The defect in the logic of both sides, here, is the unspoken belief that every curve must be a straight line. Some things, like the impact of the number of immigrants on the housing prices of less-expensive housing in a given place, are not large as the number of immigrants rises from zero, until they ARE quite large indeed, as the number of immigrants becomes too large for the community to handle. This is not a complicated or difficult concept, and it is disturbing that so many on each side of so many issues just don't "get" it. Most phenomena are neither inherently zero-sum nor positive-sum. They change from one to the other as situations change.
I guess the question is, are we actually at that point? Because for basically every major American city even if you cut immigrations by 50% we are still not building nearly enough housing, so I don't think the driver of housing costs is immigration, and cutting immigration isn't actually going to solve the problem of people being upset about housing costs.
I appreciate you staying on this theme (the podcast, this piece). But one thing I think this story misses is _intent_. Specifically, what do people in power _want_ to do with that power with respect to distribution of benefits.
Imagine that you knew that, whatever you produced, the powers in charge would take as much as they could to give it someone else? This would not strictly be zero-sum. The more you did, the more others would get, and in principle, they would produce more that could flow back to you. But you know, from the stated intentions of those in power, that this not going to happen. Or rather, that those in power will try to make it not happen, because they see one group — your group — as not deserving of benefits. So it’s not the system that’s zero-sum, it’s the way the system is managed that makes it effectively that way.
Now look at the rhetoric of the MAGA right and the progressive left. Look at how they indicate that some groups are supposed to receive benefits at the expense of others.
So I agree with abundance as an essential ingredient to getting out of zero-sum thinking, but I don’t think it’s enough. It needs to be married with a policy agenda that is non-preferential. We’re going to be build more housing, and anyone can have it. Not a little bit more that has to be given out carefully, but A LOT MORE so that we don’t have to give it out carefully.
Apologies for self-replying (you can’t edit comments).
“Favor in the heart of the rulers” is zero-sum. If politicians do not explicitly make it clear that they ‘love all their children equally,” people will infer that some are the favorites at the expense of others. And this favor matters a lot, because people assume the system is titled toward the favorite.
Both parties are dominated by “parents who play favorites.” This goes against core, old-school liberal ideals, but has been growing for decades.
Great pull on the deep blue Massachusetts housing/immigration response. But I was struck by your own statement "I support redistribution because I think poverty is bad and society is better off when people have a basic standard of living". I wonder if the answer to a question like this on taxes/redistribution would expose divisions among Democrats. Others might have the perspective that taxes, while a burden, are fair because any success one has is partially due to (1) the infrastructure and culture that exists; and partially due to (2) luck. The fair rate is up for debate.
Our approach to redistribution turns people into generational wards of the state. It is maladaptive as it tells people they are victims that need to be taken care of by others, rather than being architects of their own future and fate. The most valuable support we can provide to these people is a world-class education, which we don't have, freedom of opportunity, and enough support to help them to become masters of their own future, not perpetual dependents of the state.
Garett Jones' argument is probably the strongest attempt (not an endorsement) at a non-zero-sum case for immigration restriction. It goes something like this:
-- long-term growth and innovation, both for the US and for human welfare generally, depend on rich societies like the US maintaining high quality institutions and culture
-- nonselective immigration could undermine those institutions and culture
-- therefore immigration should be selective
I think he's sincere about it, and it's worth reading the back-and-forths between him and people like Alex Nowrasteh to get a sense of what the evidence says about the merits of this argument. I also think many of the people who seize on arguments like this are just trying to rationalize bigotry.
I think a whole lot more are not trying to rationalize bigotry. This is a pretty normie viewpoint that maps well to overall population preferences seen with polling, generally accompanied by a support of immigration as valuable while wanting to keep numbers reasonable.
I think this is an ok theory in abstract, I think that in practice a rapidly aging society with a low birth rate cannot afford to be too selective with its immigration and also avoid being zero sum with its politics. That is ultimately the problem here. There is a high demand for physical labor jobs, including caring for our aging baby boomer generation that cannot be automated or outsourced in today's world.
Meanwhile, the US has spent decades closing pathways to legal immigration, and both migrants seeking life in America and employers seeking employees who are willing to work hard for lower wages have turned to illegal immigration as the solution. Now we have a patchwork of immigrants who have a variety of legal statuses, many of which were meant to be "temporary", and reactionary, anti-liberal forces want to scapegoat them for economic conditions.
