Frankly,
I don't have a scholar's understanding of the complexities of game
theory. But I do understand the “sliver rule.” This is
something almost everyone understands only too well—as when they
sit down at a crowded table and there is only one pizza to serve
everybody. Usually everyone at least gets a sliver. The real
question is—is that all? Usually there is enough for some to get
seconds, even thirds. But others are stuck with a sliver. This is
the reality of it. And it is so despite attempts to mythologize
abundance. While we all can imagine abundance as an escape from
stark reality—and perhaps there's some validity to these imaginings
in the very long-run (that can run into millenniums)—in the short
run a large sector of people must adjust to being unappreciated by
society's winners. While the winners always find justice on their
side, the losers too are saved from bitterness by rationalization.
Typically economic losers find a vital consolation in the long-term
perspective of religion and its preference for immaterial over
material values. To say that religion “is the opiate of the
masses” is a crass dismissal of love's importance in providing the
human necessity of meaning and with it some semblance of equality and happiness.
Whether
one perceives much of life as zero-sum depends upon one's capacity to
fantasize psychologically acceptable theories to the contrary.
Unfortunately, enduring realities show such theories to be a major
source of “the opiate of the privileged.”
Compassionate
societies give up fantasy and find ways to augment the resources
available to the ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-educated, ill-nourished,
ill-treated, and fundamentally unappreciated. But such action
depends upon the disinclination to worship at the alters of false
phantasmagorical gods. These gods erected from prejudicial political and economic
theories are based ultimately on self-serving rationalizations and greed.
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