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> Most things in life are win-lose — someone gains, and someone loses. But networks are one of the few things that are win-win. That's one of the saddest thing

> Most things in life are win-lose — someone gains, and someone loses. But networks are one of the few things that are win-win. That's one of the saddest things I've read all week, and I think profoundly wrong. Does one party or the other really lose in most things in life? Surely it must be the opposite - both parties in a voluntary transaction or interaction have gained something by it. I once had a friend who explained a similar idea this way: "There is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. Whenever anyone gains wealth, it always means that someone else has to lose wealth."

brennanm 8y ago
Lol. Fair. Not most things.
- Stratoscope 8y ago
  I didn't use the word "fair", and I think that's a rather different concept from win-win vs. win-lose. So I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to.
  - brennanm 8y ago
    I wrote the article. Sorry. I was just saying you have a point and I was being a little extreme in the article
    - Stratoscope 8y ago
      Ah, now I follow you. I thought you meant, "LOL, fair? You think most things in life are fair?" Quite different from what you really meant, "LOL, you have a fair point there." Sorry for the misunderstanding!
      - brennanm 8y ago
        No way! That’s on me for being lazy and commenting on mobile! Thanks for taking the time to read and discuss!
  - NikolaNovak 8y ago
    I _believe_ the word "fair" was used in its "agreed" or "you make a fair point" sense. If somebody points out something that runs counter to my previous statement, I am likely to say, in a friendly admittance, "OK, fair enough, I guess kittens aren't the yummiest ingredient for a soup".
mathattack 8y ago
In economic theory, every trade is beneficial for both parties. You have too many cows, but need money and I have money and am hungry - you sell me a cow and we are both better off. Reality is a little tougher. You and I both run hedge funds. One of us thinks Amazon will go up. The other down. One sells to the other. In a month, only one of us has made money. Exactly what the other missed out on making. Conversely, I sell shoes. You sell supply chain software. You sell me the software for a million dollars. I save 20 million in costs. I want you to improve the software, so I tell the world about my savings. You sell to ten other customers, and I save another 20 million with improved software. Your investors make money, as do your employees. We grew the pie and we all win. I don’t know what the world is truly like, but I prefer pretending it’s the latter.
- zeusk 8y ago
  and what about the people/services that were part of the 20 million dollar cost you reduced using that software?
  - platz 8y ago
    "rip them"
  - horsecaptin 8y ago
    Thats the whole point of the a capitalist environment! Hopefully those people were paid well for their hard work and saved up enough money to retire or move onto bigger things.
  - mathattack 8y ago
    In a grow the pie worldview, let’s say the 20mm in supply chain costs means less WIP inventory and less shipping. The WIP inventory reduction might come as a decrease in raw materials. Let whoever sold it to me sell to someone else. The people transporting goods can transport for others. (Or they were overcharging)
  - api 8y ago
    If there is sufficient growth and economic diversity they can find different and hopefully better jobs. Would you want a job as a copy clerk? These were people who copied documents by hand before copy machines were invented.
klenwell 8y ago
Injustice has parceled out the world, nor is there equal division of aught save sorrow. -- Oscar Wilde One of my favorite examples of the successful application of a win-win philosophy was Paul O'Neill's focus on worker safety as CEO of Alcoa: http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2012/05/13/Habitual-excellence-The-workplace-according-to-Paul-O-Neill/stories/201205130249 http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2012/05/13...
chacham15 8y ago
> There is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. Whenever anyone gains wealth, it always means that someone else has to lose wealth From Milton Friedman: "Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." GDP increasing faster than inflation is certainly an indicator of this especially when you consider other countries GDPs are increasing past inflation as well.
- naasking 8y ago
  > From Milton Friedman: "Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." This is actually literally true. There universe's resources are finite. Economic growth comes at the expense of natural resources. Any situation where both parties of an economic transaction appear to benefit, there's a negative externality consuming natural resources making us all marginally poorer. That said, Friedman's statement is still a useful fiction since "marginally poorer" sometimes is inevitable. Edit: the reply to mine was flagged and removed it seems, but there's one commonly misunderstood belief that I think is worth addressing: > When humans had no technology or knowledge of agriculture, this may have been correct to some degree, but we are constantly decreasing the size of the population who create value from the extraction and sale of "natural resources" Any and all value generation requires energy which necessarily comes from natural resources. We have a whole universe full of raw materials and energy, possibly more than we can conceivably work with for the lifetime of the human race, but it's still literally true that this is ultimately a zero-sum game. The externalities are simply hidden.
  - epr 8y ago
    > "This is actually literally true. There universe's resources are finite. Economic growth comes at the expense of natural resources." The idea that "resources" that humans use are a fixed quantity that can only decrease is just plain wrong. When humans had no technology or knowledge of agriculture, this may have been correct to some degree, but we are constantly decreasing the size of the population who create value from the extraction and sale of "natural resources". At our level of technological sophistication today, the vast majority of people are engaged in some form of transforming one or more less valuable capital or lower order consumer goods/services into higher order consumer goods/services of some kind. This is not even to mention that natural resources ARE NEVER DEPLETED EVER. Using oil as an example, the easy to drill oil is all extracted/sold at lower costs/prices, then the rest of the oil becomes more expensive to extract, and this will cycle repeatedly until some form of renewable energy will INEVITABLY take it's place based purely on it's lower cost compared to oil. Oil will then fall into a more niche market and will still be used, but progressively less and less, especially as the old oil infrastructure is replaced with other(s). This is very similar to how farms use very little natural resources today. As land has become more scarce/expensive to develop, it's use has gotten to the point where farmers know what crops they can grow that will maintain the soil quality, and whether they have to rotate more valuable crops in periodically that damage the soil but produce more profit. A balance is maintained due to economic factors once again. Environmentalists spend so much time and effort trying to force renewable energy and sustainable practices, but in fact what they want will inevitably come to pass based solely on economic realities.
pcnix 8y ago
This is what Game Theory calls a Zero-sum Game. The economy isn't a zero sum game though, wealth creation does happen, and it doesn't necessarily come at the cost of someone else.

