As my colleague Anthony Shadid reported from Tripoli last week, the powerlessness of the government is such that the national army is treated like just another armed group.
Uber and Cabify also benefit from the drivers' powerlessness: because the alternative to driving for a ride-sharing app is often worse pay without protections, Venezuelan drivers accept the conditions dictated by the companies without protest.
We know that the problems facing our cities – affordability of housing, social tensions resulting from inequality locally and nationally, the powerlessness of architects and the institutions of public planning, and the less than hopeful outlook for the immediate future – deserve their own William Blakes, Ebenezer Howards and, indeed, Derek Walkers.
At the same time, fear of the sommelier persists among consumers, born, perhaps, of the powerlessness that stems from a bewilderment with wine.
And still there is a strange disjunction between the powerlessness that emanates from the imagery of Pruitt Igoe's demolition and the blame that is attributed to these buildings.
This is very, very, good business for Wonga and its venture capital backers - and a manifestation of the powerlessness of those who borrow from it.
This can help overcome the powerlessness that immigrants often feel when they are excluded from the dominant culture of their destination countries.
In The Wild Things, the powerlessness follows him, and the island becomes not an escape from the world but a representation of it.
The rest of us felt the powerlessness of resignation.
The powerlessness I had felt for months began to fade.
