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Politico-economic buzzwords
Oct. 28th, 2008 03:23 pmWhy do people keep referring to the world (or a subsection of it such as the economy) as being a zero-sum game? While science has come to to the conclusion that the universe fits that description, but the Earth doesn't fit even if space travel gets completely dropped for some reason. If nothing else, the sun provides approximately 52 petawatts of power that simply get reflected back into space.
Now there may very well be other problems with any particular proposal, but if there is more of a resource available in the world, then it is possible for one person to gain without having to take from another. There are situations here on earth that will be zero-sum until we achieve meaningful space travel, but I don't hear the term used in relation to them. At best I hear it applied in situations of constructed scarcity such as electoral votes; more usually it's used in relation to things like macro economics where it simply doesn't apply. Yes earthly resources are finite, but until we reach that limit we have more people working on turning more resources into more goods, so there should be an increase in "wealth" to go around. If there isn't, it's because of some reason other than "It's just the nature of the market, it's a Zero-Sum Game."
You can have either a positive-sum or a negative-sum in an open system, but you can only be stuck with a zero-sum if the system is closed.
Now there may very well be other problems with any particular proposal, but if there is more of a resource available in the world, then it is possible for one person to gain without having to take from another. There are situations here on earth that will be zero-sum until we achieve meaningful space travel, but I don't hear the term used in relation to them. At best I hear it applied in situations of constructed scarcity such as electoral votes; more usually it's used in relation to things like macro economics where it simply doesn't apply. Yes earthly resources are finite, but until we reach that limit we have more people working on turning more resources into more goods, so there should be an increase in "wealth" to go around. If there isn't, it's because of some reason other than "It's just the nature of the market, it's a Zero-Sum Game."
You can have either a positive-sum or a negative-sum in an open system, but you can only be stuck with a zero-sum if the system is closed.
