Zero sum doesn’t mean there is a loser to every transaction. It just means that the net total change is zero. You buy a friend a beer, and you get a beers worth of camaraderie.
When you eat food, something had to die for that. It was a transfer of biochemical energy from that creature to you.
Even if it was a vegetarian meal, it got transported to you and dumped CO2 into the atmosphere. The truck probably hit bugs and maybe ran over some small wildlife.
If you didn't exist, there would be slightly less demand. If 300 million of you didn't exist, there would be a whole lot less demand. The world would be noticeably different.
Everything is energy expenditure and reallocation. Even hugging your son expends ATP that could have been used elsewhere. Hug him a million times and you will be very tired.
I'm not arguing that you shouldn't love your son. I'm saying that the world, at the most fundamental level, revolves around the availability of energy and resources. All of these things in the micro add up in the macro. And even if you aren't concerned about it, your government likely is.
Every single choice has some quantum of opportunity cost and will play out in butterfly effect fashion.
In terms of the energy you want to consume in a form factor you can utilize - food, coal if you want electricity today, plastics in tour phone, Amazon shipping, etc. - it's very much not constant.
It is not. When I go shopping I give them a bill and I get something to eat. Both parties are better off after that transaction.
Similarly, if I am good at making stuff but terrible at growing stuff, by being in a community I can survive despite an utter lack of agricultural abilities and produce stuff that the farmers would not know how to make. Again, not zero sum.
You could argue that this is civilisation and unnatural. But nature is full of symbionts, not only predator/prey dynamics. “Life is a zero-sum game” sounds like something a social Darwinist would say to justify their pre-existing beliefs. It is in some instances, but it also isn’t in quite a lot of cases. It comes from a very incomplete understanding of life and ecosystems in general.
> Both parties are better off after that transaction.
What about the externalities of that transaction?
* If meat, what was killed to produce it? If veg, what was removed from the ground (and how will it be replaced)?
* Who was exploited in the production?
* What damage did you cause while traveling to the store?
* What damage was done while getting the goods/supplies to the store?
* What infrastructure was required to facilitate the transaction? What damage and opportunity costs did that inflict?
The economist would hand-wave all that away as being priced in by the "efficient" economy. Yet even the tiniest inefficiency (say, un/under-accounted damage to the environment caused by burning petroleum to power the vehicles involved) compounds over billions of such transactions every day over decades into massive debts that humanity must ultimately account for.
> What about the externalities of that transaction?
You’re entirely right, though for now I am indeed going to wave my hands and argue that it was a first-order simplification, and that externalities do not turn it into a zero-sum game :)
In the grand scheme of things, yes, lack of foresight is going to bite us in the backside.
I’m not sure you know what 0 sum is. Zero sum doesn’t mean you can’t exchange money for goods and services.
> When I go shopping I give them a bill and I get something to eat. Both parties are better off after that transaction.
Yes, you go shopping and exchange N dollars for N dollars worth of goods. The net change is 0. That’s why it’s zero sum. Of course, life isn’t truly 0 sum. Otherwise we’d have no total economic growth, which is clearly false. However, how those economic gains are distributed probably is 0 sum.
“Zero-sum game is a mathematical representation in game theory and economic theory of a situation which involves two sides, where the result is an advantage for one side and an equivalent loss for the other”
> Zero sum doesn’t mean you can’t exchange money for goods and services.
Zero-sum means that when I win, the other party loses. It means that there cannot be a voluntary exchange, because to agree about an exchange both parties need to see an upside.
> Yes, you go shopping and exchange N dollars for N dollars worth of goods. The net change is 0.
That is not what it means, though. In any case, I am better off after the exchange because now I have something to eat. The merchant is better off as well because now they can buy an iPhone or something. We are both better off at the end, and nobody has to lose. A zero-sum game in this instance might be the farmer who was pressured to sell €10 cheaper so that the merchant can take these €10 as margin. There was a net transfer from one party to the other with no other upside. But it is far from the only type of situation in life.
The initial assertion was “life is a zero-sum game”. Not by a long shot.
> However, how those economic gains are distributed probably is 0 sum.
Again, that is not what it means. Game theory does not need the concept of currency.
Besides, even assuming that it were the case, the fact that the amount of most currencies in existence just keeps increasing is a proof that it does not work like that. Someone, somewhere has to generate that money, therefore there are net emitters.
> Besides, even assuming that it were the case, the fact that the amount of most currencies in existence just keeps increasing is a proof that it does not work like that. Someone, somewhere has to generate that money, therefore there are net emitters.
Money gets created from banks lending money from their deposits. This makes sense even in a zero-sum world.
Yes, zero sum means a gain for one is a loss for another. But you’re not gaining or losing when you buy something. The seller isn’t gaining or losing either. You’re both trading like for like.
Again, zero sum does not imply like for like trades are impossible.
You are arguing purely on price but not considering other factors. To the person who bought the beer, the deemed value is probably more than they paid for it, and to the seller the beer was a liability due to having a limited shelf life and occupying shelf space. Thus there was a gain for both parties.
The basis of the capitalist system is that price is set based off of worth to the sellers and buyers. Yes, I am arguing purely on price, because the price takes into account many different factors like the liability of holding stock and the utility of drinking with friends.
>>> The basis of the capitalist system is that price is set based off of worth to the sellers and buyers. Yes, I am arguing purely on price, because the price takes into account many different factors like the liability of holding stock and the utility of drinking with friends.
Pricing isn’t perfect. It is typically the same for all. If I hadn’t been drinking water for a whole day, I would probably buy it anywhere I could and pay whatever the price. If I really need a medicine to live, I would probably pay whatever the price as long as I can afford it. And there are more examples of this
So, if something prices at 5 dollars, it can be worth more than 5 dollars to the seller and / or the buyer
Benefiting from cooperation doesn’t mean something is or is not zero sum. Take war for example. I can team up with others to form an army and conqueror distant lands. By cooperating, everyone in the army benefits more than they could individually, but the source of those benefits comes from the zero-sum expense of others.
The only source (I can think of) of positive sum benefits is innovation. I can, for example, take iron ore, learn how to smelt steel, and use steel to get more iron ore. Smelting iron is still zero-sum, but learning how to smelt iron is what increases the size of the pie.
Model war as hostility between nations or fractions. The fact that this fraction can be internally consistent does not mean that war represents cooperation.
