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Comment by jsprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

For any given period of time, the game is zero-sum.

For example, if there is one apple, either you can have it, or I can have it.

Where is the non-zero-sum game?

You could plant an apple tree. That's definitely not zero-sum. After that you could could invent better ways to ship apples so that more people can enjoy them. Or cross breed them to provide different types of apples for different uses and tastes. You could make cider from the leftover apples instead of throwing them away, so that less is wasted. In other words, there are tons of ways to make better use of what we have, or create new things. The economy is not zero-sum.

PG has a nice essay that explains this: http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html - in particular "the pie fallacy".

You might be referring to the 'rivalry' of goods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics) - but that's for one good at one time, not for the economy as a whole.

Transplanting an apple tree doesn't add more apples, it just produces apples somewhere else. Planting apple seeds doesn't really produce more apples either, you need to have an already available tree that you can graft apple tree cuttings onto.

Even if you do get a brand new apple tree, it still takes some amount of time (at least a year, though likely much more) before you get any additional apples. So, the game 15 years from now may have more apples available, but the current game has a finite amount of apples available to the participants.

I don't think you understand what it means in the sense of economics then.

It is not "all the available goods in one precise instant of time". It's how people interact in the economy over time.

Compare and contrast the creation of an apple orchard with, say, going on a raid to the neighboring village's apple orchard, stealing all their apples, and cutting down all their trees. That's a negative-sum game. Looking at the entire economy, everyone is poorer, even if the raiders temporarily get some more apples. They haven't created any wealth, though; they've destroyed it.

Since labor is not instantaneous - planting a crop and waiting for it to grow takes time - writing code takes time - building a car takes time - economists talk about those interactions as non zero-sum. The total amount of goods at any one instant in time is some other measure.

So, you are saying that even though the current game is zero-sum, at some future point in time, we can consider it not zero-sum?

How does this not violate several laws of conservation?

No, I'm saying you're very confused about the generally accepted meanings of those terms in economics.

The very meaning of 'game' implies one or more moves by each player.

A photo of a chess board does not a chess game make, in other words.

> How does this not violate several laws of conservation?

That's physics, not economics. We're not talking about the total mass or energy or something in a system. Physics does not care if an apple tree produces apples for people to eat; people do.

Did economics somehow escape physics? The economy is exactly the transference of mass and energy in a system. The size of the game may increase over time, but that doesn't mean the sum of all transactions is not still 0.

Maybe you could supply a definition of what you are talking about?

I let you have the apple and you owe me 1.5 apples at some later point.

You value the apple more then getting 1.5 apples later I value getting 1.5 apples later more than I value getting the apple now

You got something, I'll get something.

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