| There is a growing belief today that all gains must come at someone else’s expense. That is, in order to win, someone else must lose.
This is the zero-sum mindset. As Stefanie Stantcheva, writing in The Economist in her article “To understand America today, study the zero-sum mindset” it now permeates not just politics but everyday life, business, and culture. In the wake of hypercompetition and the resultant understanding that there will be winners and losers, the idea of winning has come to require a certain amount of necessary suffering on the part of the losers. The same thinking is evident in on an increasingly polarised political landscape made up of “them” and “us”, with both sides talking past each other and most of the time neither side listening to the other. We might find comfort in the simplicity the mindset offers. In neatly dividing the world into winners and losers, it frames power, wealth, or safety as inherently limited. But in the long term, it corrodes trust, breeds resentment, and prevents the kind of cooperation needed to solve complex problems. In The Power of Wellbeing, I argue for a different lens: one based on General Wellbeing (GWB)—a framework that focuses on trust, equity, and the collective flourishing of people and communities. Whereas GDP is a quantifiable number that often requires sacrifices to show its benefits, GWB is a holistic, qualitative metric. When the goal is GWB, one can see that progress doesn’t need to be zero-sum. It can, and must, be based on the greater good, the wellbeing of society and its citizens as a whole. Unfortunately, zero-sum thinking can be seductive. There will be situations where there are necessary compromises, but it’s largely a false economy. We don’t solve poverty by cutting someone else’s wages. The education system is not fixed by continuing to pay our teachers less than they are worth and the country doesn’t grow stronger by blaming others who are struggling. In my view, the difficulties Aotearoa New Zealand faces at the moment I’m not going to go away by raking over the coals of the Covid years, but by focusing on and championing innovation and productivity improvements, so we can get the economy back on track and expand opportunities for everyone. While we need to cut waste and over-government, we also need to come up with policy solutions that create win-win outcomes through better institutional design. Instead of zero-sum thinking we need to emphasise positive-sum frameworks that focus on expanding the overall pie through education, infrastructure investment, technological innovation, and institutional reforms that reduce over-regulation, get rid of unnecessary transaction costs and improve coordination. Cooperation yields benefits for us all. Equity, empathy, and wellbeing are not finite—they grow when shared. A mindset built around GWB asks not “what do I keep?” but “how can we all do better together?” It values interdependence over individualism, and prevention over punishment. It’s time to stop playing win-lose games—and start building a world where more of us thrive. 💬 I’d love to hear your thoughts: Have you noticed the rise of zero-sum thinking in your world? What’s the cost? 📘 If this piques your interest, check out The Power of Wellbeing. It is available online at Amazon and independent bookstores such as Time Out Bookstore. The Zero-sum image is from the Harvard Gazette. |
