Screw the Outsider: Self-Serving Zero Sum Games

Perhaps on a macro-level, non-zero sum games ala Robert Wright, are the way of the world. Perhaps, in total, non-zero is the winning sum.

But “screw the outsider,” a decidedly self-serving, zero-sum proposition, is played out on the micro-level in the lives of individuals daily. Scapegoats and whipping boys are the results of zero-sum games like “screw the outsider.”

As @TalesfromthHood explained in his post describing this behaviour,

We all encounter it, all experience the brunt of it, and we all – at times – even benefit from it.

When individuals, comfy in their thin-walled, make-believe castles, act collectively out of fear to protect their real or imagined, tenuously-situated power bases, you can be certain “screw the outsider” is at play.

Hey as long as you get yours, the end justifies the means, right?

How to Play Screw the Outsider

I read today a rather long post about new Wordpress plugin developers summarily ousted from the Wordpress community without “due process.” It appears we’ve put our GPL ideology above understanding through thoughtful consideration of events. Or perhaps we’ve just become intolerant of the youthful jackasses we used to be. Screw the outsider…

But I naively never expected this zero-sum game in aid work until I read @TalesfromthHood’s perspective on aid work in Haiti.

I chuckled in morbid recognition. Screw the outsider…

But this is not the only zero-sum game on the planet.

Baksheesh: Everybody’s Got Their Hand Out

For 4 days of work and $60,000 you too can play “Everybody’s Got Their Hand Out” just like fired Haitian attorney Edwin Coq.

Accused of taking part in a scheme to extort money from the families of the 10 Americans jailed for kidnapping Haitian children, Coq was fired Saturday. (Edwin Coq was hired by Jorge Puello, a Dominican attorney retained by the Americans.) He then fired him Saturday because of his involvement with unnamed Haitian government officials who were conspiring to extort money from the Americans in exchange for their release.

“He had some people inside the court that asked him for money, and he was part of this scheme…”

Coq defended his request for $60,000:

“I have worked for 10 people for four days working all hours,” he said. “Look at what hour I’m working now, responding to these calls. I have the right to this money.”

Sure, if you can get it. Yes sir… Everybody’s got their hand out. Screw the outsider.

Non-Zero Sum Games are Not for Isolationists

Before you get discouraged, recoil into your isolationist shell (I’ve been cozy there myself), there is at least one very good reason to be kind to others or continue to help Haiti in the face of rampant corruption and financial rape.

It boils down to something very simple and self-serving: Helping Haiti, or anyone else for that matter, is a Non-Zero Sum proposition.

We don’t have to discuss ethics or morals or what is “right” or “wrong”; such binary, summationist terms are a luxury of the comfortable or ignorant. We don’t even have to talk about how good it feels to help someone along in their life – especially when they’re down and out.

We simply have to understand Zero-Sum games are short-term propositions with the propensity to haunt us in the long run. Self-serving as we are, we can probably relate to the idea that if we do nothing now, we’ll have more to do in the future.

Stated another way, if we help another now, we potentially decrease our own burden of work in the future. Friends are, after all, “reliable reciprocaters,” as Robert Wright suggests. Ultimately, someone must go first in the gamble of reciprocation. Sometimes individuals do lose. But more often than not, each of us as individuals, groups and networks, gains more by stepping forward and giving than by recoiling into isolationism.