More or Less? The Paradox of the Zero-Sum Game

It’s a commonly held saying in academia that a good journal article will eventually be published in the right journal. The infamous publish-or-perish culture has led to a world of relentless hustle in which academics — particularly those precariously balanced at the base of the long, shaky ladder to professorship — compete to publish more and better work. Academic publishing has exploded as the quest for validation has intensified, so that most published academic journal articles are never read.

Yet despite this massive growth in academic publishing, it is still a competitive game, and one that early career scholars are trained to navigate and understand. The dictum that ‘a good journal article will eventually find its right journal’ is, in some ways, a limp platitude conveyed through the encouragement of supervisors to help the researcher keep the faith. If the article is ‘good’ — and the unexamined assumption is that every article by a researcher is ‘good’ — then it is only a matter of time before the ‘right journal’ is found. In this context, ‘right journal’ usually means ‘less impactful and prestigous journal’, one with less rigorous editorial standards, higher acceptance rates and ultimately a smaller readership.

In many ways, it’s a good strategy to not give up and keep submitting to journal after journal, even if rejections keep coming, especially considering that a vibrant market of dubious, if not downright predatory, publishers has emerged to scoop up the articles that didn’t make it into quality publications. There’s a certain stoicism to it all: sticking to what you believe in, accepting that you can’t control whether an article is accepted or not, and hoping for a better and more positive outcome in the future.

But what about the articles that are never published in the end? What about the scientists who end up going under rather than publishing? What do we do with these cases that do not correspond to the reality represented by the bromide theory that a good article will always find its place?

In many academic fields, particularly in the arts and humanities, the number of recent PhD graduates is far higher than the number of permanent academic positions available, and the chances of finding a position are vanishingly small. In these cases, can we still assume that all good applicants will find the right job? Again, it’s about encouraging someone to storm. You just have to hang in there a bit longer, but we know that statistically that’s not going to be the case for everyone, and in academia that’s true in all walks of life. There are some people who don’t get a journal article accepted, who don’t get an academic job, things that they were told over and over again will happen if they just wait.

I am thinking of an episode of a BBC nature programme, maybe Planet Earth, but definitely voiced by David Attenborough, where a community of walruses banish some of the male walruses to the edge of the community, they will not meet, they will get just enough food to survive as long as they are content to live on an ice floe on the edge of the community. This is an example of how this particular animal community functions and deals with limited resources, and therefore may not translate directly to the human experience, but it is one of many examples of zero-sum games that surround us everywhere.

Positive psychology tells us that there are no zero-sum games, that one person’s success does not mean that another person cannot also be successful. The advice given to young academics is that if you can just weather the storm, you will achieve your goal. But there is something of a paradox when it comes to our understanding of these so-called zero-sum games.

In the business world, companies compete for market share. There are a few factors at the company’s disposal to try to increase their market share, but they will, sooner or later, come up against the hard wall of mathematical certainty that will require something to be created out of thin air. Let’s see how this works through a thought experiment. Imagine two people are selling an identical product in a completely isolated community of exactly 100 people (let’s say a village with a total population of 102, including the two entrepreneurs).

They might agree that 50 customers is enough for each of them, and that by splitting the customer base evenly they can generate the necessary income. However, it is very likely that sooner or later the light bulb of ambition will come on for one or both of the entrepreneurs and they will think: ‘I can make more money if I have 55 customers, or 75 customers, or 95 customers.’ What doesn’t change is the total number of potential customers available. So if the more ambitious entrepreneur wants to increase their market share, they need to focus on differentiation and make their product seem like the more attractive option. Remember that the two products are absolutely identical, so the differentiation has to be done in a different way. Perhaps the entrepreneur has discovered that if he has 75 customers but charges them a lower price, he still makes more money than before by lowering the price and increasing the volume — the variable at play here is cost. Or the entrepreneur may turn to intangible factors such as persuasion and influence to make his product seem like the more desirable option. Or perhaps the entrepreneur engages in shady practises by lying about his or his competitor’s product, threatening the competition or forcing customers to choose his product over the other.

What this thought experiment doesn’t allow for is the expansion of the market beyond 100 potential customers, and there’s a reason for that: relentless expansion is exactly how humans have tried to overcome zero-sum games since the industrial revolution, Ponzi schemes of growth that feed back into systems that then require further exponential growth to be sustained in the future.

In the past, people have used various strategies to expand markets and create new opportunities. Technological advances, new scientific discoveries, and economic paradigm shifts have repeatedly moved societies forward and enabled them to break free from the constraints of the zero-sum game, creating new and more opportunities for growth. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century marked a turning point where innovations in manufacturing, transport, and communication dramatically expanded the scope of economic opportunity.

However, this relentless pursuit of growth has led to some very serious problems. Growth has become a prerequisite for maintaining the stability of the system, and economic structures have become designed to require constant expansion in order to sustain themselves, leading to resource depletion, environmental degradation, and increased inequality. As these systems become larger and more interconnected, they are required to expand faster and faster to avoid collapse, leading to some of the biggest challenges facing our world today: overconsumption, environmental degradation, and increasing economic inequality.

In the context of our thought experiment, expanding the market beyond 100 potential customers (e.g. by finding a new community of potential customers that the entrepreneurs were previously unaware of) could be a temporary solution, but it also raises the question of the long-term sustainability of such a strategy — what happens when there are no new undiscovered neighbouring villages with potential new customers? Can the market continuously expand to accommodate more potential customers for our two entrepreneurs, or will it reach a saturation point at some point?

