I live in New York City, which fashions itself as many things: the financial capital of the world, the media capital of the world, and obviously, the bagel capital of the world. But I like to think of it as something else as well: the zero-sum capital of the world. Or at least, the US.
The essential fact of life here is that more people want to live in New York than there are homes that we allow to exist. New Yorkers talk about the competition for apartments — or for slots in decent schools or tables at decent restaurants or virtually anything save tickets to your friend’s improv show — as if it is a Hobbesian war of all against all.
It’s not just New York. Once you start looking for that intuition, you see it everywhere. In arguments about immigration (“they’re taking our jobs”), housing (“we’re full”), college admissions, culture war skirmishes over who gets…