The options are either to give in to these pressures and triangulate "redistribution, affirmative action and restrictive immigration" to the point where it necessarily becomes zero sum, to accept upward limitations on economic growth and opportunity, accept the necessity of more immigrants in society, or pray we wake up in a world where young adults are eager to not just become downwardly mobile but to also have to work way harder to achieve that lower socioeconomic status than their parents.
The US is still at over 500,000 more births than deaths, before our baseline immigration level of around a million per year.
Most elderly spend three years or less receiving assistance in ADLs before death. Old people are healthier than ever. Many, like the late Catherine O’Hara, are working or independently living a full life up to the end.
We can be as selective as we want to with immigration, as we have many times more people wanting to come here than we admit.
There is a moderate - not huge - demand for physical labor jobs. Most immigrants do not work in physical labor jobs, although they are overrepresented in those jobs, particularly agriculture and construction. Some of that labor has existing technological substitutes (milking machines, mechanical harvesters, prefab homes, etc) that likely would be quickly implemented in the absence of those immigrants. Some of that labor does not have good substitutes. And some jobs have substitutes available but not mature enough for immediate deployment.
We also are looking at potential huge dislocations of the job market with AI and robotics. That suggests caution in estimating how many people we will need to do what jobs and which skills will have practical technological substitutes. We don’t have a long term crystal ball for this.
Reading the commentary on the housing problem there two obvious disconnects. Progressives see the problem as affordable rents while econservatives see it as affordable home ownership. I guess this is natural given the historical constituency of the two sets of wonks. The constituencies may be in flux but the wonks aren't. Try changing the zoning to allow multi family buildings in a wealthy neighborhood. The reverse of this and the pushback has already happened in the gentrification debate. Policies to foster one or the other must come in conflict, at least at the margin. The second disconnect is not partisan but has to do with supply vs demand. You are focused on the supply side but demand matters too. Add 20 million immigrants and it drives up prices, at least until the supply can react. Even with the reform you suggest, that is going to be slower. I don't know how much of the housing stock has disappeared into the Air B&B world but that has an impact too.
Of course its zero-sum. Sure there is economic growth, but even that is mostly captured by the biggest players. Even if there is some positive sum, the game is still played as a zero-sum game. Just like any sport or poker game. Just because new player comes into the game that adds $$ to the pot, doesn't mean the game isn't played as a zero-sum game. Redistribution and affirmative action are by definition zero-sum. It the economy wasn't zero-sum there would be no reason for redistribution and AA.
Demsas says that neighborhoods are competitive. They are actually designed to be competitive. Cities and states are forced to compete for capital and wealthy residents. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan ended the Revenue Sharing and Fiscal Equalization Program that was used to address spatial inequality between the states. This is called competitive federalism (also known as the second war between the states).
Yes it is silly kid. The market is based on competition. Even politics is based on competition. Just like any sporting event. Businesses in the market compete for profits and market share and customers. Its a winner take all system. Try reading the book by Robert Frank Winner Take All Society.
Just because points accumulate over time does not change the fact that its a zero sum game. What planet do you live on kid?
The flaw I detect with the Abundance theory of politics is that--while its proponents are largely correct about production constraints that plague urban growth--America is still doing better on affordable amenities than the rest of the West including/especially housing. Canadians would love to have America's housing market. Additionally, the tipping point states aren't the most expensive housing markets and I frankly don't buy the excuse that the median Michigan voter is super plugged into the problems facing California and New York. Moreover, cost of living has also skyrocketed in Florida yet their voters don't seem to regard that development as a failure of red state governance. Personally, I'm enthusiastic about Abundance and building out infrastructure, but I don't think it's a sufficient explanation for the political developments we've seen over the past 10 years.
This is an excellent analysis. It may be overthinking the problem. Most of the US's curren issues are related to the prevalence of racism and xenophobia in an economic environment that funnels all the goodies to the very top of the heap. For most people, its less than a zero sum game, they're just blaming the wrong villains for the problems.
Years ago I discovered that most scarcity we experience isn't natural—it's manufactured through bad policy, bad decisions, and misunderstanding human nature. Your article brilliantly demonstrates why this matters: manufactured scarcity makes zero-sum thinking rational, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that devours liberalism.
This is precisely what the Tension Transformation Framework addresses. Zero-sum thinking flows from victim identity—the belief that my gain requires your loss, producing Maladaptive responses: immigration restrictions, housing freezes, endless redistribution battles. But as Foster showed, this isn't irrational when growth has genuinely stalled.
The deeper question: Why do wealthy societies manufacture scarcity through zoning, occupational licensing, and educational monopolies? Because victim identity demands control over fixed resources rather than expansion of opportunity.