And this thought experiment hasn’t even considered the countless other factors that motivate both the entrepreneurs and the potential customers to act within the system in ways that may seem irrational, but from their personal human perspective are absolutely rational in trying to secure the greatest personal good for themselves while reducing the chances of negative repercussions or pain.

Relentless expansion is a hallmark of human progress and has been used to disguise or deny many forms of zero-sum games where one person must lose in order for another person to gain. Economic inequality is the most obvious and pressing example, but this also applies to opportunities in the labour market, where one applicant’s success means a missed opportunity for another, to healthcare, where allocation of resources in one place can mean a lack of resources in another, and for land use and housing, where gentrification and rising property values may benefit some residents but displace others, leading to an increasing expansion of urban and suburban centres and fewer opportunities for younger people to own property than was the case in their parents’ generation.

One of the reasons this problem is so complex to illustrate is that it involves large numbers and patterns of human behaviour rather than individual transactions. In the area of employment, job opportunities are finite until the market expands, but then the market must continually expand to create job opportunities for the new generation of job seekers that were initially created to expand the market.

Fordism, named after the American industrialist Henry Ford, is a socio-economic system characterised by mass production in which the workers who make the product earn so much money that they can afford the product themselves, thanks to the assembly line method that reduces costs and increases productivity. This concept — that you can afford a car, a hat, or a table if you work in a factory that makes cars, hats or tables — while commonplace today, was a groundbreaking departure from prevailing economic practises until the early twentieth century. Modern society enabled the division of labour, where workers specialised in specific tasks, which ultimately contributed to a huge increase in efficiency and output, and therefore a reduction in costs.

But this apparent success of Fordism is another example of a self-reproducing zero-sum system. Mass production required mass consumption to sustain itself, and the relentless expansion associated with Fordism perpetuated the idea that continued economic growth was not only desirable, but necessary for the well-being of society. In this system, labour became increasingly specialised in repetitive tasks, leading to a sense of alienation and dissatisfaction, and although the economic and social situation of many people improved after the industrial revolution, this came at an invisible cost.

Although the economic and social situation of many people improved after the industrial revolution and the advent of Fordism, these gains were not equally distributed. The zero-sum nature of the system meant that progress for some came at the expense of others, and as we have seen in our own time, the pursuit of continuous economic growth was fuelled by a collective mentality that prioritised material accumulation as a sign of social progress. This relentless pursuit of growth sometimes overshadowed the importance of other essential elements of wellbeing, such as work-life balance and social cohesion.

Unlike economic systems, personal relationships involve a range of observable but fiendishly complex and often invisible factors, making them a complex and highly nuanced area of experience. In many ways, however, the reality of human relationships is even more complex. Human relationships are influenced by a variety of factors, including personal values, interests and life circumstances.

Unlike economic transactions, relationships are not tied to finite resources, and the possibilities for meaningful relationships are seemingly limitless. However, this complexity also makes relationships susceptible to the nuances of individual personalities, societal expectations and cultural influences. In the context of relationships, the concept of the zero-sum game takes on a different dimension. The idea that finding a life partner is a competition in which one person’s happiness comes at the expense of another’s happiness is overly simplistic. While it is true that not every connection leads to a lifelong partnership, the richness of human experience allows for diverse and meaningful connections that contribute to personal growth and fulfilment.

The invisible costs associated with personal relationships can manifest in the form of emotional challenges, misunderstandings or unfulfilled expectations. However, much like the complexities of economic systems, the intricacies of human relationships also hold the potential for growth, learning and shared experiences that contribute to the richness of life. It is important to recognise that, similar to economic systems, societal narratives and cultural expectations shape our ideas of what constitutes an ideal relationship.

The pursuit of continuous growth and progress, whether in economic development or personal relationships, can sometimes overshadow the importance of other essential elements of wellbeing.

In the realm of relationships, as in the broader social context, balance and appreciation for the multidimensionality of human experience is critical. The pursuit of happiness and fulfilment should not be seen as a zero-sum game, but rather as an exploration of the myriad opportunities for connection, understanding and shared joy that enrich our lives. Just as economic models must evolve for sustainable progress, our view of relationships can benefit from a holistic understanding that embraces the diverse and intricate human relationships.

The dictum that a good journal article will eventually find its right journal is reassuring, but sometimes leads to settling for lower impact journals, perpetuating a zero-sum game in the pursuit of academic success. Similarly, economic systems and the relentless pursuit of growth epitomised by Fordism have often obscured or denied the zero-sum games within them.

The invisible costs of economic progress, such as environmental degradation, resource depletion, and increasing inequality, highlight the complexity and challenges associated with constant expansion. The parallels also extend to personal relationships, where the pursuit of happiness and fulfilment is often portrayed as a competition, eclipsing the diverse and meaningful relationships that contribute to the richness of human experience.

Recognising this zero-sum dynamic leads to a call for a more balanced and holistic approach. As we navigate the complexities of science, business and personal relationships, a nuanced understanding of success and fulfilment is critical. Just as the pursuit of perpetual growth in economic systems can lead to undesirable consequences, an overemphasis on competition and scarcity in personal relationships can obscure the true potential for connection, understanding and shared joy. Finding a balance that prioritises wellbeing, sustainability and inclusivity is key to fostering a future where success is achieved not at the expense of others, but in harmony with the interconnected fabric of our shared human experience.

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