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This kind of zero-sum thinking - then notion that accumulation of wealth necessarily means it must have been taken from others - is extremely detrimental to soc

This kind of zero-sum thinking - then notion that accumulation of wealth necessarily means it must have been taken from others - is extremely detrimental to society.

dventimi 2y ago
It is zero sum: there are finite goods and services in the world, and we're all competing for them. There are losers and winners. "That's just zero sum thinking" has been the smokescreen for gullible people for at least fifty years.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  No, goods and services are not finite. This is just patently false. How many automobiles existed in 1800? How many jey liners existed in 1900? How many smartphones existed in 1950? The pool of goods grows in absolute terms. It's not just goods, services too grow in absolute terms. We invented radio in 1900 (ish) and introduced a wholly novel set of services. Before photography, in order to get one's likeness recorded you had to sit for a portrait painter. After practical photography was developed, portraits became much more accessible. I could go on. Humanity is increasing the pool of goods and services in absolute terms all the time.
  - cool_dude85 2y ago
    Buddy. Are you really trying to say that there can exist infinite goods and services in a finite universe? Growing is not the same as infinite.
    - Manuel_D 2y ago
      Sure, it's finite in that it's can't grow with literally no limit: there's a fixed amount of mass an energy in the universe. But the above commenter states that goods and services are zero-sum, which is not true. Goods and services do grow in absolute terms. His whole thesis is that accumulation of wealth necessarily entails the depravation of others. This is not at all true: wealthy can and does grow in absolute terms.
      - dventimi 2y ago
        The above commenter is me and I say that goods and services are finite because they are. So what if there were fewer in the past and there will be more in the future. We live in the present and in the present goods and services are provided by people through labor which is finite at any given time. We're all competing: for housing, healthcare, and the political power to determine our material conditions. If wealth doesn't allow you to outcompete other people for those things then what the hell is it for?
        Manuel_D 2y ago
        > The above commenter is me and I say that goods and services are finite because they are. So what if there were fewer in the past and there will be more in the future. What you're describing here is literally the opposite of zero-sum. The total set of goods and services in increasing. It directly contradicts your claim that the accumulation of wealth necessitates the deprivation of others.
        dventimi 2y ago
        At any given time are there, or are there not, finite goods and services?
        Manuel_D 2y ago
        At one given instant sure, but the key thing is that over time the collection of goods and services grows. Adam, Bob, and Charlie are all shipwrecked on an island. They divy up the ship's goods equally. One day, Charlie decides to build some furniture. Now he has more goods than Adam and Bob. Did he deprive others, to achieve his comparatively greater wealth? If you just looked at one snapshot of time, you'd see Charlie with more wealth than the others, though.
        dventimi 2y ago
        > At one given instant sure [goods and services are finite] I'm glad we finally agree that wealth is finite. > the key thing is that over time the collection of goods and services grows. That's cold comfort for people who never live to see a time when they can compete for those goods and services.
  - dventimi 2y ago
    If goods and services aren't finite then they must be infinite. If they're infinite then how can they be increasing?
    - roenxi 2y ago
      Because not all wealth exists in the present. It is like counting from 1 to 5 and concluding that the maximum size of an integer is finite because so far the count has only reached 5. It is not so, however. The maximum size of an integer is infinite even though any particular integer is finite.
      - dventimi 2y ago
        Not all people on Earth exist in the present, either. At any given time in the past there were fewer of them, and at any given time in the near future at least there probably will be more of them. Does that mean that the number of people on Earth is infinite? While you're thinking about that, think about this. You and I live in the present. Of what use is it to us in the present if there's more total wealth in some future long after we're gone?
        dventimi 2y ago
        > Not all people on Earth exist in the present Correction: That should be, "Not all people on Earth who have existed in the past or will exist in the future exist in our present."
        roenxi 2y ago
        The number of people is potentially infinite. It depends on unknowns like whether we can grow exponentially, what the progress of science looks like and whether the universe is finite.
        dventimi 2y ago
        It's at this point that you're going to have to explain what you mean by "infinite".
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > No, goods and services are not finite Yes, they are. > Humanity is increasing the pool of goods and services in absolute terms all the time. The ever-increasing amount is still finite, at any given time and even aggregated over the entire history from the evolution of humanity to its inevitable extinction.
    - dventimi 2y ago
      The magical thinking in this thread is breathtaking to behold.
- slothtrop 2y ago
  Wealth is not zero sum. If it were we'd still be quibbling over sticks in caves. It is generated.
  - dventimi 2y ago
    That's technology, not wealth.
    - Manuel_D 2y ago
      What do you think wealth is? A big part of wealth generation is finding new technologies and applying them to build better things.
      - defrost 2y ago
        Is that how you'd describe the wealth of Bezos? Better shopping, or is it more about capturing shopping and taking a slice from all transactions?
      - dventimi 2y ago
        I think it's abundance in one's material conditions. That's not technology. Technology is knowledge. That's completely different.
