Still at the fuse-box, arguing with Goldman about the power supply
✍ Scribed by David Braybrooke
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Year
- 1976
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 198 KB
- Volume
- 30
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0031-8116
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Little more needs to be said to make the controversy between Goldman and me clear to anyone who cares to read, together with his original paper on the concept of power, my comment and his reply. 1 He does not concede that he has fallen into any absurdities on the two points of ordinary usage which I cited against him -not ascribing power to people before they acquire the decisive resources; not (except in hyperbole) ascribing powerlessness to them when they can cover costs however onerous. However, he cares less, as no doubt he should, about any offense to ordinary language than he does about the theoretical advantages which he believes are to be gained by his treatment of these points. I think that the theoretical advantages lie, if anywhere, rather with the distinctions which I find feasible in ordinary language.
The difference in our views of the relation between power and costs, however, deserves a few more words. Goldman's use of the concept of opportunity cost in his reply has made the difference harder, rather than easier to understand.
Goldman maintains that power is inversely related to opportunity cost. To my comment that the relation (questionable in my view anyway) hardly holds for the case in which the cost to an agent S of getting e or not-e goes up, but not so fast as his total resources, Goldman replies that if as he intended cost is understood as opportunity cost, in foregone utility, he sees "no sense at all that can be attached to the supposition that resources increase faster than cost. If opportunity cost is increasing in any amount, it follows that (relevant) resources must be declining" (p. 266). He admits that S's money in hand might increase faster than the price of obtaining (Let us say) e, rising from $15 000 to $ 20 000 while the la{ter rises from $1000 to $ 2000; but asserts that after these changes, "S would have more money left over after obtaining e. Hence, obtaining e in the second situation would involve fewer foregone opportunities, less foregone utility, ... on my account, more power" (pp. 265-266).