[jjj123]

Not sure about usefulness as the metric. How do you account for populations that will be harmed by a policy? “Not useful” doesn’t really capture it.

I usually think of policies as “who gets what, who loses what”, and form my opinion around those outcomes.

[nis0s]

I don’t think we need zero-sum framing for a lot of the things we talk about, and the fact that we do is the result of politics, not the policies per se.

[jjj123]

I don’t think my system is zero sum! Acknowledging that some population will be harmed is not saying it’s equal and opposite to the benefits. Medicare for all is useful to many, many people. But it does have downsides to some populations: the ownership class loses some amount of power and control, wealthy people with excellent private healthcare are likely to have worse outcomes, the healthcare insurance industry would likely be decimated.

I don’t consider that zero-sum, the benefits far, far outweigh the downsides to me.

These are the practical impacts of implementing a policy. I do not believe in some technocratic ideal where we can logic our way out of resource distribution causing some people to lose things.