I'm not powerless over people, places, or things

People are not 'powerless over people, places, or things'.

People are not powerless over people. People control, manipulate, coerce, affect (both positively and negatively), convince, persuade, induce, help, and harm others. These are examples of the exercise of power.

People are not powerless over places. I live in London. London did not used to be there. It used to be countryside. People exercised power and built it. It did not build itself.

People are not powerless over things. I am typing on a keyboard. That is the exercise of power. I can lift up a chair. I can throw a ball. The letters are not typing themselves. The chair is not lifting itself. The ball is not throwing itself.

Power is constrained by the operation of natural laws and others' exercise of their own power. But it is fallacious to assert there are two states: unlimited power and zero power. Self-evidently power is always a matter of degree.