Zero-sum thinking

Most things in life are not zero-sum, but somehow people often seem to act as if they are. I think that this severely limits their opportunities and wastes time. Zero-sum thinking is the idea that the total utility in a situation is fixed and hence can only be divided between…

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Is GDP the right metric?

I recently read Tyler Cowen's Stubborn Attachments, which argues that we should be focusing on maximising the rate of sustainable economic growth and discusses why that is the most important thing to target. This sparked many questions for me about what we should be optimising for (GDP? Leisure time?). In…

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