[TeMPOraL]

> powerlessness is self-fulfilling

I remember Scott Alexander wrote a piece exploring similar concepts:

http://squid314.livejournal.com/2011/02/01/

"When I was younger, I always imagined dictatorships as surviving whenever the dictator had a majority of power in the country. If the percentage of people x weapons controlled by the dictator's supporters was greater than the percentage of people x weapons controlled the dictator's opponents, the dictator won; once the rebels got more power, the dictator got overthrown.

That was, of course, wildly simplistic. Rebellion is first and foremost a coordination problem. (...)

The real-world upshot of this problem seems to be that even when everyone knows a dictator is unpopular, people won't protest unless they think everyone else will protest. This ends up getting bogged down in self-reference: lots of people will protest if and only if they think lots of people will protest."