upon the small companies and consumers and the community in general. Regulation restricts the freedom of the regulated entities and inhibits investment and growth.
See Jonathan Swift {35359} and William Shenstone {642165} for a later expression of this notion.
