the world is zero sum and gets worse

[Algernon]

whatever someone wins, another person must lose

for example, for a country to be the number one country, it must use all its resources

but since its constantly using up its own, it needs to use or destroy another countries resources to preserve dominance

it moves problems and chaos in the country away to another country to keep itself ordered, but in order to do that it must spread chaos and danger everywhere else

lets say all countries work together to try and be equal

the value of resources decrease over time though, while all are equal they equally lose and chaos builds up, one country will inevitably want to get out of this struggle of a life style (or at least, they will see the future, even if all the countries are temporarily great, they see the decrease in value and eventually predicting the future they act on it and take advantage)

you move the problem elsewhere and create problems for other people in excess so your people can benefit (for example, to build reactors to power your countries energy, you must mine resources from other countries and take their resources, you can say "why not trade", but to trade requires equal value, and that value on both sides eventually diminish)

what technology does, it increases the severity of zero sum

technology uses resources, a lot, for equal output in productivity, so zero sum

but since it is uses so much resources, it causes a lot of chaos elsewhere while creating order in its own country

resources get used up much quicker and life gets worse for everyone else faster and it eventually catches up

the only ways to stop this is by either stopping your focus on the society and focus on creating order for yourself and don't interact with others, preventing loss (since you dont interact with them, it keeps it zero sum, with only your benefit)

or, you must find a way to send the chaos away (for example, discovery of a new place, or delaying it to a later time, dangerous because it will build up elsewhere and eventually come back though)

any new area in history is a good example (australia when it was found, they used technology and quickly created prisons, worsening the prisoners lifes and maybe bettering others, discovery america worsened native life but bettered european life)

you can argue about the morality of whether the zero sums were actually good in these cases, zero sum does not connect to morality

you can use the negative end of zero sum to harm people on the negative end of morality and create positive morality benefits

but, if everyone is positive in their morality, then someone must still face that negative sum

while it is generally zero-sum, some people dont even benefit and can make it negative sum where no one benefits

life is at max zero sum, but that does not make it bad or good, at times it contributes to either end

the true thing that decreases life value is time and the waste of resources, that can only be offset by finding new resources in a new place or stealing it from others, which is hard