That picture above, as far as I am concerned, depicts a very good looking pie! And isn't this absolutely obvious: If I get a big piece of that pie (the kind I want) you'll get a smaller one?
You can click this link right here to see what the "Conceptually" website has to say about that. You might also try this link, to see if The New York Times will let you read a column by David Brooks, who suggests that the assumption I outline above may not, in fact, be a correct way to understand the world. Here's an excerpt from that David Brooks' column:
Sometimes social revolutions emerge from ordinary ideas. In the 17th and 18th centuries, thinkers like William Petty, David Hume and Adam Smith popularized a concept called “division of labor.” It’s a simple notion. If I specialize in doing what I’m good at, and you specialize in what you’re good at, and we exchange what we’ve each made, then we’ll both be more productive and better off than if we tried to be self-sufficient.It seems banal, but division of labor was part of a constellation of ideas that liberated our civilization from the savage grip of zero-sum thinking. For millenniums before that, economic growth had been basically stagnant. Many people simply assumed that the supply of wealth was finite. If I’m going to get more of it, it will be the result of conquering you and stealing what you have. In a zero-sum mind-set, the basic logic of life is dog-eat-dog, conquer or be conquered. Property is theft. Predators win.Division of labor, on the other hand, and the other principles that underlie modern capitalism, encouraged a positive-sum mind-set. According to this way of thinking, the good of others multiplies my own good. Steve Jobs got to enjoy a fortune, but I get to enjoy the Mac I’m now typing on and tens of thousands get to enjoy the jobs he helped create.In this kind of society, life is not about conquest and domination but regulated competition and voluntary exchange. Not about antagonism but interdependence. In this kind of marketplace, Walter Lippmann wrote in the late 1930s, “the vista was opened at the end of which men could see the possibility of the Good Society on this earth.”
David Brooks is too "saccharine" for many. He's too "goody-goody." Let's admit it, the Brooks' critics say; more pie for me means less pie for you. And vice versa - don't forget that! Take it from a former president (you know the one I am talking about). All that stuff I just reproduced from Brooks' column is nothing but "liberal hype." There are "winners," and there are "losers," and I know that the real "winners" get the whole pie!
Right?
Well, maybe not. If the phrase that I often repeat in these blog postings is an actual statement of the truth (and is not just some kind of pious pontificating), then the fact that "we are all in this together" testifies to the reality of what Brooks is telling us - or is trying to tell us.
I think that Brooks is right, and we'd better start shooting for a "Positive-Sum" world!
What if the problem IS the "positive sum mindset" itself? At least, materially speaking. See "The Degrowth Conundrum" in "A Friendly Critique of the Degrowth Movement." What if the supply of wealth IS finite (at least, materially speaking)? And what if property IS theft? I know you don't agree with all that Brooks is saying, but that might be something to address in a future post.
ReplyDeleteThe pie (our earth) IS finite, after all -- and the more of it that is monopolized (or contaminated) by a few, the less of it IS available for the rest of us!
What if the problem IS the "positive sum mindset" itself? At least, materially speaking. See e.g. the section that begins "The Degrowth Conundrum" in "A Friendly Critique of the Degrowth Movement." What if the supply of wealth IS finite (at least, materially speaking)? And what if property IS theft? I know you don't agree with all that Brooks is saying, but that might be something to address in a future post.
ReplyDeleteThe pie (our earth) IS finite, after all -- and the more of it that is monopolized (or contaminated) by a few, the less of it IS available for the rest of us!
Thank you, Derede! As I hope you know, I completely agree that a “positive sum mindset,” if that is taken to mean “more is better,” is absolutely the wrong way to think about how we need to live. That isn’t what Brooks is talking about, I think, but you are right that this could be misconstrued, as, I guess, my blog posting could be misconstrued, too. Thanks for the reference to the Medium article and its friendly critique of the “degrowth” movement. Definitely worth a future comment! Here is an earlier blog posting, as an antidote to today - https://www.gapatton.net/2024/05/136-less-is-more.html
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