[phil21]

On human lifetime timescales much of life is very much so a zero sum game.

Only the exceedingly privileged cannot grasp this fact of life. Academic bubble theories don’t help a generation of rust belt manufacturing workers, but it sure as hell made a whole lot of other folks rich at their direct expense.

The same academics are happy to talk about income inequality while ignoring the elephant in the room.

Ignoring this fact is exactly how we’ve gotten to where we are today. Politicians have only just begun to exploit this blind spot so many seem to have.

I have directly benefited from this fact and have done quite well for myself. But it’s so obvious I can’t believe it’s even an argument. Comparative advantage may help their grandchildren, but it doesn’t help the 49 year old machinist with no realistic job opportunities and bills to pay after the executives ship the plant off to Mexico or China. I personally watched it happen.

[jongjong]

Agreed. It is a zero sum game once you consider the extreme asymmetry in opportunities. In the age of social media, it's a myth that you can 'create opportunities for yourself'. It doesn't work like that. You need the right social network; else you will create value but that value will be ignored and not integrated into the system; you will not be paid/rewarded for it.

Either you exist in a social environment where opportunities fall on your lap by the hundreds and you have to pass on 99% of them and only pursue the top 1%... or you exist in an environment where you have to work like crazy for 10 years straight to get a single mediocre opportunity and such opportunities are so rare for you that you recognize it instantly and you know you cannot pass it up.

The economy is a zero sum game at best and a negative-sum game at worst. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have such significant asymmetries in opportunities.

Just look at anyone who is earning a lot of money in our system... They're not adding value. They have shares in companies; they could sit at home all day and they'd get paid the same. How is that not proof that they're being paid for not adding value?

Ignore past stories of what these people supposedly did once-upon-a-time to get to their current positions. What do you call a system where, at any given time, most of the money flows to people who do the least amount of work and consume the most?

Probably 5% of the population could do a better job than most CEOs. Still, these people will never get the opportunity to become a CEO. There's just not enough room at the top... So people make up all sorts of nonsense stories about track records and connections.

Buy up my existing cryptocurrency shitcoin for hundreds of millions of dollars and my track record and business connections will magically appear out of nowhere. I don't need to do anything. Just a Tweet from a celebrity will do.

[naming_the_user]

You're not describing a zero sum interaction because the gain in China has almost certainly outstripped the loss in the US. That's pretty much the story of globalization so far.

Of course, it's a net loss for the rust belt.

[phil21]

This is precisely the academic theory bubble talk I was referring to.

On balance no one cares that some Chinese peasants had a huge increase in quality of life. Their lives, and the lives of their children were significantly degraded so some executives and owners could get obscenely rich. If you zoom out far enough literally nothing is zero sum given the conservation of energy. But that’s a silly argument.

That it may someday be a net win for humanity (and this is entirely uncertain) is very much immaterial to anyone other than folks so disconnected from reality that they are insulated from the impact these theoretical games have on real people in their own country and communities.