Stack Overflow's policies exist for clearly documented reasons that are directly motivated by a clearly documented purpose (which happens not to be aligned with what most new users want the site to be, but they aren't the ones who should get to decide what the site is). They are certainly not politically motivated or created for the sake of a power trip. They came out of years of discussion on the meta site, and have changed over time due to the community realizing that previous iterations missed the mark.