What's the tangible evidence that the world is a positive-sum game? The tangible evidence to me seems to suggest it's a zero-sum game. E.g., a product costs $X, owners get too large of a % of that compared to employees.
Richer if you put more value on having an addictive piece of electronics in your back pocket rather than a few acres of land to be self sufficient on.
There are definite improvements (a fair amount of medical science), but I'm not sure on balance that the planetary destruction/extinctions/etc outweigh them. So, using made up GDP/capita numbers for justification that the world is "improving" is tenuous.
> E.g., a product costs $X, owners get too large of a % of that compared to employees.
this is orthogonal to the economy being positive/negative/zero sum. if total real wealth increases over time, the world is positive sum, regardless of how that wealth is distributed.
positive sum doesn't imply that everyone gets wealthier over time, only that it's possible for people to get wealthier without it being directly at the expense of others.
So because a homeless person today has $1, can sleep under a bridge in a jacket they got from Goodwill rather than $0.05 like 50 years ago or sleeping under a tree possibly getting eaten by wolves, this means the world is positive sum?
Standard of living has improved generally over time, but day by day the world is a zero-sum game.
>What's the tangible evidence that the world is a positive-sum game?
LEDs. To take one very specific, simple example, though feel free to substitute in everything from computers to engines. Fundamentally, we have both increased our average energy budget per person and we can accomplish far more of what we want to do for far less energy. Taking the basic general goal of "I wish to have visible photons available to me at a sufficient level for my eyes to work well at arbitrary times and places", compare the total costs and % of resources converted to the goal vs wasted as heat/losses/externalities of say torches to oil/gas lamps to electric arc to early incandescent to later incandescent to halogen to fluorescent to LEDs. We can now do with single watts for tens of thousands of hours and pennies of silicon/impurities what would once have taken dozens to hundreds of watts to kilowatts and lasting just hundreds of hours, tens of hours, or even mere minutes.
Increasing abundance and efficiency for human goals is the definition of increasing overall wealth. Even given imbalance in ultimate distribution, the pie has absolutely grown larger. Massively humongously wildly larger. Positive spirals thankfully abound, such as better nutrition and knowledge of infectious disease at young ages yielding better outcomes and life expectancies for the rest of their lives. None of this is to downplay the importance of keeping inequality from going too far, but to even suggest it's a zero-sum game, that world economics are actually the same right now as they were a hundred or a thousand years ago, is frankly ludicrous.
Edit:
>E.g., a product costs $X, owners get too large of a % of that compared to employees.
That makes absolutely no sense as a standard or line of reasoning. The total sum has nothing inherently to do with how its divided, are you sure you're clear on definitions here? When something is zero-sum that means that for anyone to gain a larger percentage, someone else must necessarily lose a smaller percentage. But when the total sum itself is increasing then somebody could be gaining more and everyone else could also be gaining more, just not as much more as if it were equally split.
Also, what is "too large of a %" and how do you know? And if the product costs $X, but previously other competing products cost 7*$X, and as a result the company is many times the size it would be otherwise, and in turn the % the employees get is still an absolute amount far larger then it would have been anywhere else, now what? Rather then thinking about fuzzy "proper %" it seems better to investigate power imbalances, human limit edge cases, information asymmetry, cost externalization, etc., that affect the equilibrium of the system. Of which there are many!
The fact that we can bake another pie doesn't make pie-eating positive-sum. The more you eat, the less is available for others, and you can't keep baking pies for ever.
If the world were just a bunch of fields with a static farm economy and no innovation in cultivation, then your point would be correct. But innovation increases the size of the pie. Yeah, the jealous may focus on the percentage kept by these innovators, but they really should be looking at the share of the pie.
Socialism is all about making sure that everyone is equally miserable.
harryh|5 years ago
wwright|5 years ago
untilHellbanned|5 years ago
StillBored|5 years ago
There are definite improvements (a fair amount of medical science), but I'm not sure on balance that the planetary destruction/extinctions/etc outweigh them. So, using made up GDP/capita numbers for justification that the world is "improving" is tenuous.
leetcrew|5 years ago
this is orthogonal to the economy being positive/negative/zero sum. if total real wealth increases over time, the world is positive sum, regardless of how that wealth is distributed.
positive sum doesn't imply that everyone gets wealthier over time, only that it's possible for people to get wealthier without it being directly at the expense of others.
untilHellbanned|5 years ago
Standard of living has improved generally over time, but day by day the world is a zero-sum game.
xoa|5 years ago
LEDs. To take one very specific, simple example, though feel free to substitute in everything from computers to engines. Fundamentally, we have both increased our average energy budget per person and we can accomplish far more of what we want to do for far less energy. Taking the basic general goal of "I wish to have visible photons available to me at a sufficient level for my eyes to work well at arbitrary times and places", compare the total costs and % of resources converted to the goal vs wasted as heat/losses/externalities of say torches to oil/gas lamps to electric arc to early incandescent to later incandescent to halogen to fluorescent to LEDs. We can now do with single watts for tens of thousands of hours and pennies of silicon/impurities what would once have taken dozens to hundreds of watts to kilowatts and lasting just hundreds of hours, tens of hours, or even mere minutes.
Increasing abundance and efficiency for human goals is the definition of increasing overall wealth. Even given imbalance in ultimate distribution, the pie has absolutely grown larger. Massively humongously wildly larger. Positive spirals thankfully abound, such as better nutrition and knowledge of infectious disease at young ages yielding better outcomes and life expectancies for the rest of their lives. None of this is to downplay the importance of keeping inequality from going too far, but to even suggest it's a zero-sum game, that world economics are actually the same right now as they were a hundred or a thousand years ago, is frankly ludicrous.
Edit:
>E.g., a product costs $X, owners get too large of a % of that compared to employees.
That makes absolutely no sense as a standard or line of reasoning. The total sum has nothing inherently to do with how its divided, are you sure you're clear on definitions here? When something is zero-sum that means that for anyone to gain a larger percentage, someone else must necessarily lose a smaller percentage. But when the total sum itself is increasing then somebody could be gaining more and everyone else could also be gaining more, just not as much more as if it were equally split.
Also, what is "too large of a %" and how do you know? And if the product costs $X, but previously other competing products cost 7*$X, and as a result the company is many times the size it would be otherwise, and in turn the % the employees get is still an absolute amount far larger then it would have been anywhere else, now what? Rather then thinking about fuzzy "proper %" it seems better to investigate power imbalances, human limit edge cases, information asymmetry, cost externalization, etc., that affect the equilibrium of the system. Of which there are many!
StavrosK|5 years ago
xhkkffbf|5 years ago
If the world were just a bunch of fields with a static farm economy and no innovation in cultivation, then your point would be correct. But innovation increases the size of the pie. Yeah, the jealous may focus on the percentage kept by these innovators, but they really should be looking at the share of the pie.
Socialism is all about making sure that everyone is equally miserable.
toiletfuneral|5 years ago
[deleted]
fartcannon|5 years ago
We collectively are not done, yet. We can still make it better for everyone. Let's at least _try_ new ideas.