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A zero sum game is where the amount won by the winner is equal to the amount lost by the loser.
"Most economic situations are non-zero-sum"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum (along with every damn economics course I have ever taken)
Robert Wright - "society becomes increasingly non-zero-sum as it becomes more complex," [same article]
I stated in my post "There is no way human society (Life as far as you are concerned) is a zero sum game."
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You are reducing the situation down to the individual. The fact that two people can both seemingly benefit(economically speaking) from the same transaction, without it costing someone, is an illusion.
This is because there are systems in place designed to create this illusion. I can promise you that for every two people who are percieved to be both profiting from a given transaction, there are others somewhere else in the world that are paying the price for this to be possible.
Now, it may or may not be exactly two, and it may or may not be exactly the same amount of money. But by Zero-Sum, I am not referring to the fact that an INDIVIDUAL must gain exactly what another individual loses, but that as a whole (human civilization in it's entirety), there is only one constant energy (capital). There is no extra money on the table, so to speak. It can niether be created nor destroyed. It can only be transfered from one to the other, with the process benefiting some, and costing others. If not on the scale of the individual, then as competing societies. Economists and writers that claim otherwise, are either ignoring or discrediting the big picture. There is ALWAYS cost.
So the next time you mistakingly think win-win, just think of all the people around the world that have died or been enslaved (either knowingly or unknowingly) to afford such a seemingly perfect opportunity.