Isn't the problem that life is in fact zero sum? Most of the really important things (land, attractive spouses, desirable jobs, etc.) are extremely limited resources. I don't see how we move past zero sum when there is not enough of the things that people are fighting over to go around.
This feels very much like someone walking into a room with a complicated, but currently broken, machine, noticing that one cord isn't plugged in, and loudly announcing that you solved the problem before you even tried that cord.
Oh duh, why didn't we think of that slaps forehead. If we all deny reality and pretend that life is an infinite-sum game then we can have most of the benefits of a true infinite-sum game.
This simply doesn't stand up to game theory, because the spoils of defection are large and you can't stop people from doing it.
From a zero-sum perspective, wouldn't it be an effective tactic to convince your competitors to avoid zero-sum thought?
It's also worth remembering that in democracy, the demographics of voting blocs necessarily creates a zero-sum distribution of power.
Let's consider a positive-sum economy. Over time, the total amount of value in the economy grows. That additional value comes from innovation, but whose innovation?
I grew up in Australia, in the state of New South Wales. In the end-of-secondary-school exams, the most popular subject in NSW is English, because it's compulsory. The second most popular subject is Business Studies. There's an awful lot of entrepreneurial spirit there.
But the reality of the Australian economy is that its complexity is declining: the economic activity is ever more concentrated into fewer and fewer industries. Sure, there are some industries, like hospitality, where you can start your own business, but the bulk of the economy is dominated by a small number of large companies: a handful of mining companies, two supermarkets, and so on. Every now and then, there's a new government initiative, like the National Disability Insurance Scheme or the opening up of vocational training to private providers, and a few years later, there's a big scandal, because most of the companies providing these services turn out to be fraudulent. So much of Australia's economic activity is tied up in pre-existing businesses that it seems that the only way to do anything novel is to rip off the government.
There was a time when Australians started innovative businesses: Victa lawn mowers, the Hills Hoist clothes line, and so on. Ford Australia and Holden (owned by General Motors) competed to build the best cars for the Australian market. This was a time of optimism and increasing living standards, when impoverished workers were enticed to emigrate to Australia by the Great Australian Dream: a detached house and a car of your very own!
But now that airfares a cheap, talented Australians emigrate to the UK, the US, or the EU, and do their innovative work there. Thanks to tax breaks, the best possible investment you can make in Australia is to own someone else's home. The population is increasing faster than ever, but housebuilding is slowing down. The housing crisis has been building for twenty years now; anger turns to ennui. A belief that Australia has no future is slowly starting to coalesce. Australia has entered a zero sum death spiral.
The solution is to create an economy where the old bootstraps analogy actually holds: where simple, honest hard work actually improves one's lot in life. An economy where anyone can innovate, not just university graduates with millions in venture capital funding: the economy that the Baby Boomers grew up in.
If only we knew how to create those conditions without having to fight a world war first.
We let the authoritarians send all their assets in a final meatwave. oh we learn to recognize the not surplus bribed tribal mode of humanity as the danger it is to stability of society. Less idealization and startrek, more actually taking into account what represents under stress. The degrowth we yearned for has arrived .
The zero sum world is one of constant worldwars, and for little cause. Nazi Germanys wars and horrors of conquest were byproduct of a zero sum, colonial world order, were the strong regularly starved the weak out. Nobody in europe has starved since those days and to bring them back ,is to be unaware of what beast you call into the circle.
gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/world/asia/trump-zero-sum...