brennanm 8y ago

Lol. Fair. Not most things.

Stratoscope 8y ago
I didn't use the word "fair", and I think that's a rather different concept from win-win vs. win-lose. So I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to.
- brennanm 8y ago
  I wrote the article. Sorry. I was just saying you have a point and I was being a little extreme in the article
  - Stratoscope 8y ago
    Ah, now I follow you. I thought you meant, "LOL, fair? You think most things in life are fair?" Quite different from what you really meant, "LOL, you have a fair point there." Sorry for the misunderstanding!
    - brennanm 8y ago
      No way! That’s on me for being lazy and commenting on mobile! Thanks for taking the time to read and discuss!
- NikolaNovak 8y ago
  I _believe_ the word "fair" was used in its "agreed" or "you make a fair point" sense. If somebody points out something that runs counter to my previous statement, I am likely to say, in a friendly admittance, "OK, fair enough, I guess kittens aren't the yummiest ingredient for a soup".

mathattack 8y ago

In economic theory, every trade is beneficial for both parties. You have too many cows, but need money and I have money and am hungry - you sell me a cow and we are both better off. Reality is a little tougher. You and I both run hedge funds. One of us thinks Amazon will go up. The other down. One sells to the other. In a month, only one of us has made money. Exactly what the other missed out on making. Conversely, I sell shoes. You sell supply chain software. You sell me the software for a million dollars. I save 20 million in costs. I want you to improve the software, so I tell the world about my savings. You sell to ten other customers, and I save another 20 million with improved software. Your investors make money, as do your employees. We grew the pie and we all win. I don’t know what the world is truly like, but I prefer pretending it’s the latter.

