Zero-sum cruelty.
While there are many ways to describe the recent trend in our world, that sums it up best to me. A mixture of zero-sum thinking and a near-gleeful embrace of cruelty has filtered horizontally through social media and from the top down amid the second Trump Administration, which – given U.S. cultural, economic, political, and military power – has had a significant influence on the rest of the world.
Consider Donald Trump’s approach to trade. He believes someone must always be taking advantage of someone else. With this worldview, if you’re not robbing your trading partner, your trading partner is robbing you. Rather than helping those who are weak, weakness should be exploited. Rather than expecting restraint and wise judgment from the strong, the strong should be unleashed to do whatever they want. It’s reminiscent of Thuycidides’ famous quote, “the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must”.
Kirk LaPointe, vice president in the office of the chair at Fulmer & Company, made this point about the U.S. President in BIV.com:
“He possesses what is known academically as a zero-sum worldview—for one party to win, another must lose, so there is never a win-win. Social research has shown that inexperienced or competitive negotiators default to this model, leading to suboptimal outcomes. Trump’s obsession with bilateral trade deficits—even if economists overwhelmingly view them as incomplete measures of national economic health—fit perfectly within this. A trade deficit is a sign the U.S. was being “ripped off,” so tariffs are the retaliation, along with a pretension that we in Canada—and not American importers and consumers—ultimately pay for them.”
And these ‘suboptimal outcomes’ are indeed beginning to manifest as noted by Rogé Karma in The Atlantic on August 1st:
“The Trump economy doesn’t look so hot after all. This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released revised data showing that, over the past three months, the U.S. labor market experienced its worst quarter since 2010, other than during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. The timing was awkward. Hours earlier, President Donald Trump had announced a huge new slate of tariffs, set to take effect next week. He’d been emboldened by the fact that the economy had remained strong until now despite economists’ warnings—a fact that turned out not to be a fact at all.”
Despite the evidence showing the negative outcome of such transactional policies, the cynical zero-sum worldview is often justified as being ‘hard-nosed’ or ‘realistic’ about dealing with the supposed ‘dog-eat-dog world.’ Accompanying this guise of realism is the idea that everyone should ‘know their place’ and submit to their role in the dominance hierarchy since ‘that’s just the way things are’ – something we often see from those who expect Canada and other nations to just submit to Trump’s rapidly shifting demands. This can create a sense that the trend of zero-sum thinking and cruelty is inevitable, and that to think otherwise is hopelessly naive.
But is this actually true?
Does the zero-sum worldview accurately describe the best way for individuals and societies to flourish, or is a win-win perspective more in line with reality?
In this piece, I argue that it’s the latter.
The benefits of cooperation
While it is often said that humans are a warlike species, the evidence points to cooperation – rather than confrontation – being the norm.
In a 2003 paper titled “The Evolution of Strong Reciprocity: Cooperation in Heterogeneous
Populations,” Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis proposed that cooperation – and the punishment of those who violate norms that benefit the group – is deeply ingrained in human nature. You can read the abstract of their paper below:
“How do human groups maintain a high level of cooperation despite a low level of genetic relatedness among group members? We suggest that many humans have a predisposition to punish those who violate group-beneficial norms, even when this imposes a fitness cost on the punisher. Such altruistic punishment is widely observed to sustain high levels of cooperation in behavioral experiments and in natural settings.
We offer a model of cooperation and punishment that we call strong reciprocity: where members of a group benefit from mutual adherence to a social norm, strong reciprocators obey the norm and punish its violators, even though as a result they receive lower payoffs than other group members, such as selfish agents who violate the norm and do not punish, and pure cooperators who adhere to the norm but free-ride by never punishing. Our agent-based simulations show that, under assumptions approximating likely human environments over the 100,000 years prior to the domestication of animals and plants, the proliferation of strong reciprocators when initially rare is highly likely, and that substantial frequencies of all three behavioral types can be sustained in a population. As a result, high levels of cooperation are sustained. Our results do not require that group members be related or that group extinctions occur.”
Elinor Ostrom, in a 1990 paper, explored how the ‘tragedy of the commons, ‘ ‘collective action problems,’ and ‘prisoner’s dilemmas’ can be mitigated through cooperation even without external threats or coercion.
A 2024 study by Isaac Carey showed a link between the number of people in a country agreeing with the statement “most people can be trusted,” and higher per capita GDP in that nation:
This makes intuitive sense. If you always assumed you were being taken advantage of, it would be tough to participate in any economic activity. Even filling up the tank at the gas station requires trusting that the gas station isn’t lying about the gas quality and that the pump is accurate. Going to a restaurant requires trusting that your food is adequately cooked and isn’t poisoned. Paying a bill online requires assuming that the website you use is secure. While we must be vigilant and aware of our surroundings, the amount of energy it would take to scrutinize every economic transaction in the minutest detail would detract from our quality of life and negatively impact our productivity.
Wherever you are now, take a moment to think about all the cooperation occurring around you. Think of all the stores and companies where employees are working together. Think of the closest airport and the astounding fact that such a complex operation goes off without a hitch almost every day. Think of the people on the roads who have to trust that someone else isn’t going to swerve into their lane. Think of the cooperation necessary for even one car to be built, let alone thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions. Think of all the people who had to work together to make it possible for you to read these words on a screen.
When looked at this way, we can see that our world is already a deeply complex and cooperative place. It only seems otherwise because acts of violence and people taking advantage of each other are proportionally rare and thus stand out from the cooperative norm.
Watching the news, it’s easy to think everything is getting worse all the time. However, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker’s research has shown that humans are becoming less violent over time, and that cruelty and injustice have been in long-term decline:
The benefits of trade
At a time when free and open trade (one of the chief forms of complex human cooperation) is under threat, it’s easy to forget that trade is beneficial, increasing overall wealth, reducing poverty, and generally making all of us better off. This isn’t simply referring to trade between nations, but also at a much more local level. One person focusing on farming is more efficient than someone splitting their time between farming and practicing law. Specialization and comparative advantage are a key foundation of civilization, and depend upon trusting others to do their jobs as others trust us to do ours.
An optimistic view of the future
Given the evidence in favour of cooperation and trade, we can recognize that the zero-sum worldview does not accurately describe reality. Rather, we can adopt an optimistic view that acknowledges the potential for win-win situations, where life can indeed improve for everyone. You winning doesn’t mean I lose.
This is a point made by Rabbi Lapin in the book “Though Shalt Prosper”:
“Rabbi Lapin explains that the economy isn’t like a pie where getting a bigger slice means someone else gets less. Instead, it’s like a candle – when you light another candle from yours, you don’t lose any light; you simply create more brightness in the room. This perfectly captures how wealth generation actually works. When Apple creates innovative products people want to buy, their success doesn’t make others poorer. Their value increases because they’ve created something new that adds to the overall economy.”
The same is true across many areas of human life. Two people having a loving relationship don’t extract love from the world. Treating someone with kindness doesn’t deplete a ‘kindness reserve.’ We can give to the world without losing, and in doing so, we can make a better world. This isn’t naive or weak. Instead, it aligns with the long sweep of human history, focusing on the best aspects of human nature – our ability to cooperate, our willingness to trust, and in doing so, achieve tremendous things.
Spencer Fernando
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