One of my favorites is the economy. People constantly talk about there only being a finite number of resources or money. While this is true, there is not a finite amount of wealth. The whole point of an economy is to generate new wealth and goods. Inventions and innovations. It is easy to see when you take the historical perspective, that the vast majority of us are living much better off than those a hundred years ago and amazingly better than those of just a thousand years.
The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
51–60 of 152 posts
Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
#52"People sometimes view gender hierarchies in the workplace as being zero-sum, which can cause them to be more opposed to gender-fair policies." Can someone explain why this isnt zero sum? If the hierarchy moves from being women at the bottom, men at the top to a fair mix, the 'gains' that women make are balanced out by 'losses' for the men. There isn't extra power/prestige/influence introduced to the system by being…
You can still have a hierarchy and the sum of the individuals within that hierarchy does not need to add to zero. It can definitely be positive.
There's many joking examples about governments/lawyers/insert hated group making tasks more difficult or harder. This would be a negative value person and potentially a negative sum hierarchy.
Conversely we can see groups of people working together and forming coalitions that have better payoffs than what the individual members could achieve on their own (like a union coming together and fighting for workers rights. Which can also lead to a more productive business that profits more, thus meaning the boss also profits).
Tldr: Just because someone has a positive worth doesn't mean someone has a negative worth.
Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
#53I see people interpret personal comfort as zero sum and it drives me nuts. Like somehow other people being safe and comfortable devalues ones own safety and comfort.
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...
Protip: please don't say "humans" when you can just say 'people', or even 'folks'! It makes you sound a lot more, well, human, and less like a poorly-programmed, clunky robot.
Related: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/style-guide-not-soundi...
Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Technically yes, but the key difference is that those index funds are equally available to rich and poor, and the returns are the same for everyone (mostly). Contrast that with the plethora of wealth-increasing opportunities that are not available without a large initial investment or the connections or power that comes with existing wealth.
They are technically available to the poor but in practice many people can't afford to tie up their money for long periods.
If they're forced to take their money out of the fund due to their circumstances, then they could actually lose a lot of it (an economic downturn makes both situations more likely to occur at the same time). Whereas someone who is well off only loses money on paper and can afford to hold on to their investment until the economy improves.
In short, index funds are a bad investment unless you're well off enough that you won't need the money invested. At least not for a long time.
Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
>Well labour prices (for whatever the industry is) is driven by market forces. [...] If the market rate is artificially inflated [...] First, are all markets just markets? Second, what if the market rate is artificially depressed - what if it is systemically artificially depressed? Do market expectations align with an appropriate distribution of wealth to labour under conditions where the first is false or the second…
> First, are all markets just markets?
I am not sure what you mean by this.
> Second, what if the market rate is artificially depressed - what if it is systemically artificially depressed?
Regarding artificial depression. Well this is where we get into some somewhat controversial territory.
Some will argue that immigration artificially depresses wages as you can artificially increase the supply of labour and thus drive down the prices. Those that are conspiratorially minded would claim that large companies would make efforts to lobby Political parties to have a more open doors policy on immigration.
Now there is some evidence of the market rate being depressed due to immigration e.g. construction wages have increased in the UK after the "Leave Vote".
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/24/constructio...
But I remember reading about a Bank of England report which is somewhat recent and this is the published paper:
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2015/the-impac...
However the stats themselves go over my head. I have google'd around for a simplified explanation (because I don't trust any of the newspapers to be honest as they will each push their own agenda). It appears that the effect on a native workers on minimum wage would have only lost less than a penny per hour due to immigration. A penny per hour is a rounding error for most people.
However that seems to be at Odds at what we have seen recently with construction.
So I don't know what to think tbh and I won't claim to be any definitive authority on the matter.
> Do market expectations align with an appropriate distribution of wealth to labour under conditions where the first is false or the second is true?
Sorry it isn't clear what you are asking me to compare.
Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
#56One of my favorites is the economy. People constantly talk about there only being a finite number of resources or money. While this is true, there is not a finite amount of wealth. The whole point of an economy is to generate new wealth and goods. Inventions and innovations. It is easy to see when you take the historical perspective, that the vast majority of us are living much better off than those a hundred years a…
Absolutely. This is also a huge problem in trade. Trump, for example sees trade in zero-sum terms, where if China and Europe are doing well, that's proof that America is losing.
Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
#57Modern Life is so complex. 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.
It's not just that. Zero sum let's you shift blame for your own failures. You can say someone else took it from you (nefariously). When the game is positive sum, the cause of failure must be internal. You just couldn't do it and there's nobody to blame but you. A lot of people can't handle this. Entire philosophies and like outlooks are driven by this. The external locus of control.
I disagree that a positive sum game implies an internal cause of failure. Easiest example is inflation. You can be gaining positive ground, but not quickly enough to outrun the entity outside of your control who can wipe out your assets unless you stay ahead of the curve.
This is true for many people who didn’t invest in the right capital such as certain real estate, equities, or intellectual property, as efficiency and automation gains means less of the labor is needed.
One can claim it’s an internal failure to not invest in the right things, but it’s not reasonable to expect everyone to have that kind of foresight.
Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
#58> 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…
When it comes to products, marketing is also one of those dimensions, and can easily swamp the others. It's a good assumption that if you hold price steady, the more marketing, the worse the product. We don't see this because it is often canceled out by economies of scale, which of course are a result of size, and the larger the relative size, the higher amount of marketing as compared to other brands.
At the same production scale, you should expect the most marketed product to be the worst.
Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
#59> 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…
Doesn't open source software kind of throw a spanner in this idea? In quite a few fields, the best option could be released for free and made by a team of volunteers, and if so, it would logically be better than its paid alternatives in pretty much every possible way.
Re: The Zero-Sum Bias: When people think that everything is a competition
#60"People sometimes view gender hierarchies in the workplace as being zero-sum, which can cause them to be more opposed to gender-fair policies." Can someone explain why this isnt zero sum? If the hierarchy moves from being women at the bottom, men at the top to a fair mix, the 'gains' that women make are balanced out by 'losses' for the men. There isn't extra power/prestige/influence introduced to the system by being…
You can still have a hierarchy and the sum of the individuals within that hierarchy does not need to add to zero. It can definitely be positive. There's many joking examples about governments/lawyers/insert hated group making tasks more difficult or harder. This would be a negative value person and potentially a negative sum hierarchy. Conversely we can see groups of people working together and forming coalitions tha…
That's just the benefit of working as a group though.
Bob, Bill, Jill and Joan are already working as a group when Bob and Bill are the bosses. If we make Bill and Jill the bosses we don't inherently gain anything from that. Yes Jill and Joan might work better because they feel appreciated, equally though Bill and Bob could work worse because they've lost something. Hell Joan could still be annoyed because she didn't get the bosses job.