Classical liberalism bet everything on abundance through creative tension—not just material prosperity, but expanding rights, mobility, and human potential. Your Massachusetts housing example is perfect: affluent progressives create artificial scarcity, then blame newcomers for the competition they manufactured.
The alternative isn't abandoning those in need—it's recognizing that genuine help means expanding opportunity, not managing dependency. Equal access to excellent education. Economic mobility through deregulation. Housing abundance through builder-friendly policies.
Foster's peasants had real scarcity. We have chosen scarcity. Liberalism survives when it delivers what those peasant societies never experienced: visible, tangible proof that the pie grows. That's not just policy—it's identity transformation from competitor to architect.
The classic and still underrated book on this subject is Benjamin Friedman, _The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth_. I'd be very interested to see one of the Argument folks (Arguers? Argumentatives?) review it and dive into how its theses hold up in light of history since the book was written.
Great article that will help to think deeper about housing and politics. Many progressives (I’m one) have lost the plot on housing, The market worked in 1970 in a 3:1 housing multiplier nation on price as long as neighborhood boundaries were clear. In part high multipliers are modern legal redlining. Housing subsidies today are much much greater per capita and subsidize owner equity growth in same way Medicaid subsidizes WalMart workers. Housing subsidy costs get used against liberals politically. Zero sum didn’t work in housing in a 3:1 world. The multipliers, subsidies, and public housing help maintain the class boundaries.
Local school funding in MA is still a big problem. The high multipliers keep school enrollments down on the market side and local politics allow subsidized housing only for the elderly. Progressives need to embrace sustained market supply growth as a North Star. The state need to reform zoning and school funding formulas for any chance to do it. #BackTo3.
The average home across america cost less that 3x the average adults full time wage in 1970. Supply restriction since has made that number grow to 6 nationally and 10,12 + in
The problem with a tight focus on zoning is that most scarcity problems aren't the result of excessive and misguided regulation. To get decent health care and education for everyone, , we need more and bigger government not less. And social/public housing is at least as important as private provisions.
In Australia at least, YIMBY has swept all before it, at least in political term. There are still plenty of local disputes, but no-one admits to being a NIMBY. But that doesn't solve our housing problem, let alone fix problems in the health system.
I think the big issue is less the perception that policy is zero-sum (which is clearly wrong) than that we're probably in a state where policy is Pareto efficient. To be more specific-- yes, many supply-expanding policies are *good*, but there are still losers to passing them.
Take housing. Know-nothing criticisms notwithstanding, building more housing certainly lowers housing costs and makes it more affordable. But one person's affordable housing is another person's depreciated asset-- a house becoming cheaper is good for buyers, but bad for the seller. And even building apartments in empty lots triggers complaints about the "character" of neighborhoods, the perils of increased traffic, etc. (and can also lower housing costs, all things being equal). Or take healthcare; a major factor in our healthcare cost spike is just that we pay doctors more than our peers do. But how much appetite is there to cut doctor pay?
And that problem, like so many policies, is magnified by the fact that the benefits are concentrated, while the costs are widespread. Paying $60 for TurboTax is a small annoyance for most people, but its existence is a huge boon for... TurboTax employees and shareholders. Or take stockbrokers who can extract a few extra pennies per trade out of each retail investors... which results in billions in excess monopoly rents at brokerage houses. And while those few pennies aren't individually a big deal, a bunch of those kinds of rents extracted up and down the economy adds up to a whole lot of rent seeking that's a big boon to each rent seeker, but not worth the energy for those paying those rents to combat. Which is where class-action lawsuits should be a disciplining tactic, but they're probably underpowered.
So in sum-- I think Pareto efficiency is our enemy here, not zero-sum thinking (or even the perception of zero-sum distribution), as well as the age-old problem of inefficiencies having concentrated benefits but distributed costs.
The defect in the logic of both sides, here, is the unspoken belief that every curve must be a straight line. Some things, like the impact of the number of immigrants on the housing prices of less-expensive housing in a given place, are not large as the number of immigrants rises from zero, until they ARE quite large indeed, as the number of immigrants becomes too large for the community to handle. This is not a complicated or difficult concept, and it is disturbing that so many on each side of so many issues just don't "get" it. Most phenomena are neither inherently zero-sum nor positive-sum. They change from one to the other as situations change.
