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.
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.
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.
> 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”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game
> 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.
Who loses out if I buy you a beer? Or if my wife and I love each other? Or if people are nice to others?
Like seriously - if I treat someone else with respect and dignity am I required to shit on someone else? Of course not.
The zero-sum game is life stuff is nonsense.
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.
