The Left and the Zero Sum
When I published my logic book, “How to Win Every Argument,” I said that if fallacies were assigned to nations, the English would have the Argumentum ad Temperantiam, which falsely attributes superiority to a middle way in the absence of supporting argument or evidence. I remarked that if one group in a pub was arguing that two plus two equals four, while another group argued that it made six, an Englishman might conclude that the answer was probably about five. Moderation in all things, even accuracy.
If fallacies were instead assigned across the political spectrum, the Left would have the Zero Sum Game fallacy. This is the fallacy that falsely supposes something to be limited in supply when in fact it is not. Some have dubbed it the Pizza Pie fallacy, because a pizza pie is limited in size, and if some take a larger share, there is less left for others. The fallacy lies in extending this reasoning to things that are not limited in size.
Many on the Left apply this to wealth, supposing that some people are poor because others are rich. They suppose that a small number of very rich people are somehow making the rest of the world poorer by taking too large a share of a fixed supply. The reality is that the world’s wealth is not limited, and that wealth is created every day. When people trade and exchange both sides give what they value less in return for what they value more, and both have greater value than they had. The trade takes place because both people gain; this is how wealth is created.
Some on the Left suppose that rich nations became rich by taking wealth from others, whereas the reality is that they became rich by creating wealth through trade and exchange. Some also claim that poorer countries can only become richer if the world’s wealth, supposedly in fixed supply, is “shared out more equally.” Poverty is neither man-made, nor is it caused by wealth. It was the default condition for most of humankind for hundreds of millennia. It was only when we discovered how to manufacture productively and to trade and exchange with others that we climbed out of it, as more are doing every year.
The presence of a few billionaires does not make the rest of the world poorer. Indeed, they probably makes it richer by heading up corporations that add value to people lives by giving them new opportunities. Oxfam, which once was the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, dedicated to the worthy cause of providing food to those hit by famine, has fallen head over heels into the Zero Sum trap. Their new report, “The Inequality Virus,” blames the rich for the poverty of the poor worldwide.
“This inequality is the product of a flawed and exploitative economic system, which has its roots in neoliberal economics and the capture of politics by elites. It has exploited and exacerbated entrenched systems of inequality and oppression, namely patriarchy and structural racism, ingrained in white supremacy. These systems are the root causes of injustice and poverty.”
This is simply wrongheaded on all counts. “These systems” are not the root causes of injustice and poverty. It is lack of economic opportunity that perpetuates such poverty as remains worldwide, for a diminishing proportion of humanity. Globalization has enabled billions in poorer countries to enter the world market and to trade their produce and their labour with people in richer ones. It is by buying their produce and employing their labour that richer people have helped them up the ladder, not by transferring to them more of a fixed supply of wealth. Wealth is infinite, and there is no limit to the amount that can be created. The important thing is not to share it out on a more equal basis, but to enable more people every year to gain more of it by creating more of it. It is not a zero sum game.