Zero Sum Vs. Positive Sum

Fancy Hi-Fi topics. (Btw, My filters are off.)

I used to read a lot while stuck at home during the COVID era (aka unemployed), where I tried learning anything and everything with a lot of time and no direction binding me.

I was suggested to read a self-help book. I rarely pick these up myself, all churning the same bullshit with a few more fancy terms twisting the simple concepts not applicable to anyone because everyone is a little universe in themselves and all you can advise anyone is to just keep moving and be kind while others are trying to move.

To my surprise, it was quite refreshing in some ways, and one concept I learned has stuck with me and makes sense every day, helping me not hate a lot of people in my MBA.

The book was “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant” and the topic he introduced was the zero sum game we all keep on playing in different niches unless one day this light dawns on us: “Why are we such assholes to each other?” . We think there are limited pieces of pie,and you surely want the biggest one, don’t you?(uhu..uhu p…com……)

I agree there are indeed limited pieces of THIS pie—this job, this college, this promotion, bleh bleh……..

The one that gets everyone , even me, is something better explained by the song I attached-

Status: social hierarchy is the one suggested by him and played across all strata of society (exactly why I dislike being a social being).But you have to live with people , see the game they are playing understand it, make your move , win the game, and move on .

How to move on, though? Do you even want to? Some people find putting others down extremely thrilling , this is not for you. Stop reading here.

I believe this is where the concept of the positive sum game comes in—creating a new pie from the given resources—so a larger cohort can have a share of it. This is much harder than just scrounging for leftovers and being content with the jobs we MBAs are going to do.

Naval stated this as:

Wealth creation: I know, that sounds extremely pompous; try to hear him out.

Wealth is the thing that you want. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep. Wealth is the factory, the robots, that’s cranking out things. Wealth is the computer program that’s running at night, that’s serving other customers. Wealth is even money in the bank that is being reinvested into other assets, and into other businesses.

Creating something like a business will always provide significantly greater leverage than vying for already limited resources.

On the other side, every new business idea will also kill the old one; we can see that happen already—most of the blue-collar rote jobs can be automated—but in my humble opinion, a lot of new jobs will also be provided, albeit in different forms, thus more pieces of the pie. Ask Mr. Ambani.

Or in simpler terms , companionship , collaboration , business creation , building products, and so on will help a person who wants to move away from the zero-sum game in doing so , It does not mean we will not have competition at all; that’s human nature, but the terms can be a lot less selfish . This is my limited understanding of the same.

I might have confused you more than before , or maybe this doesn’t bother you. In any case, I would love to hear you out.!

Putting my picture as a hook, as this might have been a hard read :P

I put an entire day into this when I could have trekked , meh!