I guess the question is, are we actually at that point? Because for basically every major American city even if you cut immigrations by 50% we are still not building nearly enough housing, so I don't think the driver of housing costs is immigration, and cutting immigration isn't actually going to solve the problem of people being upset about housing costs.
I appreciate you staying on this theme (the podcast, this piece). But one thing I think this story misses is _intent_. Specifically, what do people in power _want_ to do with that power with respect to distribution of benefits.
Imagine that you knew that, whatever you produced, the powers in charge would take as much as they could to give it someone else? This would not strictly be zero-sum. The more you did, the more others would get, and in principle, they would produce more that could flow back to you. But you know, from the stated intentions of those in power, that this not going to happen. Or rather, that those in power will try to make it not happen, because they see one group — your group — as not deserving of benefits. So it’s not the system that’s zero-sum, it’s the way the system is managed that makes it effectively that way.
Now look at the rhetoric of the MAGA right and the progressive left. Look at how they indicate that some groups are supposed to receive benefits at the expense of others.
So I agree with abundance as an essential ingredient to getting out of zero-sum thinking, but I don’t think it’s enough. It needs to be married with a policy agenda that is non-preferential. We’re going to be build more housing, and anyone can have it. Not a little bit more that has to be given out carefully, but A LOT MORE so that we don’t have to give it out carefully.
Apologies for self-replying (you can’t edit comments).
“Favor in the heart of the rulers” is zero-sum. If politicians do not explicitly make it clear that they ‘love all their children equally,” people will infer that some are the favorites at the expense of others. And this favor matters a lot, because people assume the system is titled toward the favorite.
Both parties are dominated by “parents who play favorites.” This goes against core, old-school liberal ideals, but has been growing for decades.
This is sounding like the Adorno and Horkheimer critique of capitalist government as racketeering.
I don’t know that it’s gotten that bad. And I’m not sure that it’s actually reality. But it’s how the parties _talk_ in a polarized world.
Great pull on the deep blue Massachusetts housing/immigration response. But I was struck by your own statement "I support redistribution because I think poverty is bad and society is better off when people have a basic standard of living". I wonder if the answer to a question like this on taxes/redistribution would expose divisions among Democrats. Others might have the perspective that taxes, while a burden, are fair because any success one has is partially due to (1) the infrastructure and culture that exists; and partially due to (2) luck. The fair rate is up for debate.
Our approach to redistribution turns people into generational wards of the state. It is maladaptive as it tells people they are victims that need to be taken care of by others, rather than being architects of their own future and fate. The most valuable support we can provide to these people is a world-class education, which we don't have, freedom of opportunity, and enough support to help them to become masters of their own future, not perpetual dependents of the state.
"Quick caveat here that you can support redistribution, affirmative action, and restrictive immigration policies without holding zero-sum views."
Is this actually possible in practice? It feels like you've skipped over that immigration piece in your argument.
Garett Jones' argument is probably the strongest attempt (not an endorsement) at a non-zero-sum case for immigration restriction. It goes something like this:
-- long-term growth and innovation, both for the US and for human welfare generally, depend on rich societies like the US maintaining high quality institutions and culture
-- nonselective immigration could undermine those institutions and culture
-- therefore immigration should be selective
I think he's sincere about it, and it's worth reading the back-and-forths between him and people like Alex Nowrasteh to get a sense of what the evidence says about the merits of this argument. I also think many of the people who seize on arguments like this are just trying to rationalize bigotry.
I think a whole lot more are not trying to rationalize bigotry. This is a pretty normie viewpoint that maps well to overall population preferences seen with polling, generally accompanied by a support of immigration as valuable while wanting to keep numbers reasonable.
I think this is an ok theory in abstract, I think that in practice a rapidly aging society with a low birth rate cannot afford to be too selective with its immigration and also avoid being zero sum with its politics. That is ultimately the problem here. There is a high demand for physical labor jobs, including caring for our aging baby boomer generation that cannot be automated or outsourced in today's world.
Meanwhile, the US has spent decades closing pathways to legal immigration, and both migrants seeking life in America and employers seeking employees who are willing to work hard for lower wages have turned to illegal immigration as the solution. Now we have a patchwork of immigrants who have a variety of legal statuses, many of which were meant to be "temporary", and reactionary, anti-liberal forces want to scapegoat them for economic conditions.
The options are either to give in to these pressures and triangulate "redistribution, affirmative action and restrictive immigration" to the point where it necessarily becomes zero sum, to accept upward limitations on economic growth and opportunity, accept the necessity of more immigrants in society, or pray we wake up in a world where young adults are eager to not just become downwardly mobile but to also have to work way harder to achieve that lower socioeconomic status than their parents.
