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AndrewKemendo • yesterday at 4:08 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

Capitalism is 100% a zero sum game and capitalists love to try to pretend that it’s not

The fact of resource extraction from society and externalities like pollution not being counted by capitalist because they “can’t count them “and just bundle them as externalities demonstrably destroy any concept of non-zero sum game

There are limited resources on the planet and that’s the sum.

If you want to take it even further the extraction pace is even more important than the total gross amount of resources because of inefficient allocation and distribution processes

So no the universe itself is zero some we’re not creating more Mattar and especially in the context of humans on earth the functional and numerical reality is zero sum

Replies

MontyCarloHall • yesterday at 4:16 PM

>The fact of resource extraction from society and externalities like pollution not being counted by capitalist because they "can’t count them" and just bundle them as externalities demonstrably destroy any concept of non-zero sum game

The article explicitly addresses this:

   The fact that Capitalism is non-zero-sum doesn't mean it is necessarily positive-sum. An economy that gets out of balance can produce very negative results (which are still non-zero). Cons of capitalism: — Can not be relied on to provide adequate social services, including healthcare and education. — Can be expected to run at a cost to externalities like the environment. — Can produce products that are detrimental to well-being.
Based on your other comment [0], it seems you have a bad-faith axe to grind against this site.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434065

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Xirdus • yesterday at 4:27 PM

That's a very reductionist view of economy. For starters, it ignores the entire services sector, which is like half of GDP of most developed capitalist countries. Services are an extremely clear example of positive sum - no resources disappeared from the world, as much money was gained as was spent, but on top of it somebody got something of value.

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