this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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You couldn't possibly be more wrong. Whenever two people engage in a transaction and walk away happy, value has been created. A zero sum game would be if the economy were a pie of static shape, where if you have more then I have less. But it isn't like that. The pie grows, and every time there is an equitable transaction with value being created, the pie gets bigger and everyone is better off. That's the opposite of a zero sum game.
The Pie is of static shape, and that shape is all the resource planet is holding, and any part party who has more of those ressources means others will have less, the economy 'wealth" of the british empire didn't grow because it has engaged in equitable transaction with the colonised world (you can never have equitable __ insert something here __ ), they needed more ressources to grow and those ressources were extracted elsewhere
Just the same how the rich countries today aren't rich because they engage in equitable transactions with the poor world, but because the mecanisme that are put in place makes so those "equitable transactions" favours the hoarding of wealth on one side more than the other.
I'm not interested in a back and forth internet flame war about this, so I'll just say you are straight up wrong about economics being a zero sum game. This is a very common fallacy that somehow persists, most likely because we are all being squeezed by our corporate overlords for everything we are worth. But that is different from a zero sum game.
If you're interested then you should google "economics zero sum game fallacy" and learn a bit. Then come back if you are interested in engaging in some more discussion in good faith.