Chapter 16 The Paradox of Power

Individuals and organizations if rational and self-interested will equalize the marginal returns of two ways of generating income: (1) production and exchange, versus (2) appropriative efforts for capturing resources previously controlled by other parties (or to defend against appropriation by others). It might be expected that in appropriative struggles between stronger and weaker contenders, the strong would grow ever stronger and the weak always weaker. The paradox of power (POP) is the observation that in actual contests, poorer or smaller combatants often end up improving their position relative to richer opponents. A notable instance is the political struggle over income redistribution. Although citizens in the upper half of the income spectrum surely have more political strength than those in the lower half, modern governments have mainly been attempting to transfer income from the former to the latter group.