        Manuel_D 2y ago
        Technology is the application of knowledge. Often to improve one's material conditions. Even an average person in this day's age has amenities that nobody, not even the wealthiest noble, could have achieved in preindustrial eras. We have air conditioning, electricity, antibiotics, vaccines, antiseptic, and near-instant communication worldwide. Our material conditions have drastically improved. Wealth is not finite, not even remotely.
        dventimi 2y ago
        I suspect these people do not have ready access to air conditioning, electricity, or even antibiotics, and they're not going to get it simply by appealing to "technology." https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview#1 https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview#1
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > It is zero sum: there are finite goods and services in the world, and we're all competing for them. Zero-sum (or fixed-sum, since zero-sum strictly means the aggregate quantity is not only fixed and finite but actually zero) doesn't just mean the total is finite (which is obviously correct), it means that output is fixed and the choices made only affect distribution, not the quantity of goods and services that are produced and made available. This is not the case.
  - dventimi 2y ago
    Yeah but the material conditions of an individual's life are determined by the goods and services they have, not by the total amount of goods and services that exist in the world. Moreover, certain material conditions--safety from harm, freedom of expression, and the political power to maintain those things--absolutely do not increase in some global sense the way that economic output does. Consequently, it's the distribution of wealth that determines the quality of an individual's life, and that's what concerns me. So no, I don't give a fig if "total wealth" whatever that is is somehow going up in aggregate, not if it's not being shared more uniformly.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      > Yeah but the material conditions of an individual's life are determined by the goods and services they have, not by the total amount of goods and services that exist in the world. That's obviously why distribution matters as well as total production (or aggregate utility), but fixed-sum means that distribution is the only thing subject to change, and that for someone to gain someone else must lose equally. (There's also an argument that things get closer to fixed sum in utility terms if you first lift everyone out of extreme poverty, because relative wealth/deprivation becomes a much more significant source of utility/disutility than absolute wealth is of utility once you are beyond extreme poverty, but even there its much more complex than fixed sum.) > Moreover, certain material conditions--safety from harm, freedom of expression, and the political power to maintain those things--absolutely do not increase in some global sense the way that economic output does. They certainly don't increase in lockstep with economic output, either globally or locally, but neither are they fixed-sum, where for someone to have more someone else must have less in the same degree (except maybe "political power").
cool_dude85 2y ago
It's true the the economy is not a zero-sum game, but it's also true that many aspects are zero-sum. Maybe some portion of Zuck's wealth does genuinely come from his innovations, and otherwise wouldn't exist. But I think it would be hard to argue that all of it is - if he had been hit by a car his first day at Harvard, maybe MySpace Tom or friendster or the Winklevoss guys would be stinking rich. So, the question is, how much of his wealth did he actually create versus simply grab from others? When it comes to MySpace Tom the answer isn't super important, but it is very important for the masses of poor people who make up the vast majority of the planet.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  If a company creates a better, or cheaper, or otherwise superior product and garners more sales than it's competitors is it "grabbing from others"? If so, then consumers benefit when companies do their best improve or invent new goods and services in their quest to "grab from others". Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in poverty. If MySpace became the most popular social networking company rather than Facebook, how would the poor be in a different situation?
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in poverty. If MySpace became the most popular social networking company rather than Facebook, how would the poor be in a different situation? If it was state sponsored and without ads, people would get much happier since they are no longer constantly mentally assaulted by ads intended to create cravings or feeling of missing out.
  - cool_dude85 2y ago
    >Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in poverty. If MySpace became the most popular social networking company rather than Facebook, how would the poor be in a different situation? If we recognize that broadly the same pile of money would exist absent Zuck, and instead belong to Tom or Joe or Jane, this provides us a nice justification for not letting Zuck have quite so much money anyway. He's the guy who hit the lotto. It's not such a bad thing to say the government is going to take a lot of it and spend it on poor people.
ProxCoques 2y ago
If "wealth" is the value of labour, then there is a limit to the value you yourself can generate with your own. After that, to become more wealthy you must work out a way of taking that value from other people, and making it your own. There is no other way capitalism can work.
- Jensson 2y ago
  Wealthy people make others more productive. Key example: By writing an engaging story, you make the people managing the printing presses more productive since it lets them print higher value stories than before and thus sell better. The author writing the story didn't take millions of dollars from the persons manning the presses, without the author the work done by the presses wouldn't be as valuable and those millions of dollars of value wouldn't have materialized. The same goes for most of the people who got rich on their own, they realized a way to create more value using the same number of workers, so they get rich and it didn't involve taking from anyone, just giving more value to customers.

