How Did We Break Capitalism

We have been playing with the wrong rules for a long time.

Not like a game rule, but economic rules. According to James P. Carse, we have finite and infinite games when playing games and when we’re at our jobs.

There are finite games and infinite games.

A finite game is defined with a certain number of players, fixed rules, and a finite goal, like soccer. There are referees to control the rules, and in a defined time frame, whoever gets more points wins the game. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end.

And then, there’s the infinite game. An infinite game is defined as known and unknown players; new players can join at any time, the game has changeable rules, and the goal is to perpetuate the game- to stay in the game as long as possible.

Marriage is an infinite game; you can’t say you have won a marriage. You wouldn’t know who won global politics or won in a business.

Yet, if you watch some leaders talking about success, they say things like be the number one, be the best, or beating their competition.

Based on what?

There are no metrics on winning a marriage or a business. If you try to win marriage, you’d no longer be married. If you’d try to win a business, you wouldn’t know when it ends, so it would be at least awkward.

In other words, people are playing the infinite game with a finite mindset. And if you’re playing the same game with the wrong rules, something happens- the decline of trust, the decline of cooperation, and the decline of innovation.

Simon Sinek, author of the book Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action, spoke at an educational summit at Microsoft and at Apple.

At the Microsoft summit, most executives spend most of their time talking about beating Apple.

At the Apple summit, a hundred percent of their executives spend all their time talking about how they could help teachers teach and help students learn.

One was obsessed with where they were going, the other was obsessed with beating their competition.

When Elon Musk created SpaceX, he didn’t spend his energy thinking about how he could beat Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, or NASA. Instead, he wanted to build a company to colonize Mars and found a way to do it. Elon Musk has an infinite mindset.

Source: https://medium.com/the-price-of-tomorrow/how-did-we-break-capitalism-3a53f2d832cb?source=rss——-8—————–cryptocurrency