zeusk 8y ago
and what about the people/services that were part of the 20 million dollar cost you reduced using that software?
- platz 8y ago
  "rip them"
- horsecaptin 8y ago
  Thats the whole point of the a capitalist environment! Hopefully those people were paid well for their hard work and saved up enough money to retire or move onto bigger things.
- mathattack 8y ago
  In a grow the pie worldview, let’s say the 20mm in supply chain costs means less WIP inventory and less shipping. The WIP inventory reduction might come as a decrease in raw materials. Let whoever sold it to me sell to someone else. The people transporting goods can transport for others. (Or they were overcharging)
- api 8y ago
  If there is sufficient growth and economic diversity they can find different and hopefully better jobs. Would you want a job as a copy clerk? These were people who copied documents by hand before copy machines were invented.

klenwell 8y ago

Injustice has parceled out the world, nor is there equal division of aught save sorrow. -- Oscar Wilde One of my favorite examples of the successful application of a win-win philosophy was Paul O'Neill's focus on worker safety as CEO of Alcoa: http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2012/05/13/Habitual-excellence-The-workplace-according-to-Paul-O-Neill/stories/201205130249 http://www.post-gazette.com/business/businessnews/2012/05/13...

chacham15 8y ago

> There is a fixed amount of wealth in the world. Whenever anyone gains wealth, it always means that someone else has to lose wealth From Milton Friedman: "Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." GDP increasing faster than inflation is certainly an indicator of this especially when you consider other countries GDPs are increasing past inflation as well.

naasking 8y ago
> From Milton Friedman: "Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." This is actually literally true. There universe's resources are finite. Economic growth comes at the expense of natural resources. Any situation where both parties of an economic transaction appear to benefit, there's a negative externality consuming natural resources making us all marginally poorer. That said, Friedman's statement is still a useful fiction since "marginally poorer" sometimes is inevitable. Edit: the reply to mine was flagged and removed it seems, but there's one commonly misunderstood belief that I think is worth addressing: > When humans had no technology or knowledge of agriculture, this may have been correct to some degree, but we are constantly decreasing the size of the population who create value from the extraction and sale of "natural resources" Any and all value generation requires energy which necessarily comes from natural resources. We have a whole universe full of raw materials and energy, possibly more than we can conceivably work with for the lifetime of the human race, but it's still literally true that this is ultimately a zero-sum game. The externalities are simply hidden.
- epr 8y ago
  > "This is actually literally true. There universe's resources are finite. Economic growth comes at the expense of natural resources." The idea that "resources" that humans use are a fixed quantity that can only decrease is just plain wrong. When humans had no technology or knowledge of agriculture, this may have been correct to some degree, but we are constantly decreasing the size of the population who create value from the extraction and sale of "natural resources". At our level of technological sophistication today, the vast majority of people are engaged in some form of transforming one or more less valuable capital or lower order consumer goods/services into higher order consumer goods/services of some kind. This is not even to mention that natural resources ARE NEVER DEPLETED EVER. Using oil as an example, the easy to drill oil is all extracted/sold at lower costs/prices, then the rest of the oil becomes more expensive to extract, and this will cycle repeatedly until some form of renewable energy will INEVITABLY take it's place based purely on it's lower cost compared to oil. Oil will then fall into a more niche market and will still be used, but progressively less and less, especially as the old oil infrastructure is replaced with other(s). This is very similar to how farms use very little natural resources today. As land has become more scarce/expensive to develop, it's use has gotten to the point where farmers know what crops they can grow that will maintain the soil quality, and whether they have to rotate more valuable crops in periodically that damage the soil but produce more profit. A balance is maintained due to economic factors once again. Environmentalists spend so much time and effort trying to force renewable energy and sustainable practices, but in fact what they want will inevitably come to pass based solely on economic realities.

pcnix 8y ago

This is what Game Theory calls a Zero-sum Game. The economy isn't a zero sum game though, wealth creation does happen, and it doesn't necessarily come at the cost of someone else.