21–30 of 152 posts
And in many situations , telling whether they're zero sum, is uncertain, and hard. Look at the debates here for example.
So people default to what they already generally know.
They know that society is very competitive. The job market is very competitive. The mating market is very competitive. Zero sum games are everywhere.
So it's no wonder they have this cognitive bias.
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…
Point is it does not matter if rich got richer. What matters is the tax-system that (at least under Trump) favors the rich and produces growing inequality.
> 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?
A common one on HN is cryptocurrency energy use. If crypto didn't exist that energy would have been "wasted" on something else.
> 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?
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 would say it's a combination of zero sum and non-zero sum. If we can allocate resources better, both the poor and the rich can get richer by producing more. But at the same time how profits are distributed is a zero sum game.
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…
But anyways, that's not how people build their model of fairness.
They look at their boss, making much money,often of their good work, while giving them the bare minimum he could get away with.
They look at bezos treating employees like cattle, and not paying taxes.
They look at their landlord, "killing them" with rent. And let's not talk about buying a house.
They look at rich guys, getting many women easily. While they struggle.
Should they really feel the rich don't play a zero sum game?
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.
There is a tautological zero-sum ordering in relative wealth, but it's not clear that correlates to anything meaningful to vast majority of people.
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.