The US is still at over 500,000 more births than deaths, before our baseline immigration level of around a million per year.
Most elderly spend three years or less receiving assistance in ADLs before death. Old people are healthier than ever. Many, like the late Catherine O’Hara, are working or independently living a full life up to the end.
We have not been decreasing the number of legal immigrants, although we saw a temporary drop in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, followed by a record surge. See https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/annual-number-of-us-legal-permanent-residents - which is not from an anti immigrant group.
We can be as selective as we want to with immigration, as we have many times more people wanting to come here than we admit.
There is a moderate - not huge - demand for physical labor jobs. Most immigrants do not work in physical labor jobs, although they are overrepresented in those jobs, particularly agriculture and construction. Some of that labor has existing technological substitutes (milking machines, mechanical harvesters, prefab homes, etc) that likely would be quickly implemented in the absence of those immigrants. Some of that labor does not have good substitutes. And some jobs have substitutes available but not mature enough for immediate deployment.
We also are looking at potential huge dislocations of the job market with AI and robotics. That suggests caution in estimating how many people we will need to do what jobs and which skills will have practical technological substitutes. We don’t have a long term crystal ball for this.
Reading the commentary on the housing problem there two obvious disconnects. Progressives see the problem as affordable rents while econservatives see it as affordable home ownership. I guess this is natural given the historical constituency of the two sets of wonks. The constituencies may be in flux but the wonks aren't. Try changing the zoning to allow multi family buildings in a wealthy neighborhood. The reverse of this and the pushback has already happened in the gentrification debate. Policies to foster one or the other must come in conflict, at least at the margin. The second disconnect is not partisan but has to do with supply vs demand. You are focused on the supply side but demand matters too. Add 20 million immigrants and it drives up prices, at least until the supply can react. Even with the reform you suggest, that is going to be slower. I don't know how much of the housing stock has disappeared into the Air B&B world but that has an impact too.
So interesting! And helpful. Thanks for this.
Of course its zero-sum. Sure there is economic growth, but even that is mostly captured by the biggest players. Even if there is some positive sum, the game is still played as a zero-sum game. Just like any sport or poker game. Just because new player comes into the game that adds $$ to the pot, doesn't mean the game isn't played as a zero-sum game. Redistribution and affirmative action are by definition zero-sum. It the economy wasn't zero-sum there would be no reason for redistribution and AA.
Demsas says that neighborhoods are competitive. They are actually designed to be competitive. Cities and states are forced to compete for capital and wealthy residents. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan ended the Revenue Sharing and Fiscal Equalization Program that was used to address spatial inequality between the states. This is called competitive federalism (also known as the second war between the states).
No it's not
Compare how wealthy the average family is.Now, to say a hundred years ago or fifty years ago or thirty years ago
Our living standard has in fact gotten a lot better
The main problem is government regulation that has prevented the free market from providing enough housing
And has prevented competition in health care services
Yes it is silly kid. The market is based on competition. Even politics is based on competition. Just like any sporting event. Businesses in the market compete for profits and market share and customers. Its a winner take all system. Try reading the book by Robert Frank Winner Take All Society.
Just because points accumulate over time does not change the fact that its a zero sum game. What planet do you live on kid?
If that was the case then living standards would never have improved. But they did.
Free markets have made people WAY better off than they used to be
The flaw I detect with the Abundance theory of politics is that--while its proponents are largely correct about production constraints that plague urban growth--America is still doing better on affordable amenities than the rest of the West including/especially housing. Canadians would love to have America's housing market. Additionally, the tipping point states aren't the most expensive housing markets and I frankly don't buy the excuse that the median Michigan voter is super plugged into the problems facing California and New York. Moreover, cost of living has also skyrocketed in Florida yet their voters don't seem to regard that development as a failure of red state governance. Personally, I'm enthusiastic about Abundance and building out infrastructure, but I don't think it's a sufficient explanation for the political developments we've seen over the past 10 years.
This is an excellent analysis. It may be overthinking the problem. Most of the US's curren issues are related to the prevalence of racism and xenophobia in an economic environment that funnels all the goodies to the very top of the heap. For most people, its less than a zero sum game, they're just blaming the wrong villains for the problems.
Years ago I discovered that most scarcity we experience isn't natural—it's manufactured through bad policy, bad decisions, and misunderstanding human nature. Your article brilliantly demonstrates why this matters: manufactured scarcity makes zero-sum thinking rational, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that devours liberalism.
