[fchollet]

It could be that our current economic system implements a pretty terrible resource allocation algorithm, where many workers' jobs consist in undoing the efforts of employees from concurrent companies.

In trading, a quant's job is to outsmart or outspeed the other bank's team. They invest considerable brain power, effort and money into producing incremental improvements that are quickly rendered meaningless by the work of the team in the building across the street.

Another prime example is advertising, a zero-sum game where competing brands fight to undo other brands' brainwashing efforts and replace it with their own brainwashing. A waste of the time and energy of million of humans.

Some more ideas on the subject: http://www.sphere-engineering.com/blog/15-hour-work-week.htm...

[Retric]

Advertizing and HFT are only zero sum for competing products in an established market. For new products it can be a net benifit ex: "talk to your doctor about ED."