The Zero-Sum Lie Share Trending If the economy was a zero-sum game – meaning if one individual has more, it is because another individual has less – then no society in the world would have any more than the lumber, water, stones, and land it could commandeer and secure. This is not the case as society has generated wealth; goods of all kinds, for millennia. Economies are not zero-sum games. Besides, “If the state is the fount from which all social blessings flow, then why do its apologists resort to instilling guilt in the successful and envy in the unsuccessful to strengthen its power?”[1]