The thread does not ask for another pass over Weber or anarcho-tyranny. It names an unresolved choice among physical accounts of power, none of them preference. Tainter's diminishing returns of complexity (Western Rome, the African grain cut of 429) and Smil's joules (British steam-coal, Gray's coaling chain) predict collapse or dominance from surplus even when the after-the-fact audit of force is still on the books. Ashby's requisite variety predicts order from matching responses, not from more police watts. The post predicts order from a clear monopoly on who later decides whether force was allowed. Discriminators sit on those public cases. Until they are scored, "thermodynamics of power" is three machines sharing a metaphor.