Play Positive Sum Games
Be a pie grower. And then find others like you.
Humans aren’t wired for abundance. We’re wired for scarcity.
It’s not hard to understand why. For most of human history, scarcity was the norm. Never enough food or shelter. If a neighboring tribe raided our tents, we lost. It was a zero sum world. For us to win, someone else had to lose.
But technology changed all that. At least it should have. Now we have markets and interdependence and globalization and more potential for leverage. We can do more with less.
And as a result, wired behaviors that helped us survive for millennia don’t work as well anymore.
Instead of raiding tents, we can create stuff. Grain, books, deals, businesses. And the more we create for ourselves, the more we can give to others.
Trading > Raiding.
We can grow the pie.
We do better when we see the world as a positive sum game. Love begets love. Trust begets trust. Cooperation begets cooperation.
Quick aside: My weekly email gained 51 new subscribers last month. If you’re new here, welcome. And if you shared or forwarded one of my articles, thank you. That’s cool.
- Ryan
Others might not share our view. We’re wired for scarcity. A client, business partner, or friend may see the pie as limited, and when we play games with short-term zero sum people, we may get burned. Taken advantage of. Exploited. Raided.
But that’s okay in the long term. Getting burned now and again is the only way to find long-term cooperators. And that’s who we want to find. We want to play long-term games with long-term people.
Pie growers.
We should fight against schadenfreude and stamp out self-defeating wired behaviors like revenge and jealousy. Not just out of altruism or moral obligation, but because seeing the world as a positive sum game is in our personal long-term interest.
It’s better for humanity. And for us personally.
It helps us find the other pie growers.
