The standard model of power — as a resource that some actors possess and others lack, and which can be used to achieve desired outcomes — is inadequate for Living Value Theory's purposes. LVT proposes instead that power is best understood as a structural asymmetry in value transactions.
This means: power is not a property of actors but a feature of the relational field. An actor is powerful not because they possess some quantum of power but because the structure of the field systematically advantages their value transactions over those of others. This asymmetry may be reproduced through force, through ideology, through institutional design, or through the accumulated weight of historical sedimentation.