[lbo-talk] wealth is not a zero sum game

Arthur Maisel arthurmaisel at gmail.com
Tue Mar 11 10:38:50 PDT 2014


By "wealth," I guess they mean the accumulation of wealth. A "zero-sum game" is one with winners and losers, so.loosely speaking (which is what the apologists are doing), it is wrong that wealth (accumulation) is not a zero-sum game---in the sense that given finite resources, time, etc., two people can't eat the same piece of pie. The use of mathematical language, which has a theoretical justification in game theory, is, in everyday discourse, mostly obfuscatory.

Strictly speaking, however, capitalism does increase the size of the pie, so it's true that wealth is not a zero-sum game---here's the big "if"----if there are referees (to continue the game metaphor) who enforce rules against taking unfair advantage of position (like being "offsides") and promoting more equal sharing of the pie (you get your chance to run with the ball). Not part of classical or neoclassical capitalism, those rules or those refs. In fact, adding them to the game changes the game to socialism.

So the apologists are "right," but only because they omit to mention these essential qualifications.

On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 12:29 PM, JOANNA A. <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:


> 1. Exploitation is exploitation whether wealth is zero sum or not.
>
> 2. But if it's a war of cliches, you can always try "You mean trees can
> grow to the sky?"
>
> Joanna
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> I'm mostly not very confident of my grasp of left criticism of the economy
> and yet am a long time subscriber here, happily gleaning what I can glean.
>
> I'm in a conversation right now where I'm being hit with "wealth is not a
> zero sum game." Because I had a superficial understanding of it at first I
> did a teeny bit of googling and found it is a major talking point with
> apologists all over.
>
> My point in the conversation is basically that our current system is
> incredibly exploitative both of natural resources and labor. They repeat
> the wealth is not a zero sum game. Is this just wrong, a red herring?? any
> pointers.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list