This kind of zero-sum thinking - then notion that accumulation of wealth necessarily means it must have been taken from others - is extremely detrimental to society.

dventimi 2y ago

It is zero sum: there are finite goods and services in the world, and we're all competing for them. There are losers and winners. "That's just zero sum thinking" has been the smokescreen for gullible people for at least fifty years.

Manuel_D 2y ago
No, goods and services are not finite. This is just patently false. How many automobiles existed in 1800? How many jey liners existed in 1900? How many smartphones existed in 1950? The pool of goods grows in absolute terms. It's not just goods, services too grow in absolute terms. We invented radio in 1900 (ish) and introduced a wholly novel set of services. Before photography, in order to get one's likeness recorded you had to sit for a portrait painter. After practical photography was developed, portraits became much more accessible. I could go on. Humanity is increasing the pool of goods and services in absolute terms all the time.
- cool_dude85 2y ago
  Buddy. Are you really trying to say that there can exist infinite goods and services in a finite universe? Growing is not the same as infinite.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    Sure, it's finite in that it's can't grow with literally no limit: there's a fixed amount of mass an energy in the universe. But the above commenter states that goods and services are zero-sum, which is not true. Goods and services do grow in absolute terms. His whole thesis is that accumulation of wealth necessarily entails the depravation of others. This is not at all true: wealthy can and does grow in absolute terms.
    - dventimi 2y ago
      The above commenter is me and I say that goods and services are finite because they are. So what if there were fewer in the past and there will be more in the future. We live in the present and in the present goods and services are provided by people through labor which is finite at any given time. We're all competing: for housing, healthcare, and the political power to determine our material conditions. If wealth doesn't allow you to outcompete other people for those things then what the hell is it for?
      - Manuel_D 2y ago
        > The above commenter is me and I say that goods and services are finite because they are. So what if there were fewer in the past and there will be more in the future. What you're describing here is literally the opposite of zero-sum. The total set of goods and services in increasing. It directly contradicts your claim that the accumulation of wealth necessitates the deprivation of others.
        dventimi 2y ago
        At any given time are there, or are there not, finite goods and services?
        Manuel_D 2y ago
        At one given instant sure, but the key thing is that over time the collection of goods and services grows. Adam, Bob, and Charlie are all shipwrecked on an island. They divy up the ship's goods equally. One day, Charlie decides to build some furniture. Now he has more goods than Adam and Bob. Did he deprive others, to achieve his comparatively greater wealth? If you just looked at one snapshot of time, you'd see Charlie with more wealth than the others, though.
        dventimi 2y ago
        > At one given instant sure [goods and services are finite] I'm glad we finally agree that wealth is finite. > the key thing is that over time the collection of goods and services grows. That's cold comfort for people who never live to see a time when they can compete for those goods and services.
- dventimi 2y ago
  If goods and services aren't finite then they must be infinite. If they're infinite then how can they be increasing?
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Because not all wealth exists in the present. It is like counting from 1 to 5 and concluding that the maximum size of an integer is finite because so far the count has only reached 5. It is not so, however. The maximum size of an integer is infinite even though any particular integer is finite.
    - dventimi 2y ago
      Not all people on Earth exist in the present, either. At any given time in the past there were fewer of them, and at any given time in the near future at least there probably will be more of them. Does that mean that the number of people on Earth is infinite? While you're thinking about that, think about this. You and I live in the present. Of what use is it to us in the present if there's more total wealth in some future long after we're gone?
      - dventimi 2y ago
        > Not all people on Earth exist in the present Correction: That should be, "Not all people on Earth who have existed in the past or will exist in the future exist in our present."
        roenxi 2y ago
        The number of people is potentially infinite. It depends on unknowns like whether we can grow exponentially, what the progress of science looks like and whether the universe is finite.
        dventimi 2y ago
        It's at this point that you're going to have to explain what you mean by "infinite".
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > No, goods and services are not finite Yes, they are. > Humanity is increasing the pool of goods and services in absolute terms all the time. The ever-increasing amount is still finite, at any given time and even aggregated over the entire history from the evolution of humanity to its inevitable extinction.
  - dventimi 2y ago
    The magical thinking in this thread is breathtaking to behold.
slothtrop 2y ago
Wealth is not zero sum. If it were we'd still be quibbling over sticks in caves. It is generated.
- dventimi 2y ago
  That's technology, not wealth.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    What do you think wealth is? A big part of wealth generation is finding new technologies and applying them to build better things.
    - defrost 2y ago
      Is that how you'd describe the wealth of Bezos? Better shopping, or is it more about capturing shopping and taking a slice from all transactions?
    - dventimi 2y ago
      I think it's abundance in one's material conditions. That's not technology. Technology is knowledge. That's completely different.
      - Manuel_D 2y ago
        Technology is the application of knowledge. Often to improve one's material conditions. Even an average person in this day's age has amenities that nobody, not even the wealthiest noble, could have achieved in preindustrial eras. We have air conditioning, electricity, antibiotics, vaccines, antiseptic, and near-instant communication worldwide. Our material conditions have drastically improved. Wealth is not finite, not even remotely.
        dventimi 2y ago
        I suspect these people do not have ready access to air conditioning, electricity, or even antibiotics, and they're not going to get it simply by appealing to "technology." https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview#1 https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview#1
dragonwriter 2y ago
> It is zero sum: there are finite goods and services in the world, and we're all competing for them. Zero-sum (or fixed-sum, since zero-sum strictly means the aggregate quantity is not only fixed and finite but actually zero) doesn't just mean the total is finite (which is obviously correct), it means that output is fixed and the choices made only affect distribution, not the quantity of goods and services that are produced and made available. This is not the case.
- dventimi 2y ago
  Yeah but the material conditions of an individual's life are determined by the goods and services they have, not by the total amount of goods and services that exist in the world. Moreover, certain material conditions--safety from harm, freedom of expression, and the political power to maintain those things--absolutely do not increase in some global sense the way that economic output does. Consequently, it's the distribution of wealth that determines the quality of an individual's life, and that's what concerns me. So no, I don't give a fig if "total wealth" whatever that is is somehow going up in aggregate, not if it's not being shared more uniformly.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > Yeah but the material conditions of an individual's life are determined by the goods and services they have, not by the total amount of goods and services that exist in the world. That's obviously why distribution matters as well as total production (or aggregate utility), but fixed-sum means that distribution is the only thing subject to change, and that for someone to gain someone else must lose equally. (There's also an argument that things get closer to fixed sum in utility terms if you first lift everyone out of extreme poverty, because relative wealth/deprivation becomes a much more significant source of utility/disutility than absolute wealth is of utility once you are beyond extreme poverty, but even there its much more complex than fixed sum.) > Moreover, certain material conditions--safety from harm, freedom of expression, and the political power to maintain those things--absolutely do not increase in some global sense the way that economic output does. They certainly don't increase in lockstep with economic output, either globally or locally, but neither are they fixed-sum, where for someone to have more someone else must have less in the same degree (except maybe "political power").

