The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition • Hacker News Board

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#11

Post by 13415 » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #6

This will be controversial, but this is true everytime there is a pitchfork-inducing "the rich got richer in 20XX" thread. But it's not that the rich stole from the poor in order to become richer (though undoubtedly people will argue this). If I stick a million dollars in an index fund and passively get richer, am I stealing from the poor? Wealth is not zero sum, yet we seem to treat it like it is (in order for poor…

The question is not whether someone steals or doesn't steal from the poor. The crucial questions are whether the divide between rich and poor increases or not and whether the actual buying power of the poor decreases or not. If the lower income classes have less and less, then something has gone wrong and needs to be fixed. That's currently the case in most Western industrialized nations.

One way to fix the problem, in one way or another, is by some form of resource distribution. If someone has got other recipes that could reasonably be expected to work, then they should put them on the table. So far, the "trickle down to the masses" methods favored by the ultra rich have not proven to be very successful and people cannot be bullshitted forever (or who knows, maybe they can, we'll see in the future).

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#12

Post by wayoutthere » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

doc_gunthrop wrote: post #7

wayoutthere wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it is because many humans derive self-worth from seeing other people who are worse off than they are. If you have that mindset, personal comfort really can be a zero-sum game, sadly...

What you just described is rivalry-based schadenfreude. > Rivalry-Based Schadenfreude is individualistic and related to interpersonal competition. It arises from humans' desire to stand out from and out-perform their peers. Another person's misfortune elicits pleasure because the observer now feels better about their personal identity and self-worth, instead of their group identity.

I actually believe this effect is responsible for most of the racism we have in the US. Black people are an easily identifiable “lower class” who aren’t supposed to have power over white people or have higher social standing. A lot of Americans were irrationally angry at Barack Obama as a result.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#13

Post by manifestsilence » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #6

This will be controversial, but this is true everytime there is a pitchfork-inducing "the rich got richer in 20XX" thread. But it's not that the rich stole from the poor in order to become richer (though undoubtedly people will argue this). If I stick a million dollars in an index fund and passively get richer, am I stealing from the poor? Wealth is not zero sum, yet we seem to treat it like it is (in order for poor…

I think money is one of the few things that really does approach a zero sum game. If you have more money, even if you printed it yourself, it deflates the value of everyone else's money when you spend it.

What is not zero sum are the actual goods bought with the money, in cases where cooperation could result in better productivity and more actual goods produced.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#14

Post by davesmith1983 » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

gamegoblin wrote: post #8

umvi wrote: post #6

This will be controversial, but this is true everytime there is a pitchfork-inducing "the rich got richer in 20XX" thread. But it's not that the rich stole from the poor in order to become richer (though undoubtedly people will argue this). If I stick a million dollars in an index fund and passively get richer, am I stealing from the poor? Wealth is not zero sum, yet we seem to treat it like it is (in order for poor…

Not that I necessarily agree with them, but some people would say that your index fund is stealing from the poor in a sense, because corporate profits (distributed to you, the shareholder, as dividends) are derived from exploiting the working class, when they could be raising wages instead. This is obviously not the entire story, because the economy certainly has grown historically and continues to grow, and that gro…

Well labour prices (for whatever the industry is) is driven by market forces. The Salary / Rate has to match the market expectations.

If the market rate is artificially inflated (minimum hourly wage) then companies will find a way to automate those jobs away. I am sure people will say that this would have happened anyway with certain unskilled labour jobs but you could argue that this only further incentivises them.

I would argue that the UK fast food chains and supermarkets are a good case study to illustrate this. In the UK most of the cashier staff are slowly being removed. Now they normally have 6 - 10 checkouts that are automated and have the customer scan their own items. Tesco (that where I normally go) instead of having 10 checkout staff you can buy 10 machines that are managed by one or two people at most. All the machines in the major supermarkets are using the same vendor for their machines and the software appears to the same for each supermarket but skinned, with the only exception being the german supermarkets.

