That must be a depressingly cynical worldview to have. At some point we all lived in caves and life was nasty, brutish and short. Since the world is zero sum, every advance that has happened since this has put some poor human further and further negative from that point? Or if you don't want to go back that far, just look back 100 years. Running water, electricity, phones, and the ability to travel were either restricted to a very rich few or didn't exist. Now they do. According to the zero sum theory, all those advances had to come on the back of an equal amount of misery somewhere. Where is that exactly? As I clearly said, there are aspect of markets and life that are zero sum. Just because you can imagine a scenario where my company might have caused more misery and badness than the value it created in no way means that it must have, which is what you're arguing if you insist that everything is zero sum. Take Google again if you demand a concrete example, it's got a trillion dollar market cap. Who lost a trillion dollars to make up for this? And as I said, even time isn't zero sum. That hour long run I had at lunch today was not only enjoyable but statistically prolonged the enjoyable part of my life by far longer than an hour.
"Depends on why the currency had a low value" answer:thats a negative briefly, you offered your currency to another central(or private)bank which offered you an amount of their currency that they felt was a fair exchange at the time. (often nations offer favors to help other nations but we are speaking in terms of a real market where there isnt a favor involved) You are now holding a large amount of their currency to be able to still participate in the global market at a fair value, while your currency is going through its own refinement. You have basically helped your own currency not plummet more & also provided more insurance to the currency that you are holding as a reserve. It doesnt really matter the "why did the currency have low value" "Inflation related than working people lost" So you are not aware how currency & central banking work? yet automatically come to the conclusion that if it was "inflation related than working people lost", yes inflation hurts those that are earning a fixed income more than those that are able to raise their prices. politicians, professors and the like will be the first to organize to protest against this however it is not really fair to mention this without mentioning the actual reason that more money needs to be printed and thus the real CAUSE of inflation... If you were running the central bank of your country, why would you have to print money to loan to your government?, (which would then offer bonds or raise taxes to be able to repay the central bank, usually this is done to avoid raising taxes however) answer: your government is unable to pay its workers and or keep its developement, depending on the size of your government those workers could be a handful, to entire companies worth of highway developers, hospital systems, electricity services, housing authorities, education systems, etc... No one can be certain how any investment will turn out, however in most cases as I have stated earlier, this actual "currency trading" actually benefited both parties tremendously, even in this "foreign exchange is a zero sum mind state", as I said already IMHO most people who think they are "currency traders" arent really currency traders but are rather making small bets against their bookie, I mean brokerage house :O) Now there are real currency traders who hold actual amounts of foreign currencies in their reserves, and there are even really large ones that can even have a pull or say on the market, but I have only seen them on television or read about them in articles. We have come a long way from "are markets a zero sum game" :O)
Not to mention all the suffering and effort of automation technology researchers who were too lazy to work with shovels. Actually even decent shoovel takes lot of engineering and prerequisite tools to make. Travel: Railroad building slave camps in siberia for example. Running water: Pipe installation and maintance misery. Electricity: Used to work as electrician , its misery IMO. God knows how many times researchers failed when getting first light bulb stable. Phones: Why iphone factory uses suicide nets? Whoever will be providing same worth of services to people benefiting from Google's profits if it gets used. If google earns 0.1 dollar by ADS algo , and i saw ADS and bought burger at McDonald's instead of Burger King then i will pay for it also, if im not earning my income via speculation and do actual work with shovel.
Nations have interests. If no common ground no favors most likely. Thanks for taking time to offer information.
Markets are negative sum, for most. It’s a mechanism for transferring risk from one institution to the next, while the commoner gets the tail end (no pun).
Your point is correct. And even among day traders, if we consider them to be the players, money leaves the game through commissions, slippage, etc. Example of zero sum games: A poker tournament or cash ganme at a friends house with no charge to play. We agree to flip a coin 10 times and each bet 100 dollars per flip. No money is leaked away in these two examples: If one player is losing 100 dollars, the other player is winning 100 dollars or the other players are collectively winning that 100. NOTE: A poker game with a rake or hourly fee to play is not zero sum for the players. If the game goes long enough and the skill gap is small enough, it is possible for all players to lose.
He would not say investing or trading is zero sum. By the way, It is possible for skilled players to beat some minus sum games. "Zero sum" is a term with an exact meaning. Many posters would be wise to Google the term because it is easy to assume/ guess wrong as to its meaning.
My definitin of zero sum might be wrong , i thought of if as "everything comes at the cost of something" Some say commissions are high at pokerstars.com...making it harder to even break even. Middlemen would make it negative sum game compared to friend organized poker event? For players? But if looking in wider sence and broker site as middleman is also considered a participant , would that turn the operation into zero sum game?