cool_dude85 2y ago

It's true the the economy is not a zero-sum game, but it's also true that many aspects are zero-sum. Maybe some portion of Zuck's wealth does genuinely come from his innovations, and otherwise wouldn't exist. But I think it would be hard to argue that all of it is - if he had been hit by a car his first day at Harvard, maybe MySpace Tom or friendster or the Winklevoss guys would be stinking rich. So, the question is, how much of his wealth did he actually create versus simply grab from others? When it comes to MySpace Tom the answer isn't super important, but it is very important for the masses of poor people who make up the vast majority of the planet.

Manuel_D 2y ago
If a company creates a better, or cheaper, or otherwise superior product and garners more sales than it's competitors is it "grabbing from others"? If so, then consumers benefit when companies do their best improve or invent new goods and services in their quest to "grab from others". Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in poverty. If MySpace became the most popular social networking company rather than Facebook, how would the poor be in a different situation?
- Jensson 2y ago
  > Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in poverty. If MySpace became the most popular social networking company rather than Facebook, how would the poor be in a different situation? If it was state sponsored and without ads, people would get much happier since they are no longer constantly mentally assaulted by ads intended to create cravings or feeling of missing out.
- cool_dude85 2y ago
  >Also, I'm not sure why the hypothetical situation of what would happen if Zuckerberg hadn't founded Facebook would be particularly relevant to people in poverty. If MySpace became the most popular social networking company rather than Facebook, how would the poor be in a different situation? If we recognize that broadly the same pile of money would exist absent Zuck, and instead belong to Tom or Joe or Jane, this provides us a nice justification for not letting Zuck have quite so much money anyway. He's the guy who hit the lotto. It's not such a bad thing to say the government is going to take a lot of it and spend it on poor people.

ProxCoques 2y ago

If "wealth" is the value of labour, then there is a limit to the value you yourself can generate with your own. After that, to become more wealthy you must work out a way of taking that value from other people, and making it your own. There is no other way capitalism can work.

Jensson 2y ago
Wealthy people make others more productive. Key example: By writing an engaging story, you make the people managing the printing presses more productive since it lets them print higher value stories than before and thus sell better. The author writing the story didn't take millions of dollars from the persons manning the presses, without the author the work done by the presses wouldn't be as valuable and those millions of dollars of value wouldn't have materialized. The same goes for most of the people who got rich on their own, they realized a way to create more value using the same number of workers, so they get rich and it didn't involve taking from anyone, just giving more value to customers.