Similarly at the other end of the scale in the UK. A C# .NET + MVC + JS with some SQL Server experience contract rate is about £350-400 a day. In London because developers expect higher rates (and the higher cost of living pushed the rate up by about £100-200 a day.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#15

Post by verroq » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

A common one on HN is cryptocurrency energy use. If crypto didn't exist that energy would have been "wasted" on something else.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#16

Post by _8j50 » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #6

This will be controversial, but this is true everytime there is a pitchfork-inducing "the rich got richer in 20XX" thread. But it's not that the rich stole from the poor in order to become richer (though undoubtedly people will argue this). If I stick a million dollars in an index fund and passively get richer, am I stealing from the poor? Wealth is not zero sum, yet we seem to treat it like it is (in order for poor…

I don't that is neccesarily a zero-sum mentality. It's an observation on how policy and the economy as a whole did NOT benefit the poorer class as much as it did the rich class. The rich making more money should not translate to the poor making less money but increase in economic quality of life should more proportional between rich and poor.

The rich making a trillion dollars does not translate into the poor losing a trillion dollars (zero sum). But the wealth of the rich increasing by 300% and the wealth of the poor remaining the same indicates the economic policies and conditions are not benefiting the poor as much as they benefit the rich.

Often,the argument is that policies are not fairly applied to allow the poor to maintain an increasingly better economic living conditions.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#17

Post by gnicholas » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

> people tend to assume that if a product is superior in one dimension then it must be inferior in other dimensions.

Assuming price is one of the dimensions, this is generally a true statement. Otherwise we'd have a bunch of best-in-class products that are cheaper than inferior competitors.

This can occur for products sold at massive scale and with large tooling costs. This dynamic enables the producers of premium products to manufacture at lower cost than smaller-scale competitors. But usually they don't set their prices lower--they just enjoy higher profits.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#18

Post by mikeash » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #6

This will be controversial, but this is true everytime there is a pitchfork-inducing "the rich got richer in 20XX" thread. But it's not that the rich stole from the poor in order to become richer (though undoubtedly people will argue this). If I stick a million dollars in an index fund and passively get richer, am I stealing from the poor? Wealth is not zero sum, yet we seem to treat it like it is (in order for poor…

It’s a common fallacy to believe that wealth is zero sum. It’s also a common fallacy to believe that, since it’s not zero sum, gains by one group are uncorrelated to losses by another.

If the rich got richer, does that mean they took from the poor? No. But it also doesn’t mean they didn’t. As usual, you have to look at the specifics.

The world does have limited resources and capacity for economic growth. In your index fund example, a substantial chunk of those are being allocated to someone who already has plenty, and it would be a lot more useful if it went to someone who had less. That’s not exactly taking from the poor, but it’s not exactly not.

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#19

Post by gravypod » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #17

> people tend to assume that if a product is superior in one dimension then it must be inferior in other dimensions. Assuming price is one of the dimensions, this is generally a true statement. Otherwise we'd have a bunch of best-in-class products that are cheaper than inferior competitors. This can occur for products sold at massive scale and with large tooling costs. This dynamic enables the producers of premium pr…

Would this be dissimilar to undercutting a competitor? For example Ryzen 3rd gen chips seem to out perform, and undercut the price, of Intel chips with a similar feature set. Maybe brand is a dimension?

Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition

#20

Post by smallnamespace » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #6

This will be controversial, but this is true everytime there is a pitchfork-inducing "the rich got richer in 20XX" thread. But it's not that the rich stole from the poor in order to become richer (though undoubtedly people will argue this). If I stick a million dollars in an index fund and passively get richer, am I stealing from the poor? Wealth is not zero sum, yet we seem to treat it like it is (in order for poor…

> Wealth is not zero sum

But what relative wealth buys - a safer, more comfortable position in society - definitely is.