Zero-Sum versus Collaborative Gain

by Raven

The term “zero-sum” comes from game theory where it is used to describe a game or situation where one person’s gain can only come with another person’s loss, that is the results can be described by a positive number and a negative number which collectively equal zero.  Psychologists are now talking about a “zero-sum mindset” where a person “is convinced that success in any and all domains of life can only be achieved at the cost of someone else’s failure. By definition – win-win situations don’t exist in such a world.”

This explains the behavior of many people described as conservatives and sometimes as bigots.  They believe in “winners and losers” and think that if other people get ahead, they will fall behind.   Heather McGhee has written a book, The Sum of Us, pointing out how often racism comes from buying into the zero-sum paradigm as well as how often it backfires, costing white folks almost as much as people of color.  (Her classic example, which is why there is a picture of a kid jumping into a swimming pool on the cover of many editions, is that the response of many towns when they were told that everyone had to be let into the pools, was to close the pools, which certainly kept black children from swimming with white children, but also meant that neither black kids nor white kids had public pools to swim in.)

Heather McGhee talks about the opposite of zero-sum being what she calls the “Solidarity Dividend”.  I’m going to call it “Collaborative Gain”. It’s the idea that by working together and sharing together, we collectively benefit–all of us gain.

This is certainly the idea behind income-sharing communities.  From a zero-sum perspective, income-sharing makes no sense.  What if people contribute different amounts?  Don’t the people who contribute less make gains at the expense of people who contribute more?

Of course that assumes that economic gains are the only gains that matter.  I knew of a woman, a lawyer, who made a six-figure salary, who was asked what she got out of living in an income-sharing community.  She was a single mother who pointed out that her kids were taken care of, she came home every night to a clean house and home cooked meals, and she got to live with a bunch of people that she liked.

When we all work together and share with one another–and even live together, we can all benefit.  It’s the zero-sum mentality that keeps us from seeing how much we gain by collaborating with each other to create better ways of living. I think that income-sharing communities are just one example.