Max Borders‘ latest Ideas Matter update explores efforts to fight the notion that economic transactions benefit one person at another’s expense.
How do you neutralize the zero-sum fallacy? How do you explain to people that prosperity comes from people working and often cooperating to serve others? You have two award-winning economists – one with a Nobel Prize – and neither can figure out how effectively to communicate to the layman that wealth must be created through productive activity and exchange. Well, it’s not so much that they can’t communicate it effectively, it’s that the message doesn’t seem to get very far.
This is an uphill battle, one requiring constant attention. And in many respects it’s is the sort of thing that is supposed to be our job here at Free To Choose Network. But dispeling the zero-sum fallacy is not easy. Not only are you going against people’s intuitions on the matter, but against pervasive campaigns to perpetuate the fallacy. And while each new generation must learn it anew, they’re getting very little of the truth. So the job is Sisyphean.
