A new paper by Sahil Chinoy, Nathan Nunn, Sandra Sequeira and Stefanie Stantcheva examines beliefs that the world is ‘zero sum’: your success is my loss. If prizes are not only scarce but fixed, then one person’s victory comes at another’s expense. This paper is fantastic and it has hugely important global implications - for racism, religious violence, xenophobia and authoritarianism.
The trade liberalization and globalization over the last several decades has been, in my opinion, so badly managed. The field Economics (and research that I worked on) clearly shows that trade is a positive sum game but requires redistributive mechanisms to guarantee that everyone is at least as well off. But we never implemented any of these policies. Naturally, this resulted in what you have shown here.
Several of Autor's papers show explicitly how the 2016 election played when controlling for areas affected the most by China joining the WTO.
Most conservatives falsely labeled “far right”, in order to demonize them. Wanting immigration laws to be enforced, like any law, is conservative. All parties want some limits on immigration.
Alice, one thing that you don't comment on in your discussion of the Chinoy et al. article that I would be interested to get your thoughts on is the relationship between population density/total population size for a community and zero-sum thinking. Figure 3's bottom panel shows that suburban and rural people overlap in their zero-sumness, and are both significantly lower in zero-sumness thann urban people are.
I live in a very small, rural community, and some of that makes sense to me: Every interaction is iterated, so there is a lot of reciprocal altruism (just like economic models would predict). Also, we are very vulnerable to the vicissitudes of nature, and very reliant on tourism, which underscores our shared economic reality: A bad storm is bad for me even if my house was unscathed, and my enemy's was destroyed, and a good tourist season is good for me even if I don't directly work in the tourism industry. Zero-sum thinking just doesn't comport with lived experience of working with neighbors.
Separately, you've written about the impact of different kinds of agricultural production influencing social cohesion and conformity. As far as I can tell, the Chinoy et al. research does not cross-tabulate rural/suburban/urban residence with geographic location in the USA, and certainly not with what kinds of crops were grown there. But it does (figure 4) show US states color-coded by zero-sumness. I can't help but notice that many of the least zero-sum states are rural states that never farmed cotton (Nebraska, Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont, Maine) while many of the most zero-sum are rural states that did, relying on the most zero-sum model of agriculture there is (slavery). I further note that the major agricultural product of some of the most rural, least zero-sum states is timber (Idaho, Vermont, Maine, Oregon, Montana)--and timber is a product that requires complex cooperation among many people working in a group, just like you've noted about rice.
I think the very least zero-sum state, Utah, is a special case that can be explained by particular features of the LDS church (ward structure, required missions, required 10% tithing), which comprises 69% of the state's total population. And since Hawaii has many features in common with my lovely tropical island home (described above), I'm happy to assume its lack of zero-sumness is explained by the same things I see here.
Economics is not zero sum, but social status issues tend very much to be zero sum. Unfortunately, once people are above the survival threshold, they tend to care more about relative status.
Churches are vandalized by muslims as are Buddhas and cemeteries. It is part of Sharia and islam's culture. Southeast Europe is Spain and Portugal again the muslim influence. The Iberian Peninsula is the only geographic area to ever expel islam. We will see what the Swedes can pull off. It depends on what you look at as to what you find, many look at the numbers from Covid and find information that induced persons to take the vaxx. Some think America is the 48 States. When it is actually from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to the tip of Tierra del Fuego and from the Atlantic on the east to the Pacific on the west. Victory is strange, some think the Nazis lost WWII but when you examine Operation Paperclip and count the 2nd and 3rd generation German names in the USDOJ, FBI one wonders. Then we look at the products from the United States District of Columbia Inc it is for sure our Constitutional republican form of government lost and the communist / fascist / islam / lgbtq et al. have gained .
This creates a feedback loop, doesn’t it?
Economic issues leads to authoritarianism which leads to extractive institutions which again lead to economic issues. How can a country prevent that?
The trade liberalization and globalization over the last several decades has been, in my opinion, so badly managed. The field Economics (and research that I worked on) clearly shows that trade is a positive sum game but requires redistributive mechanisms to guarantee that everyone is at least as well off. But we never implemented any of these policies. Naturally, this resulted in what you have shown here.
Several of Autor's papers show explicitly how the 2016 election played when controlling for areas affected the most by China joining the WTO.
Great charts and data.
Most conservatives falsely labeled “far right”, in order to demonize them. Wanting immigration laws to be enforced, like any law, is conservative. All parties want some limits on immigration.
Alice, one thing that you don't comment on in your discussion of the Chinoy et al. article that I would be interested to get your thoughts on is the relationship between population density/total population size for a community and zero-sum thinking. Figure 3's bottom panel shows that suburban and rural people overlap in their zero-sumness, and are both significantly lower in zero-sumness thann urban people are.
I live in a very small, rural community, and some of that makes sense to me: Every interaction is iterated, so there is a lot of reciprocal altruism (just like economic models would predict). Also, we are very vulnerable to the vicissitudes of nature, and very reliant on tourism, which underscores our shared economic reality: A bad storm is bad for me even if my house was unscathed, and my enemy's was destroyed, and a good tourist season is good for me even if I don't directly work in the tourism industry. Zero-sum thinking just doesn't comport with lived experience of working with neighbors.
Separately, you've written about the impact of different kinds of agricultural production influencing social cohesion and conformity. As far as I can tell, the Chinoy et al. research does not cross-tabulate rural/suburban/urban residence with geographic location in the USA, and certainly not with what kinds of crops were grown there. But it does (figure 4) show US states color-coded by zero-sumness. I can't help but notice that many of the least zero-sum states are rural states that never farmed cotton (Nebraska, Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont, Maine) while many of the most zero-sum are rural states that did, relying on the most zero-sum model of agriculture there is (slavery). I further note that the major agricultural product of some of the most rural, least zero-sum states is timber (Idaho, Vermont, Maine, Oregon, Montana)--and timber is a product that requires complex cooperation among many people working in a group, just like you've noted about rice.
I think the very least zero-sum state, Utah, is a special case that can be explained by particular features of the LDS church (ward structure, required missions, required 10% tithing), which comprises 69% of the state's total population. And since Hawaii has many features in common with my lovely tropical island home (described above), I'm happy to assume its lack of zero-sumness is explained by the same things I see here.
So, what do you think?
Economics is not zero sum, but social status issues tend very much to be zero sum. Unfortunately, once people are above the survival threshold, they tend to care more about relative status.
Churches are vandalized by muslims as are Buddhas and cemeteries. It is part of Sharia and islam's culture. Southeast Europe is Spain and Portugal again the muslim influence. The Iberian Peninsula is the only geographic area to ever expel islam. We will see what the Swedes can pull off. It depends on what you look at as to what you find, many look at the numbers from Covid and find information that induced persons to take the vaxx. Some think America is the 48 States. When it is actually from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to the tip of Tierra del Fuego and from the Atlantic on the east to the Pacific on the west. Victory is strange, some think the Nazis lost WWII but when you examine Operation Paperclip and count the 2nd and 3rd generation German names in the USDOJ, FBI one wonders. Then we look at the products from the United States District of Columbia Inc it is for sure our Constitutional republican form of government lost and the communist / fascist / islam / lgbtq et al. have gained .