Life is Not a Zero-Sum Game

The haves vs. the have-nots. The majority vs. the minority. Good vs. evil. It seems like everything in life is turned into a conflict between two forces where one has to win and the other has to lose. Unfortunately, this taps into deep human psychology regarding everything from our fight-or-flight response to our tendency toward tribalism to feel a sense of belonging to a group. The in-group/out-group dynamic is important to everything from ethical behavior to culture to group safety. And it is true that there is a lot of competition in the world. But is there as much as it seems? Not in reality.

There are two forms of relationships in life: competition and cooperation. Most people think of competition in the sense of “survival of the fittest” of people fighting over resources such as food, water, space/territory, and mates. But people forget about the explicit and implicit cooperation occurring all of the time that allows all parties to be better off. Everyone drives on one side of the road to get where they are going. People agree to rules in sports and mostly only bend the rules enough to gain an advantage without appearing like they’ve broken them. Business partners only agree to move forward if they feel they are both benefitting. There is much more cooperation in society than competition nowadays as people behave in ways that benefit more than themselves.

This idea that life is a zero-sum game comes from some real examples such as betting and sports along with the perception of some people benefitting at other expense in business and life. And there is no doubt that there are real examples of zero-sum situations such as theft. But most of the time, everyone benefits through cooperative behaviors: trade, families, neighborhoods, theaters, and lines are all examples of cooperation that leads to better outcomes for all. Two parties agree to exchange goods, services, or currency so that they are both better off. Families live together and work out their differences so that they can all grow and thrive. Neighborhoods agree to rules to keep the area beautiful and relatively quiet. People watching a movie, stand-up comedian, or stage play agree to sit and stay quiet so that everyone can see and hear the performance. When people violate those rules, people enforce them to keep the peace and eliminate chaos. This cooperation helps with the safety and well-being of the group.

In a civilized society, the truth is that everyone behaves in ways that are mutually beneficial. The simple act of not harming others while living your life gives people the ability to live their lives with less fear and protective actions. But voluntary trade leaves both parties better off and allows them to specialize in what they do best so that the overall output of all parties is greater than if they did everything themselves. This is the definition of a positive-sum game: each party is better off and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

In fact, humans cooperate so much today that even our competition is cooperative. In a dog-eat-dog world, life forms fight to stay alive and can come at you any time in any way. But in a cooperative world, competitions are organized with rules that everyone follows with the understanding that transgressors are punished by the group. Competition is safe in that it stops when someone is injured. People wear protective gear to protect themselves and their opponents and even follow unwritten rules (example: don’t steal bases when you have a significant lead in baseball) to behave in a “sportsmanlike” manner. These rules ensure that harm is minimized by both parties even in the zero-sum game of a sport with winners and losers. People want to outperform their competition, not hurt or kill them.

So when you think that the world or other people are out to get you, remember that people are both selfish and social: they want benefit for themselves, but they wouldn’t want someone else to be significantly worse off due to their behavior in most cases. Even thieves rationalize their actions by saying its “okay because the person is rich”—thus absolving them of the guilt of making someone else worse off because it didn’t put them to the point of being unable to feed themselves or their families. Even most criminals have codes for how to treat people so that they can rationalize their behavior.

The important takeaway here is two-fold: cooperation is beneficial and you can make the most progress in your life by ensuring that others benefit from your actions as well as yourself. If you agree to do something in exchange for something else or for a shared outcome that benefits both parties, you are getting more value than you could by yourself and, therefore, are breaking the zero-sum game. Just as important, if you want some benefit or outcome in life, you can switch your mindset for how you can get someone else to give you what you want and start asking yourself how you can benefit others to have the benefit you need reciprocated to you out of gratitude and assurance of mutual benefit.

The truth is that as people’s lives get better, they realize how important it is for everyone to be better off—how others’ prosperity benefits them. As a result, they create jobs, help the homeless, donate to charity, and partake in fair trade. People want everyone to live happy, prosperous lives (sometimes barring people who did something terrible to them, of course).

So if this is true, then why do people still feel like life is a zero-sum game (even accounting for theft and other obvious, unethical zero-sum actions)? Well, three reasons:

• Effort – Some people work harder than others and do better, but the people who don’t work as hard just see the result and want the same outcome without the same effort.
• Risk/Reward – Some people take more risk in their lives and, when the benefits pay off, others wish they would get the same outcome without taking on that risk.
• Luck – Sometimes, good things happen at random and so it seems unfair that people benefit for no reason when others work hard and don’t see the same results.

Of course, sometimes things happen to people and because life events don’t follow ethical rules, it could seem that some people win and lose for no reason. Other times, someone might think that another person didn’t deserve the promotion, salary, or outcomes they received because there was seemingly equal effort from their perspective.

Unfortunately, it is hard to objectively measure effort, risk, and luck—especially when the one observing is comparing himself or herself against the other person and his or her bias creeps in. But what anyone can say definitively looking at trends from a societal view is that cooperation, trade, effort, and calculated risks taken to attain a positive outcome are all net positives for society and make everyone better off as a result—even if it’s someone living on the street who has the ability to do so without being attacked because of the police system that is paid for by taxpayers who earned their money doing business. The system is set up to enable people to be as free to pursue their own goals in a way that benefits others while they are doing so.

Are there cheaters and rule-breakers in this world that benefit at others’ expense? Of course. But most of the world is cooperative, so the next time you think the world is rigged against you, it will benefit you to remember the positive-sum games happening all over the world all of the time. People want to cooperate toward shared goals knowing the greater outcome that will be attained as a result, so if you join people in their shared goals, you will see the power of mutual benefit in action as they want to help you succeed since your win is their win.