> I think if your model of the economy assumes it amounts to a zero sum game you have definitely missed something. What I wrote hardly supports your guess abou

> I think if your model of the economy assumes it amounts to a zero sum game you have definitely missed something. What I wrote hardly supports your guess about my model of the economy. I merely claim that zero-sum-games appear more pervasive to me than most people are willing/able to admit/recognize. So no, I don't think "the economy amounts to a zero sum game" is all there is to my model of the economy. But maybe you correctly infer more about my mental model than I myself know about it, who knows. > ... thermodynamic probability ... Since you appear to be familiar with thermodynamics, you'll be able to follow my reasoning easily: Every aspect of society/economy that can be expressed by an equation in a useful way, can be thought of as a zero-sum-phenomenon. Why? Because every ordinary equation can be restructured as a zero-sum equation. Example: Y = a * X + b^2 * Z ... can be written as: 0 = a * X + b^2 * Z - Y > ... so please don’t take this as a naive assumption that infinite growth without consequences ... To my mind, the mere combination of "infinite growth" and "without consequences" sounds naive, to be honest. > ... surely any model that is based on a static pie that can only be cut up so many ways is in flat denial of reality, and falls at the first hurdle. Well, I never claimed that the pie that gets cut up - and this methaphor for the economy is ironically equivalent to the term "zero-sum-game" - be static. How the size of the pie develops over time (grow, shrink, remain the same) is completely separate from the question of how the pie gets cut up. The pie always gets cut up, thus there's always at least this very basic zero-sum-game. And there are many more subtle zero-sum-games.