This is precisely what the Tension Transformation Framework addresses. Zero-sum thinking flows from victim identity—the belief that my gain requires your loss, producing Maladaptive responses: immigration restrictions, housing freezes, endless redistribution battles. But as Foster showed, this isn't irrational when growth has genuinely stalled.
The deeper question: Why do wealthy societies manufacture scarcity through zoning, occupational licensing, and educational monopolies? Because victim identity demands control over fixed resources rather than expansion of opportunity.
Classical liberalism bet everything on abundance through creative tension—not just material prosperity, but expanding rights, mobility, and human potential. Your Massachusetts housing example is perfect: affluent progressives create artificial scarcity, then blame newcomers for the competition they manufactured.
The alternative isn't abandoning those in need—it's recognizing that genuine help means expanding opportunity, not managing dependency. Equal access to excellent education. Economic mobility through deregulation. Housing abundance through builder-friendly policies.
Foster's peasants had real scarcity. We have chosen scarcity. Liberalism survives when it delivers what those peasant societies never experienced: visible, tangible proof that the pie grows. That's not just policy—it's identity transformation from competitor to architect.
The classic and still underrated book on this subject is Benjamin Friedman, _The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth_. I'd be very interested to see one of the Argument folks (Arguers? Argumentatives?) review it and dive into how its theses hold up in light of history since the book was written.
Great article that will help to think deeper about housing and politics. Many progressives (I’m one) have lost the plot on housing, The market worked in 1970 in a 3:1 housing multiplier nation on price as long as neighborhood boundaries were clear. In part high multipliers are modern legal redlining. Housing subsidies today are much much greater per capita and subsidize owner equity growth in same way Medicaid subsidizes WalMart workers. Housing subsidy costs get used against liberals politically. Zero sum didn’t work in housing in a 3:1 world. The multipliers, subsidies, and public housing help maintain the class boundaries.
Local school funding in MA is still a big problem. The high multipliers keep school enrollments down on the market side and local politics allow subsidized housing only for the elderly. Progressives need to embrace sustained market supply growth as a North Star. The state need to reform zoning and school funding formulas for any chance to do it. #BackTo3.
The average home across america cost less that 3x the average adults full time wage in 1970. Supply restriction since has made that number grow to 6 nationally and 10,12 + in
some places.
to what are you referring when you say 3:1
Hm, I wonder what happens when AI automation starts going mainstream in this environment?
@Jerusalem Demsas, I'd still absolutely love to interview you if you're free sometime in the upcoming weeks or months!
The problem with a tight focus on zoning is that most scarcity problems aren't the result of excessive and misguided regulation. To get decent health care and education for everyone, , we need more and bigger government not less. And social/public housing is at least as important as private provisions.
In Australia at least, YIMBY has swept all before it, at least in political term. There are still plenty of local disputes, but no-one admits to being a NIMBY. But that doesn't solve our housing problem, let alone fix problems in the health system.
I think the big issue is less the perception that policy is zero-sum (which is clearly wrong) than that we're probably in a state where policy is Pareto efficient. To be more specific-- yes, many supply-expanding policies are *good*, but there are still losers to passing them.
Take housing. Know-nothing criticisms notwithstanding, building more housing certainly lowers housing costs and makes it more affordable. But one person's affordable housing is another person's depreciated asset-- a house becoming cheaper is good for buyers, but bad for the seller. And even building apartments in empty lots triggers complaints about the "character" of neighborhoods, the perils of increased traffic, etc. (and can also lower housing costs, all things being equal). Or take healthcare; a major factor in our healthcare cost spike is just that we pay doctors more than our peers do. But how much appetite is there to cut doctor pay?
And that problem, like so many policies, is magnified by the fact that the benefits are concentrated, while the costs are widespread. Paying $60 for TurboTax is a small annoyance for most people, but its existence is a huge boon for... TurboTax employees and shareholders. Or take stockbrokers who can extract a few extra pennies per trade out of each retail investors... which results in billions in excess monopoly rents at brokerage houses. And while those few pennies aren't individually a big deal, a bunch of those kinds of rents extracted up and down the economy adds up to a whole lot of rent seeking that's a big boon to each rent seeker, but not worth the energy for those paying those rents to combat. Which is where class-action lawsuits should be a disciplining tactic, but they're probably underpowered.
So in sum-- I think Pareto efficiency is our enemy here, not zero-sum thinking (or even the perception of zero-sum distribution), as well as the age-old problem of inefficiencies having concentrated benefits but distributed costs.