Competitive → Cooperative
To win, choose games where winning doesn’t require others losing.
I know which games I surpass peers at: Catan; poker; contract structuring; the 2%-prepay discount my contractor just offered me. So I know I’m not going to play that last one.
Having grown skilled at games, I have also grown skilled at game selection.
The next step: game selection by socio-structural traits.
By finding situations where I could have an edge, I could also locate situations where the edge isn’t worth exploiting.
Competition Meta
In a competition, the loser often feels wronged. At a minimum, unhappy.
A producer creates new value; a carnivore eats producers; and a scavenger takes the remains.
In a real ecosystem, carnivores have value in keeping the grazers in check. In our economic structures, people don’t like playing with them.
A Contractor Contract
My contractor sent over an offer a few days ago. The offer: a discount if I pre-pay. He wants the money early to ensure clients don’t stiff him.
The problem: not enough newly produced value. His discount reflects a small value to the prepayment (only a few percentage points). If the value of that discount does not outweigh the value to me of having increased leverage should there be a problem with his work, there’s no deal.
Since the financial mechanics take money from one to give to the other, this situation can become a squabble if there’s not enough new value created. Therefore, I’d prepay a portion, but only if it was the first portion they dip into, which secures me the discount but negates the reason they’re offering in the first place. In this situation, he would only agree to my terms if he misunderstood them. And I, to his, if I misunderstood.
This relationship matters to me. We will be working together for the next ~5 months.
In some situations, you might want to steal candy from babies (e.g. play poker with people much worse than you). With people with whom you intend to form long-term relationships, it might be valuable to avoid competitive situations even if you have an edge.
Competition, itself, has a cost.
Steering to Positive-Sum
I think I should use my skill at games to intuit which games are not worth playing. Not because I’m unskilled at them. But because a superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations which require the use of his superior skill.
Partner has posed the question: what if children grew up first with co-operative games?
Maybe. While insurance companies are often themselves disliked, it is widely popular to purchase insurance for many things such as dwellings, health care, your bank account, driving and your car, disability, workers' comp, etc. These insurances decrease the EV of the purchaser, but they are thought to be wise to purchase, and perhaps are.