To have power means not to have to give in, and to force the environment or the other person to do so. Power in this narrow sense is the priority of output over intake, the ability to talk instead of listen. In a sense, it is the ability to afford not to learn.

Deutsch defines power in a deliberately “narrow” and somewhat ironic way: as the capacity to impose one’s preferences without having to adjust to feedback. Framed in information terms—output versus intake—power becomes the privilege of broadcasting rather than receiving, of shaping the environment rather than being shaped by it. The final sentence (“the ability to afford not to learn”) underscores the danger: actors insulated by power can ignore corrective information and still prevail in the short run, even if that ignorance is costly in the long run. The quote thus links political power to communication asymmetries and to the epistemic risks of dominance.