by Tim Harding
(An edited version of this article was published in
“The Skeptic” Vol 32, No. 4, December 2012)
In game theory, ‘zero-sum’ describes a game where one player’s gain is a loss to other players; and the total amount of the available money or playing chips is fixed. A logical fallacy often occurs when this particular game theory is applied to real life economic or political discussions amongst non-economists – leading to false beliefs that the amount of wealth or jobs in the economy is fixed.
This mistaken view is illustrated by expressions such as ‘a larger slice of the pie’, which imply that ‘the pie’ has a fixed size and that net welfare cannot be improved by growing a bigger pie. That is, that people can only become richer by making others poorer; or that increasing labour productivity or immigration causes unemployment. In economics, this is…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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