This is something both you Bronze tongue and Uju do Which is it are Exalts Behemoths on the playground that get to do whatever they want, Or are they humans with a limited supply of power Liable to face resistance to pretty much anything they want to do.
You can't have it both ways either. We treat them as humans that have a kind of wide breath of supernatural abilities. Or we stopped pretending like we're human. But you can't have us pussy footing around All the time and then pretend like adding More exalts is suddenly going to make the world crazy.
We either act like a world shaking power or we decide. We're not a world shaking power and we have peers and adversaries what you cannot pretend like These people would exist in a vacuum.
I cannot stand this constant advocacy for non action as if that is better than making a mistake. Or committing to a course of action and correcting on point. It's not it literally, isn't. It's worse in pretty much everyway.
1) This isn't a binary thing, it's a spectrum. Exalts aren't completely unstoppable but they are very strong, grow very quickly, and have access to very deep and exotic perfect effects. They also have the freedom to act of a regular mortal, which allows them to do a lot more with their power than most things with similar abilities.
Take Molly for example. If we didn't care about the consequences and were only out for ourselves how much damage could she cause? With the right build she could do things ranging from global economic collapse in an afternoon to selling god's plans to the devil.
Can she be beaten? Yes. Could she do a lot of harm on the way down, or win enough to cut out a kingdom of her own at everyone else's expense? Also yes. In any case they don't need to be successful to make a mess.
2) It's precisely because they're humans with power that this is something we need to be so careful about. We are being very careful about things to help without causing harm, but people do not all have the same views or priorities.
I've given multiple examples of plausible scenarios in which power will not make things better for the people involved. At this level we're not talking about something complicated, abstract, or improbable. If you give people power they're going to use it for their own purposes, and they have no obligation to see things your way.
3) This isn't advocating to do nothing, it's advocating not to drink bleach. We can make things better without biting this particular bullet.
I believe I provided reasonable counter-measures and examples for each of the scenarios you mentioned, but they haven't convinced you. I don't actually expect to convince you, or much of anyone else.
Not that I recall.
Unless I'm forgetting something you've raised two basic counter points.
1) Controlling who has access, which is technically possible for some of them but so difficult the people designing them didn't bother. Just locking them up was already a trial.
2) Somehow getting in contact with them as they're chosen all over the world and getting them to sign up with us. Which doesn't account for the fact that these are going to be people with their own motives and beliefs that we have no reason to believe would be in alignment with ours.
Suppose we get a Lunar with a grudge, more interested in killing fey nobles than in any consequences of their actions. How about a day caste who thinks the masquerade should come down, regardless of the casualties involved in just doing it? Betting everything on being able to talk other exalts down from their own motives is not a good plan.
We are starting from a much, much better position than original generation of exalted, during the Age of Legends, or during thr Age of Sorrows.
No we aren't, not in this respect at least.
The age of legends didn't really have any much in the way of cultural or religious divides, and the open warfare consumed so much attention there wasn't time for serious political knife fighting for the most part.
After it was over the concentration of power kept things running, but there's a reason that the dragon blooded kept hunting Solars down instead of trying to salvage them.
As reasonable people, in a society of their peers, with support from forces of heaven, they'll either reach a reasonable compromise, or agree to disagree amicably, if that's possible, or try both ideas if that's possible to figure out which works best, or face the censure of their peers, and elders. I'll expand on this later.
Which is why the UN has solved all global conflicts right?
People aren't 100% reasonable all of the time, and even when they are trying to be it doesn't stop conflicts of interest.
I'm also skeptical of the idea that we could run all over the planet, crossing variably hostile territory, to pick up every single exalt out there and convince them to all cooperate despite having nothing in common but power. Especially once other powers start making offers.
Every full wizard is capable of summoning outsiders, rapidly raising armies of brainwashed slaves, including magic using slaves, raising armies of undead, in theory breaking time itself. The magic is inherently self-reinforcing and corrupting if used for evil.
Warlocks are a fact of life. You are underestimating them.
Most warlocks are minor talents who are fairly weak. They can do nasty stuff, but for the majority of history they weren't really able to become more than a local problem most of the time.
Proper wizards are dangerous, but they take a relatively long time to grow into that power fully and need a lot of training to really get up there. They're also vulnerable to the basic human condition, as Butcher notes in his WoG.
Also worth noting that people like Molly and Dresden are wizard heavyweight champions. Summoning evil stuff is on the table for them, but the average wizard isn't going to be animating armies of zombies easily.
They're an accounted for part of the world that has a long spin up time and have to put a lot more work into breaking the rules.
A wizard can't really replicate the crown of eyes, launch high grade global range curses on nearly arbitrary numbers with zero warning, or permanently kill true immortals without playing the special circumstances game.
The white council isn't a good example for what you want anyway. Its core purpose is to limit the power of wizards over the mortal world, something that was important to keeping it together in the first place. It's noted in a WoG that there's a lot of stuff they couldn't get involved with in the first place, because having members from all over the world meant that poking things would inevitably cause internal conflict. We'd have the same problem.
